Do you really want the internet on your TV?

TVs with network connections are all the rage; they’re not actually that new – I looked at some for RegHardware a while back – but this year’s CES show brought forth lots of new ones, and updates to existing ranges. Google is trying to get in on the act too, with some TVs and set top boxes featuring it’s Google TV system (which has not, it has to be said, been universally well received).

And, doubtless I, and many of my colleagues on various technical blogs, as well as marketing people, will be extolling the virtues of these ‘net connected’ TVs, possibly even referring to them as “Internet TVs.”

In some ways, I think that’s a potential mistake.

The internet? Really?

It’s very easy to get carried away with the technology; I’m sure plenty of people will, and there are plenty of sites where those of us with a detailed technical interest will be poring over the details of new TV sets, wondering if they support SMB as well as UPnP for network media playback, and whether they can be controlled as DLNA renderers by other devices.

But ordinary members of the public aren’t like that. And I think that if you said to many of them “Do you want the internet on your TV?” the answer would probably be “Good grief, no.”

Why’s that? Partly because some consumers have been here before, with other devices. Internet on your mobile phone? Thanks.

Oh. It turned out to be just WAP.

For the average consumer, even a modern touch screen phone can still be a bit disappointing, and that’s if they even try using the net functions – many probably don’t bother, after the first flush of playing with a new toy.

So, outside the core tech-savvy market, I think that there are a lot of people who will be resistant to the idea of something called an “internet TV”; they’ll view things that they do on the net as largely being separate from things they might want to do on the TV with other people in the room.

That’s not to say that connected TVs are pointless, by any means. Just that I think how they’re actually described to ordinary people is crucial, not just in terms of whether or not they buy them (because, like HD Ready, in a few years, most TVs will probably have a network connection on the back), but whether or they actually use those features.

I’ve heard from people, for example, who have friends or family who have been delighted to discover that actually, their TV had iPlayer or LoveFilm built in, and they just needed to connect it up and learn how to access it. But they only learned that when a friend or family member explained it, rather than from the person selling them the set.

A few months ago, Humax talked at the unveiling of their Freeview HD recorder about how to get the message across in shops, especially when some of the first products with all these features are going to priced at a premium. Some of the UK’s high street chains, like Currys and Comet, offer awful and misleading advice, and I’m not convinced they really will be able to explain these products to people.

Keep it simple

Outside our bubble of people really interested in technology, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of people for whom things like Twitter are utterly irrelevant. The thought of using YouTube comes pretty far down the list too. Most TVs probably aren’t bought by net-savvy people in their 20s and 30s.

There are people who want to watch TV; they might have an internet connection for email or Skype, but the idea of “internet on the TV” will leave them cold, if that’s how it’s presented by the pushy salespeople of big high street retailers.

What’s going to make people think this is worthwhile is not the technology. It’s what they can do with it – and that means, in the UK, things like iPlayer, 4OD and ITV Player. It means other concepts they can easily understand, like film rental via LoveFilm, or perhaps access to sports events without having to take out an annual subscription.

Though technical evangelists might like the play up the argument that internet delivery lowers the cost of entry, and can bring lots of niche content, there’s a reason it’s niche. Not many people are interested in it.

This is, essentially, another version of the ‘content is king’ argument. Ordinary people want their familiar TV shows; they want to know that that’s what the Ethernet socket on the back of their TV gets them, and they might be interested in some extras, if you explain in terms they understand.

And, incidentally, I think this is one reason why YouView is likely to do fairly well, by integrating catch-up TV in the EPG, rather than burying it away as a separate function, or talking about the internet.

Words matter

I really think that talking about “Internet TVs” or even “Connected TVs” isn’t actually going to enthuse huge portions of the buying public. Focussing on app platforms for the TV might appeal to those who have an iPhone – but the vast majority of people don’t; they don’t even have a smartphone.

The technology can be clever as you like, and often is. But unless you talk to people about it in terms that really mean something to them, you’re going to have a hard job persuading them to buy a “connected TV,” let alone actually connecting it up when they get it home.

How Topfield lost the plot

Long time readers of this blog will know that I also run the Toppy.org.uk site, which is a pretty useful resource for owners of the Topfield Freeview recorders, principally the TF5800 but also the TF5810.

There was a time, a few years ago, when the accepted wisdom was pretty much that, if you wanted a Freeview hard disk recorder, there were two leading models. One was the Humax 9200, and the other was the Topfield TF5800, or ‘Toppy.’

