Jeremy Hunt’s mixed messages about PSB channels

One of my colleagues drew my attention earlier to a story about Jeremy Hunt in the Telegraph, titled “Provide local news or lose your TV guide slot, ITV and C4 told.” It was quite a striking headline, and he wondered if it was even possible for him to have such influence.

The article stated “Today Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, will warn the major channels that their guide position is at risk if they don’t provide local news.” And when a newspaper says something like that, it usually means that they have been given a copy of the speech beforehand.

Is it possible?

Can a Minister do anything like this, even if he wants to? Well, actually yes. Electronic Programme Guides are covered by an Ofcom code, and that says that PSB (Public Service Broadcasting) channels have to be given prominence, and that the Secretary of State can add to or subtract from the list of PSB channels.

So, on the face of it, if ITV and C4 don’t pull their weight with local material (not that C4 has ever had any; it had a different job to do, catering for minorities) then they could find themselves losing their right to the top spots on the programme guide. Here, I could venture into an aside about how it was previous broadcasting reforms under first the Conservatives and then Labour that have stripped from ITV every shred of the regional programming it used to have, but that’s for another day.

Is it practical?

While on the face of it, it might be possible for Hunt to say to ITV and Channel 4 “You’re not doing what we want, down the EPG you go,” there are more problems than just the potential for Ministers to bully broadcasters into doing what they want.

PSB status is important not just for a place in the programme guide. On Freeview, it’s also intimately related to coverage, and Freeview is going to be the de-factor way of receiving television after switchover.

The PSB channels were given space, because they were PSBs. The BBC had two multiplexes (the chunks of capacity, each of which can carry several channels, also known as a mux), ITV and Channel 4 shared one, and the other three muxes are commercial (though Channel 5 has first dibs on half of one, and there are various other complications and tangled ownerships).

After switchover, there will be three PSB muxes; one will carry the BBC channels, one the HD services, and one the ITV and Channel 4 services with a slot for Channel 5. Channel 5 gets a space on that because many transmitters around the country will only be carrying those three muxes. The other three, with channels like Dave, E4, Sky Three, Sky Sports, ITV4, Film 4 and others won’t be on many relays, because the commercial operators don’t see the benefit.

That means that they’ll have less coverage, and people in rural areas won’t get all the channels (by percentage population, most people will get everything, nevertheless, some people are going to get fewer channels than others. Estimates are around 90% coverage for all channels, and 98% for just the PSB services, a difference of some 4.5million people.)

Now, it would be a bit odd, surely, to say to ITV “Well, you don’t have PSB status any more, so you can’t be on channel 3, but we’ll let you keep the space on that PSB mux” wouldn’t it? You can’t be a PSB sometimes, but not at others.

And what of the people who might gain PSB status by providing local news? Wouldn’t they be entitled to space on a mux that reaches everyone in their area, rather than just those on a main transmitter?

Effectively, to have any logic, the plan would have to involve swapping some of the channels on the ITV/C4 mux for others, otherwise regardless of channel numbers, you’d have the bizarre situation where local news wasn’t available to a lot of people, while there was universal coverage of channel that were no longer deemed PSB.

And there’s also another consequence of that. Given that most people think local TV will find it hard to survive, it’s going to be run on a shoestring – don’t expect glossy production values with amazing graphics. Don’t even expect something like Southern TV’s old Day By Day programme, most likely.

So, how do you think people (or voters as they’re sometimes called) would react if they suddenly found that, not only was Coronation Street or Desperate Housewives on a different channel number, but that if they lived in some rural areas, they couldn’t receive it any more? And the alternative was a distinctly budget local news operation?

I’m sure some people might welcome the news, but I suspect rather more would be pretty annoyed – and they might well think “Actually, couldn’t we just have Day By Day back, in its old slot?” That, surely, would be a better idea – something like the proposed independent news consortiums the last Government talked of, if ITV’s so determined to banish every memory of its regional past.

(There’s also talk of ‘ultra-local’ broadcasting, using extra frequencies; that would allow these new PSBs to get a slot in the cities, without bumping ITV or C4 services out of the way, but it would still be an odd arrangement, with non-PSBs getting better coverage, and local services very unlikely to be available in rural areas, where the cost of reaching those 4.5 million viewers could be prohibitive for a small organisation.)

What’s going on?

Later in the day, a story in Media Guardian caught my eye, “Traditional channels safe from being pushed down EPGs, says Jeremy Hunt,” which seems somewhat at odds with what was reported initially. The Guardian headline appears to be based on questions and answers afterwards, and they too point out it’s not quite what the speech implied.

So what happened? Did the Minister get a reality check from someone? Was the speech poorly drafted? Did someone point out that 4.5 million viewers in rural areas might translate into quite a lot of votes? And has Mr Hunt got quite as much of a grasp of his portfolio as those of us who are interested in broadcasting would like him to have?

