3View – 4TV is no cause for concern

When I wrote about the situation with the 4TV-based Freeview PVRs a couple of weeks ago, some readers made the assumption that, reading between the lines, I was suggesting people don’t buy equipment that hasn’t got the official Freeview or Freeview HD logo on the box, and given that the one box that’s eagerly anticipated by many but doesn’t have Freeview HD certification is the one from British start-up 3View, some readers might have drawn the conclusion that I was talking about them.

As I said in a comment to that post, I wasn’t specifically referring to anyone, and I’m certainly not going to tell people to make a decision one way or another about the 3View box when I’ve yet to play with it (I declined the offer of a pre-production unit, preferring to wait until the release version, with final firmware).

All that said, the cessation of the 4TV service and the problems caused for people left with no EPG on their device has made some people wonder about the wisdom of buying something that isn’t Freeview certified. So, I tackled that question head on earlier today, in a conversation with 3View’s Robert Blackwell.

Key facts

3View's box doesn't have the Freeview sticker on it - but does that really matter?

The most important message for people to bear in mind is that there isn’t really a chance of the sort of problems caused by the missing 4TV EPG affecting the 3View box. Although it’s designed from a fairly internet-centric point of view, with easy access to catch up services from the programme guide, it is also perfectly capable of working without an internet connection at all. It can use enhanced programme guides from the internet (which allow things like clicking on programmes to buy them on DVD, or accessing catch-up TV), or it can quite happily work with the standard Freeview broadcast EPG. So, whatever happens, you’ll have an EPG, from which you can set recordings.

And, 3View has already confirmed that the box will be able to access the EPG for Freeview’s HD channels, which has content controls, so you’ll be good for both HD and SD channels.

Online services

What of online services? While the core TV recording functionality is clearly able to continue whatever happens to 3View, the box promises lots of other neat tools and tricks. According to Blackwell, the online widgets are standard Opera widgets, so while 3View may have some available on their own site and through their own portal for you to add, it’s essentially an open system.

And, where you install a widget that accesses information from, say, the BBC News site, your box will be accessing that information directly. In other words, 3View isn’t running servers through which all the information reaching your box has to pass. So, again, even if they were to go the way of the 4TV guide, you wouldn’t lose out on services provided by other people – you’ll still have a box that can connect to and display online content.

So why not certify?

The Freeview logo: reassurance of compatibility? Or 'Just tv'?

The obvious question for many people, then, is why not certify? Wouldn’t the FreeviewHD logo provide people with some extra degree of reassurance?

Perhaps – but 3View’s Blackwell outlined some other reasons why not. With Project Canvas creating a new class of connected boxes with a powerful brand name, 3View feels that in the longer term the ‘Freeview’ label may be seen by consumers as meaning more basic boxes, lacking the online services that will assume a higher profile when Canvas (probably to be called YouView) launches next year.

Certification would also require the use of an MHEG system, which provides the ‘red button’ interactive features used by the BBC; while some people may miss those, Blackwell is confident that many of the functions will be able to be replicated through widgets – and for those who do want to access specific BBCi content, they’ll almost certainly have a TV that’s capable of displaying it anyway. And, in my own experience, MHEG can slow down boxes, and has been the cause of plenty of bugs in various PVRs over the years.

The Freeview label, in other words, is seen as potentially limiting the marketing options. 3View’s box is compliant with the key technical standards, like DVB-T2, and agreement to use the HD EPG as well as the ability to pick up the standard Freeview programme guide should ensure that whatever the fortunes of the company themselves, the boxes will carry on working just fine.

FreeviewHD content control – don’t panic

Some of the most significant complaints about the content control system on FreeviewHD have been from the open source movement, who feel that they’ll be unnecessarily locked out of making equipment.

I must say that I think some of the quotes have been rather over-eggging the pudding, suggesting that there’s an army out there of people who are modifiying existing equipment to provide things like extra services for the deaf, for instance. And I don’t think it’s really terribly helpful to try and conjure up scenarios that many people will instantly think are far-fetched.

As some will know, I run a website for Topfield PVRs. That’s one of the most user-modifiable digital TV recorders on the market at the moment, and looking at the various statistics from the website, I’d hazard a guess that the majority of people don’t even bother tweaking that unit. Of those that do, only a tiny minority ever delve into the programming side of things – which is true of many systems. Much is made of the open source nature of Linux, but it’s a tiny fraction of the community that ever gives anything back.

Now, that’s not an argument for saying that standards shouldn’t be open, or that the open source community should be locked out of things like Freeview HD, but I do think that it’s necessary to keep a reasonable perspective on these things – some of the reports about content control gave the impression that if only it weren’t for this, an army of people would be attacking set top boxes with soldering irons and modifying them. I know that’s not an accurate representation, and you probably do too, but in talking up the consequences too much, I think goodwill can be lost.

Don’t panic

And, in any case, I don’t think that – for the next few years at least – this is a major issue, certainly not on Freeview HD. Firstly, the control mechanism is the same as for Freesat, and open source projects like Myth have successfully managed to work out how to decode the Freesat EPG.

Even if that were impossible on Freeview HD, for technical or commercial reasons – a company might not want to be seen to have reverse engineered the Huffman tables that are being used, for example – it’s not the end of the world.

That’s because of the nature of what’s actually on Freeview HD, and the fact that the EPG data for the standard definition broadcast isn’t changing at all. Right now, Freeview HD offers BBC HD, ITV1HD and Channel 4HD. Later this year, BBC One HD will be joining, and in 2012, there may be a fifth channel. That could be Five HD, or it could be something else, but it’s likely to be something from one of the PSBs, and I suspect it may well be an HD version of an existing channel.

Where does that leave us? Well, in the short to medium term, since I don’t think anyone else will launch HD channels until sometime after 2012, of the four channels on Freeview HD, three will be simulcasts of their SD equivalents. And the EPG data for those will be broadcast in the usual way, complete with series link information, and accurate recording triggers. And since it’s a simultaneous broadcast, wouldn’t it be pretty simple for software to just take the EPG data from the standard def channel, and use it for the HD one? About the only thing you’ll miss out on is the extra information that indicates if a channel is broadcast using surround sound or not.

That leaves the BBC HD channel, and it’s fairly easy to get an EPG feed for that from the internet, especially for an open source project. Of course, you won’t necessarily have the series link information, or accurate recording triggers, which is a pity. Some of that, perhaps, may be possible to recreate where a programme on BBC HD is simulcast with one of the other SD channels. Accurate recording triggers are handy, but with the advent of BBC One HD, I suspect there will be fewer instances where programming on the HD channel is likely to ‘slip’ due to overrunning events like tennis matches.

3View

Incidentally, this EPG issue is also one that’s been vexing people regarding the 3View box, with people worrying about availability of HD channel EPG information, should they not be able to use the official broadcast one. 3View reports that they do have agreement to use it – while boxes with the FreeviewHD logo have to have the Huffman tables in it, the reverse doesn’t apply; you just have to agree to play by the rules to get access to the tables necessary to unpack the EPG. And, even if that weren’t the case, for the reasons I’ve outlined above, I really don’t think this need be a major issue, at least in the next few years.

That may change, of course, if lots of other HD-only channels launch after switchover is complete, and a bit more openness never goes amiss, but right now, I don’t think there’s any  great cause to panic, or to believe that there will be no way that open source projects can display an EPG for Freeview’s HD channels.