There were two things that made many people consider the Toppy the leading Freeview PVR. One was the ability (shared with the Humax, but a little more reliably) to transfer recordings from the hard drive via the USB port. The other was the presence of an open API, and a freely available set of development tools that allowed users to create ‘TAPs’ or Topfield applications. When the box launched, back in 2005, this was somewhat unprecedented for a piece of domestic AV gear, but it allowed all sorts of things, from simple tweaks like making it easier to jump around a recording, to an almost complete replacement of the user interface.

In short, the TF5800 was a tinkerer’s paradise. Thanks in part to the community that built up on the Toppy forums, and great work done before that by the Australian users (where a version had been on sale for a while), plenty of TAPs appeared, making it one of the most flexible PVRs out there. And, in some ways, it still is – want a box that can automatically record any programme that mentions the word ‘Almodovar’ ? Or that you can set up so that when a radio show has been recorded, it’s transferred to your PC and turned into an MP3 for your iPod? Or that you can set recordings on via the web, or text message? All those things, and more, are possible with the Toppy.

It’s no surprise, then, that many users have been eagerly waiting for a similarly-specced High Definition box to come out.

What is a surprise, though, is how completely and comprehensively Topfield has dropped the ball. They started out as an unknown name in the UK. They gained prominence with a good – if at times quirky – PVR. And they then proceeded to ignore the market to the extent that they’ll have to try very hard to win the trust of users back, even if they do launch a Freeview HD product under their own name.

What went wrong?

When the TF5800 arrived, it had bugs. Plenty of them. But the company was also willing to work with their distributor, Turbosat, who in turn worked with the Toppy.org.uk community, where we collated problems and feature requests. We even created a bug tracker that they could review online.

And, for a while, we had reasonably regular firmware updates; some of those were necessary because in the original firmwares, the MHEG engine (used for interactive services) was a pretty ropy open source implementation that appeared to be being used in a way that breached the open source license. It crashed, and at times while we waited for Topfield to issue fixes, we had to rely on the work of some of the forum members, who reverse engineered firmwares, creating patches in MIPS code, to address shortcomings in the system.

Things really started to go wrong for Topfield with the launch of the TF5810, and the Freeview Playback system (now called Freeview+). To put it bluntly, they never successfully adapted their firmware to work reliably with Freeview+.

If you’re using a Topfield PVR, the advice we have to give on Toppy.org.uk is not to use the Freeview+ firmware; if you have a TF5810, you don’t have much choice, but you can at least use a TAP to create recordings, avoiding the bugs in Topfield’s code.

From a distance

One of the problems is that most of Topfield’s work is done in Korea; they occasionally sent engineers to the UK, who appeared to tinker, then go home, and think “this is good enough.”

On the Toppy forum, we have a group of people who will run through pretty detailed tests and discover bugs that the Topfield engineers never noticed; we report them back – and then another firmware comes out, featuring the same bugs.

Worse, while sending Turbosat firmwares to pass on to the testers, Topfield would release a completely different firmware on their website, that we’d never even seen. When they finally decided to replace the MHEG engine with one bought in from Ocean Blue, they sent a firmware to test, and then released one built two days later on their site, before they had any test results. And then withdrew it.

There hasn’t been an officially released Topfield UK firmware for over two years; the updates that have appeared have been unofficial ones from Toppy.org.uk, patched by our users, or semi-official ones, where Turbosat has commissioned an experienced UK user to patch a firmware to fix critical bugs that Topfield seems unwilling or unable to resolve themselves.

In short, there’s been more work to keep the products alive carried out by dedicated, unpaid forum members than there has been by Topfield’s seemingly never-ending succession of engineers. They have the source code, and yet are unable to fix bugs that users have resolved.

To date, there still hasn’t been an official release of a firmware with the Ocean Blue MHEG engine. There still hasn’t been a properly working Freeview+ firmware update for the 5800 or the 5810.

And, frankly, it seems as if Topfield just consider it all too much trouble, having to have their equipment tested to meet certification requirements, or even asking a dedicated – and willing – group of users to beta test, and then listen to the information that they report back.

Happy Humax

Contrast with their Korean compatriots, Humax, who have taken the UK market far more seriously; though not without some issues of their own, and some grumbles about the time for firmware updates, they’ve managed to maintain a good reputation, and to bring out some first class products for Freeview HD. They have, rightly, become a respected name for PVRs in the UK.