Now, as some who read this site will know, I’m not a friend of the Conservative party, but even if I were, I think I might be tempted to ask whether or not whoever let the original idea be floated really had as much idea about the sheer impracticality of it as they should have, and the potential implications.

If any Minister wants to have the confidence of people in certain areas, they need to exhibit a decent grasp of the practicalities of what they propose. And so far – especially with now abandoned talk from last year of tearing up the BBC charter – I have to say I don’t have a lot of confidence in Jeremy Hunt. Some of that is undoubtedly down to my own political views, but really – if you’re going to float ideas, from whatever party, think about them first. Don’t put them in a speech and then row back from them in the Q&A immediately afterwards.

4TV postscript

Pretty much as I predicted, Beko – the company that’s now owner of the Digifusion name – is not going to produce a firmware update to make the old PVRs use the standard Freeview EPG.

Some owners on Digital Spy are reporting that Beko is offering £70 to owners of some models of PVR, in exchange for the old units, as a gesture of goodwill. The offer depends on the serial number of your unit, and essentially only applies to those sold after Beko acquired the assets of Digifusion.

The Beko contact page is here.

If you want to recap the whole tale, this is a good place to start.

FreeviewHD Content protection rolled out

According to my sources at the BBC, an update to the FreeviewHD programme guide data is being rolled out at the moment. This update is the implementation of the Huffman-encoded EPG tables, which are part of the Freeview HD content protection system that I’ve written about here and here.

The theory is that as part of the approval for the Freeview HD badge, equipment will already have the ability to decode the EPG built in, and so most people should not notice any change.

The change hasn’t been done in one go, and is apparently rolling out around the country; I don’t have a schedule yet, or details of which transmitters have been changed over, but I do know that the plan is that the switchover will conclude in November if all goes well.

However – there’s always one of those, isn’t there? – there have been some reports on internet forums that the change has caused some problems with equipment, and specifically with the new Humax HDR Fox T2. I’m unable to confirm these at the moment, but I will update this post as soon as I get information back from Humax.

I’ve got a Humax here, and the EPG still works just fine. What has been suggested on some forums is that where the new EPG has been rolled out, the search function no longer works on the Humax. I can certainly confirm that the search doesn’t work on the unit I have , but since I hadn’t tried it until today, I can’t honestly say whether or not anything has changed in that regard, though posts elsewhere on the net, such as AV Forums, suggest that to be the case.

So, content protection is being rolled out as I write; it’s not everywhere yet, but I shall try to get more details as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’d be most interested to hear from anyone who is experiencing problems with the EPG or EPG related functions on Freeview HD equipment, which weren’t evident a little while ago.

Update, 1945, Thurs: I’ve just had work from Humax that the issue some users are having with search does indeed appear to be related to the compressed SI data, and that they will be looking at issuing an update to the HDR Fox T2 in September. I’ll note also, since my review’s not yet been published, that this issue aside, I’ve been quite impressed with the box. So if you can live without the keyword search, don’t let it put you off.

Panasonic statement on GuidePlus

My review of the Panasonic DMR-XW380 Freeview HD DVD recorder has just been published on RegHardware. And, just as predictably, there have been quite a few comments already about one of the most noticeable aspects of Panasonic’s Freeview products – the GuidePlus EPG.

For those who aren’t familiar, this is what you see when you press the Guide button:

Taken from the FreeviewHD recorder, but the Panasonic TVs also have those adverts in their guide

Not exactly a thing of beauty, is it? And, as many people point out, the Panasonic kit isn’t exactly cheap, either. So, you pay a lot – £550 in the case of the recorder – and you still have to look at adverts when you see what’s on telly.

So, I asked Panasonic for a statement. Here’s their official line:

As with all customer feedback, we take your listener’s views on board.  Panasonic, along with other leading consumer electronics manufacturers took the decision to implement the Guide Plus Programme guide on our range of TVs and recorders.  The EPG offers enhanced features to consumers, e.g. in the UK, the Radio Times provide editorial highlights selecting recommended programmes from their TV schedule and these are highlighted on the Guide.

Advertising is not new on information services, for example, on PCs, it is common for many web related services to have advertising on them.

As mentioned, we have taken your listener’s comments on board and as we value what our customers say, as part of our continuous product improvement we will look at illustrating the benefits of the EPG in our next publicity materials (catalogues, online tec.), as well as highlighting the advertising content more comprehensively in the instruction manuals.

Now, firstly, that looks to me like it was originally written in response to a question from a radio station, which would account for the references to listeners. And the suggestion of illustrating the benefits of the EPG is interesting. It sort of says “if only we explain this better, people will understand why we did it, and come to love it.”