Their 9200 launched in the UK around the same time as the Topfield 5800; both were built on the same platform too – NEC’s EMMA2 chip. Both have been through ups and downs over the years. And both have been well supported with vibrant user communities.

Topfield, however, just seems to have run out of steam; they give every impression of not really caring if their products work the way they’re supposed to, of not listening to their customers and – perhaps worst of all – of not even being familiar with their own software. How is it that crucial bugs, including one affecting scanning for channels, have only ever been fixed by third party patches, rather than in a release from their own engineers?

What next?

So far, none of the Freeview HD products out there yet has caught the imagination the way that the original Toppy did when it arrived in the UK in 2005. Many users are still hanging on, hoping that something will come along that’s close enough to make them want to switch.

Five years is a long time for a product like a PVR, especially these days. That the TF5800 is still popular, and has such a vibrant community around it is, in my view, more in spite of Topfield than because of them.

Slapdash software development, an unwillingness to understand the UK market, or to listen to users have probably doomed Topfield in the UK. From a position where they had a leading product, and a good track record in providing updates, they have become, an also-ran, with a reputation for products that the users support themselves.

And the biggest shame is that it needn’t have happened.

Is there a future for £100+ media players?

This week, I wrote a piece for Register Hardware, rounding up some of the best media players of 2010. Looking at a range of products for that, it struck me that the market for a lot of them may well disappear, or at least become much smaller in the next year or so. Essentially, I’d be surprised if anything priced much over £100 does terribly well.

Why do I think that? Take a look at what you can get for £100. There’s the Apple TV, which isn’t without its flaws (principally, Apple’s “you get what we say you can have” approach to format support), but is easy to use, neat and at a price where many people will think it’s worth it. And there are similar products below the £100 mark which do equally well.

There are plenty of media players that cost a lot more – like the Popcorn Hour models, for example, and even the Boxee box is about £200. Sure, some of these are very flexible. They’re also, to a degree, a bit geeky – you might want wide-ranging format support if you grab lots of material via torrents, but a lot of people don’t need absolutely everything, and certainly not at upwards of £300 for some of these boxes.

The general public, it’s important to remember, will often settle for “good enough,” and it’s hard to convince them to spend more by saying “ah yes, but this one will handle DTS sound on MKV files.”

And, with capabilities that have come on by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, ‘connected’ TV sets from most major manufacturers are able to do a lot of the things that a home media streamer can do. In some cases, like some of the Samsung and LG sets, the format support is extremely good – they’ll play just about everything you throw at them.

For those who aren’t ready to buy a whole new TV, an increasing number of set top boxes offer streaming too, like the Humax HD-Fox T2. These might not have the broadest format support in the world, but for a lot of people it’s good enough.

In suspect that some people will want to dip their toe in media streaming at around the £100 price – Apple TV, for instance, or some of the even cheaper units.

Spend a little more than that, and £140 will get you the Humax Freeview HD receiver, with media streaming built in. And it can even record via USB. I think many people will be reluctant to spend £300 on a high end media player when the same money will get you a Freeview HD twin tuner recorder that can also play streaming media, and with forthcoming updates will offer iPlayer, SkyPlayer, and eventually the ability to stream from its own hard drive.

Those on a still higher budget may well decide that if they choose a TV that has good playback functionality built in, they don’t need a media player at all – the TV will offer them everything, with one remote as well.

So, who’s really going to want to spend more than £100 on a media player in future?

Should you buy FreeviewHD this Christmas?

With Christmas fast approaching, together with a line-up of televisual treats, like Doctor Who in high definition, a lot of people are probably considering buying a new TV set, or a recorder, and making the move to FreeviewHD for Christmas.

But is that the right thing to do? Will it be cheaper in the new year, will there be better boxes and TVs? Are the current ones any good? That’s the question I’m going to try to answer for you.

What sort of person are you?

Really, there’s no simple answer to this question – it really depends on what sort of person you are, what you enjoy watching on TV, and what you envisage doing in the future – if you’re the sort of person who’s likely to change the way they watch TV, thanks to new technology, like iPlayer.

First, let’s look at what you get on Freeview HD. There are four HD channels; BBC One HD, ITV 1 HD, and Channel 4HD all show exactly the same as their standard-def counterpart, but with a better quality picture – either real HD when the programme’s made that way, or a standard quality picture, electronically improved to give ‘upscaled’ HD. The fourth HD channel is BBC HD, which is a channel that shows only HD programmes, and most of its content is selected from the other three BBC TV channels, with a few repeats from BBC One.

You’ll notice there’s no Channel 5 – so if you’re hoping for CSI and shows like that in HD, then Freeview HD is not for you. It’s possible Channel 5 might appear around 2012, but not certain.

So, first question – do those channels that are on Freeview HD show the sort of things you watch. If they don’t, then you probably won’t benefit from it that much, and due to space considerations, channels from other broadcasters won’t appear for some time, and you’ll be better off waiting until later.

Where do you live?

Next, where do you live? If you live in an area that’s already gone through digital switchover (where the old analogue signals are turned off) then you should get Freeview HD already, or very soon. If you live in some other areas, it may be available to you – you can check on the Freevew HD web site, and more areas will get it next year. But if you’re in the south east of the UK, for example, and outside London, then you probably won’t get a Freeview HD signal until 2012.

Any Freeview HD equipment will also receive the standard definition channels, of course, so you could buy it now and wait until HD starts in your area. But unless you absolutely have to buy new equipment right now, you’re probably best off waiting.

If you do have to buy something right now, then read on and find out whether or not buying Freeview HD is the right thing to do.

Why wait?

Why do I advise some people to wait? Freeview HD only launched a year ago, and equipment didn’t get to the shops until the spring. There’s more and more kit becoming available, and prices are dropping. Kit that comes out next year will have some nice new features, and improvements over some of the first products, and basic products will be cheaper.

So, if you can’t get Freeview HD at the moment in your area, but want to go digital (for example, to get extra channels), then you might be better off just getting a cheap standard def box now, and buying Freeview HD next year, when there will be a wider range of kit, some of it at lower prices, rather than buying a piece of kit right now, which will cost more and won’t give you HD anyway, until sometime next year.

Do you just watch TV?

To decide whether it’s worth buying now or waiting until next year, you need to know a bit about what’s happening with Freeview HD next year, but before I explain that, it’s also worth considering what sort of person you are.

Do you just watch TV, by which I mean, is it just something that’s there, in the corner of the room, maybe with a video recorder, or DVD player, but essentially something you turn on, watch TV through its built in speakers, and that’s it?

Or are you more sophisticated? Do you have the TV sound hooked up to extra speakers, so you can listen to surround sound when you watch DVDs? Do you already use a digital TV recorder, or have the TV connected up so you can watch movies that are stored on the computer? Do you use iPlayer on the computer? Or think that if it was built in to the TV, you’d probably use it to catch up on things that you’ve missed?

If you fall into any of the categories described in that last paragraph, then I think there are probably good reasons to wait until next year before buying Freeview HD. On the other hand, if you don’t, and you are one of the people who ‘just’ watches TV, then go ahead – treat yourself this Christmas.

That said, if you’re buying a new TV, but you also think some of those other things are important, then why not buy a Freeview HD TV now, and add a separate recorder next year, with some of the new features?

Technical improvements

So, just what are those improvements for next year, and who’s going to be interested in them?

Regular readers of this site will know that one of the issues with Freeview HD is that a lot of the equipment on sale now does not handle surround sound very well. Now, there aren’t that many programmes made with surround sound, but some dramas, films, and music shows have it. And it’s a shame if you can’t get surround sound out of your equipment.

The good news is that most FreeviewHD TV sets can feed a surround sound signal to your AV system, if you have one; when it comes to set top boxes, though, far fewer can – I’ve got a partial list here.

The FreeviewHD test requirements are changing, and from next April, supporting surround sound properly will be a mandatory requirement. So, if that’s important to you, your choice is to buy one of the bits of kit now that handles surround sound properly, or wait until next year’s models are released.

Also coming next year, Freeview HD kit will have to support some extensions that will make it possible to deliver extra services, like iPlayer, via the red button (much as they are on Freesat). Again, next year’s models should all support that.

And, finally, next year will also see the launch of YouView. This will be a set of boxes that will support Freeview HD and also have access to catch-up services from all the broadcasters, so you can go backwards in the programme guide and find shows you’ve missed, then watch them via the internet, through the same box. It will also offer some extra pay services too – though it’s worth noting that some boxes out there already offer iPlayer, or will do very soon.

If any of these things is important to you, or you think you might find them useful, then you should probably wait until next year to buy a Freeview HD box. And if you’re after a bargain, when the new kit becomes available, you may find lots of this year’s models discounted – but remember that they may not offer surround sound, or access to online TV.