I’m afraid they won’t. And I’m frankly amazed that Freeview are happy to have kit like this bearing the FreeviewHD logo, which also has to appear in the guide – their logo could be on screen with adverts over which they have no control.

There is, of course, another issue which is what happens if the GuidePlus service ever goes away? Will the box continue to work just fine? I suspect the answer is yes, because it seems to be using the Freeview triggers for series links and recording start/stop. But in light of the 4TV affair, I shall double check with Panasonic.

And I shall, of course, continue to remind them that it’s a very annoying thing to put in an EPG. Even if you explain the merits to me, I’d still not be happy about having adverts on there, and judging by the comments, every time a Panasonic product with GuidePlus is reviewed, nor are many other customers.

So please, Panasonic. Drop GuidePlus. It’s horrible, ugly, intrusive and puts a lot of people off your Freeview kit.

4TV – Freeview to the rescue? Or perhaps the OFT

Not long after I wrote my previous post about 4TV, a few news reports cropped up suggesting that Freeview might be coming to the rescue, though what they actually said was merely that they’d be talking to the third party concerned.

Frankly, I don’t think there’s much chance of Freeview stepping in to pay for the service – and don’t forget that InView say they no longer have the bandwidth that’s required to transmit it in any case, which makes things even more expensive to do.

There is – of course – an online petition asking Freeview to re-instate the EPG, but I’m still not of the opinion that it will actually make much difference. Nor do I really think may people will defect to Sky or Freesat as a result – though I’d hope that if they buy replacement equipment, they’ll make sure that it conforms to the digital tick.

A tangled web

I know some people will think this is a somewhat defeatist attitude, but I honestly will be very surprised if someone coughs up the money to fund a service for a small number of people who, legally speaking, aren’t even their customers.

That, I’m afraid, is just realism about how things work – and in particular about how they can work in a world where electronic equipment develops so quickly, and a product that you buy in a shop may actually rely on so many external factors to work correctly that, ultimately, the end user has little or no chance of knowing who to blame if something goes wrong – and there we have some echoes, perhaps, of the situation regarding surround sound on Freeview as well.

In this case, as the legal people at Which have said, along with other experts on consumer law that I’ve spoken with, there really is very little chance of redress.

A wider issue

While it’s certainly frustrating for people who have the affected bits of kit, I think there’s perhaps a better use of ones energy than campaigning to get an EPG brought back for a couple of years, for some equipment that’s pretty old already.

The PVRs affected aren’t by any means the only equipment sold that relies on services from elsewhere for part of their functionality. Take DVD and Blu-ray players, for example, not to mention many other gadgets. Very often these rely on a service called Gracenote, which displays a track listing when you pop a CD in. Gracenote is now owned by Sony, and I have absolutely no reason to imagine that they’ll ever do anything other than keep it going.

But what if they did decide to pull the plug? You’d find that suddenly, you couldn’t just pick the track you wanted to play from a helpful list on screen, when you popped a disc into your player. You’d have to look at the case, and find the number, and work it out that way, just like the people with the 4TV-based PVRs are having to set recordings manually.

And you know what? There’s nothing you could do about it. A feature that you thought was part of a bit of equipment you’ve bought turns out to be reliant on a service provided by a third party, with whom you have no contractual arrangement, and very likely absolutely no rights in law.

It’s the label, darling

I’m sure other readers of this blog can think of other products that, similarly, rely for a part of their functionality on a service that’s provided by someone else. You might call it, perhaps, an ‘implied subscription’ to that service, except of course that’s not really recognised in law: unless something says “With 3 years free subscription to XYZ service” then you can’t really complain when the service stops after two years.

And thinking about it, it would make consumer law even more complicated, if there were some sort of liability established to try and ensure the continuing provision of services. You can’t really make shopkeepers liable for something done by a company they’ve never heard of, can you? You might say that if a service is provided, then a company should have funds set aside to pay for it – but for how long? And wouldn’t that hamper many sstart-up companies before they even got to the launch?

So, I’m not sure there’s an awful lot that can be done, especially in such a complicated and interconnected world, where products and company allegiances change all the time.

Look for this symbol to guarantee compatibility with digital TV services, up to and beyond DSO

The ‘Digital Tick’ is supposed to let people know that a product will work throught the switchover to all-digital TV, and beyond; none of the boxes that are affected by the 4TV problems was certified. So perhaps that’s an important lesson for people there.

But in the wider arena, perhaps there’s also something to be said for a similar mark, or indication, not as a statement of approval – such schemes involve more cost, inevitably – but simply a clear and unambiguous statement so that people can know, when they look at a piece of equipment, that a significant feature or part of its functionality relies on a service provided by a third party. So you’d know if a PVR relied on a service like 4TV, or if a Blu-ray player used Gracenote, and you could factor that into your decisions when buying.

There would be work involved in working out what qualifies – for example, the standard Freeview EPG isn’t provided by box manufacturers, but it doesn’t really qualify as a third party service; it’s just there, as part of the platform. I daresay people will think it ever so onerous – but manuals already contain loads of regulatory information as it is. How hard would it be to put an icon next to a feature that relies on a third party? Or perhaps a list near the back page, with URLs? All that is probably a matter for the Office of Fair Trading, I guess.

As devices become more complicated, and provide more and more features, which are often bought in from other suppliers, I think perhaps it is about time there was more transparency in terms of letting people know what’s probably going to carry on working indefinitely, and what might disappear at a moment’s notice, if a contract runs out, or a company goes bust – even one of which you’ve never heard.

Freeview – who makes what, and why it matters

Following on from my recent post about the various names of the Vestel T8300 HD receiver, Marc over at PVR Junction has helpfully sent a list of some of the other brands that have rebadged Vestel equipment for the UK, together with a link to an unofficial web site with more information.

So, these are the brands that have sold Vestel Freeview PVRs under their own name in the UK:

• Akura
• Alba
• Bush
• Digihome
• Dual
• Durabrand
• Evesham
• Ferguson
• Goodmans
• Grundig
• Hitachi
• Linsar
• Logik
• Luxor
• Maplin
• ONN
• Proline
• Sharp
• Technika
• Techwood
• Wharfedale

As again, note that this doesn’t mean that everything with that badge on was made by Vestel; check the label on the bottom and see if any part of the model number corresponds to one of the Vestel ‘T’ numbers listed on the Futaura site.

Some companies will simply buy in what looks best at the time. For example, there has also been a Wharfedale PVR that was a rebadged TVonics, and while Goodmans and Grundig have used Vestel kit in the past, their current Freeview HD boxes are made by someone else, as far as I can tell – they certainly aren’t the Vestel T8300.

A big boy did it and ran away

On the subject of rebadging, you might think it’s just the second and third tier brands who do this sort of thing, while the big well known global companies diligently create shiny new products in their test labs.

That’s not the case. Sony’s SVR-S500 Freeview PVR wasn’t really a Sony product at all. It was a twin tuner recorder, with a miserly 80GB hard drive – though to be fair, it was released around four years ago.

Rather than being a Sony design, it was really a re-badged Digifusion FVRT200. And this is where things start to become curiouser and curiouser. The Digifusion was one of a few products that didn’t use the main Freeview programme guide. Instead, it relied on a channel which some people might remember, called 4TV. This was a data channel that seemed to do nothing most of the time, and if you watched it, you would think it was a waste of space.

What it actually did was broadcast a fourteen day programme guide in the middle of the night, which was stored by various devices, including the Digifusion models. Sony, for whatever strange reason of their own, cut the programme guide down to seven days on the SVR-S500, effectively meaning that you paid extra money to get a Sony badge on a Digifusion recorder, and had only eight days of EPG, rather than fourteen.

Fast forward to this year; 4TV is now InView, and they’ve announced that since the contract hasn’t been renewed for them to broadcast the programme guide, they’re stopping. So, if you have a Digifusion recorder, or the Sony clone (both were made by Beko, another Turkish firm), you’ll find that there isn’t a programme guide any more, making it much harder to schedule recordings.

Of course, a four year old Freeview recorder that can only record one thing at a time, and has just an 80GB hard drive sounds like pretty ancient technology now. But wouldn’t you think that if you paid for a big brand name like Sony, you wouldn’t be left with something that had vastly reduced functionality, just four years later?

EPG gallery – FreeviewHD

For your delectation and delight, here’s a little gallery of images, showing the EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) on fifteen different Freeview HD products. This is what you’ll be using to find what you want to watch, unless you’re still buying a printed TV guide. Perhaps, with some of these, you probably should…

From the Bush set top box; you'll find the same guide in the Linsar and other boxes made by Vestel - look for 'T8300' in the sticker on the bottom

Digital Stream's twin tuner recorder - which seems to take a little while to fill up the EPG

Goodmans set top box; expect the Grundig to look similar - same box, different brand

Humax HD-FOX T2. Their recorder will probably look very similar

iCan's EasyHD - Editor's choice in my roundup for RegHardware

The Icecrypt T2200 - actually made by Topfield

LG's TVs use this guide - not the best use of screen size, perhaps?

Taken from the FreeviewHD recorder, but the Panasonic TV's also have those adverts in their guide

The Philips set top box is actually designed by Pace, who license the name

Sagem's Freeview HD recorder

This is the guide from Samsung's Freeview HD set - another RegHardware winner

Sharp's FreeviewHD set top box

Sharp's Quattron FreeviewHD set - but it's test firmware; there's no Freeview HD logo

The EPG on Sony's TV set

Toshiba's EPG. You can even change the colour coding