Summing up

It’s hard to give a definitive answer for everyone. If you have to buy a TV this Christmas, I’d say it’s almost certainly worth buying a Freeview HD one, if you already have the service in your area. If you don’t really need a new TV, or there’s no HD coverage where you are, save your money for now.

If you’re thinking of buying a set top box, I’d suggest waiting until next year, if you want to take advantage of lower prices, or newer features that you think you will use.

If you absolutely want to get HD for Christmas, I’d personally recommend the Humax set top box or PVR right now, as they will give you surround sound, and should get iPlayer too, in the New Year. But if you just enjoy a bit of TV and aren’t too fussed about those things, there are some bargains to be had, like the Vestel Freeview HD boxes.

Two FreeviewHD recorder reviews – Humax and DigitalStream

Two more reviews of Freeview HD recorders that I’ve done have been published this week on Register Hardware.

The first (though I wrote it second) is of the Humax HDR-Fox T2 – the most capable of the Freeview HD units I’ve played with so far. And the second review is of the Digital Stream DHR8203U. It’s a slightly less polished unit than the Humax, but a sound performer again, and if  you don’t need the network facilities of the Humax, it’s well worth a good look.

Worth pointing out is that both of these will produce Dolby Digital surround sound from their optical outputs, so you’ll get the full Freeview HD audio experience. Right now, I’d put these two at the top of any shopping list.

Humax HDR Fox T2 review

For those who’ve not noticed it, there’s a short review of the Humax HDR Fox T2 Freeview HD recorder on the ComputerActive website.

I wrote this a little while ago, so it’s worth pointing out that the problem I mentioned in the review about searching the programme guide has been fixed by a firmware update. I’ve also done a longer review for Register Hardware, though that’s not yet been published.

The future for CAMs

When I wrote about Sky Sports on Freeview a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that one possible outcome may be the ability to use a CI Plus module with some receivers. Before people get too excited, it’s worth saying that that’s my theory, not an official comment. TopUpTV would obviously like it to be available to everyone via standard CAMs, and Sky would like it restricted only to receivers with embedded encryption. A CI+ system would, I think, be a reasonable compromise.

And that has raised the issue of what is CI+ and why is it more secure than a standard CAM solution. I answered this question on a well known forum, but for reasons best known to them, all the messages have mysteriously disappeared. So, I though I’d explain here what the difference is between embedded encryption, CI+ and standard CAMs, and why it affects what you’ll be able to use to watch Sky Sports.

Embedded solutions

The i-Can EasyHD has embedded encryption for watching Sky Sports on Freeview

What I mean by embedded encryption is a solution that is, essentially, akin to what you have with a Sky box. There’s a slot in the receiver that takes a viewing card directly; these are credit card sized, with a small chip. The receiver has the chips necessary to handle the encryption system built in; they can’t be replaced with another system, but they can often be updated to a newer version, and sometimes newer versions of the smart cards are handed out too.

Often, these systems allow for things like configuring the box only to work with a specific card, so you can’t take your card from your home, pop round to a friend’s place and put it in their receiver to watch the match on their fancy TV. It’s considered the most secure system, because there’s essentially nothing you can tamper with.

What’s wrong with a CAM?

A CI slot accepts a CAM, into which you fit your 'viewing card'

The CI (common interface) slot appears on many digital TVs and lots of receivers, including PVRs. It looks just like the PC card slots that used to be on notebooks, and uses the same connectors. A CAM (conditional access module) fits in the CI slot, and the smartcard slides into the CAM.

A receiver that works like this sends the encrypted information to the CAM, and then receives an unencrypted stream back, which can be displayed on screen, or in the case of a PVR saved to the hard disk.

The advantage is that the consumer can pick the equipment they want, then they buy a CAM that supports the encryption used by the programmes they want to watch, subscribe, and put smartcard in CAM, then CAM in CI slot, and tune it.  Some equipment supports two CI slots, so you could have two different pay TV providers on one box – much more convenient than having a separate box for each one.

So, on the face of it, a great idea, and there are more clever things you can do with CAMs and the CI system; for example, I’ve seen a CI module that fits in the slot, and has an Ethernet connector, and is designed to stream media from your home network, passing it into the set top box via the CI slot. A neat solution, though hard to make it work.

One of the reasons for that was that the CI system is limited in functionality. It’s designed to do one thing, really – take an encrypted signal and turn it into an unencrypted one. There’s a built in system that allows modules to display menus via the TV interface, but it’s very basic – a simple text based system. And when you want to do other things, it’s tricky; the Ethernet module I mentioned worked with some TVs; with others, you just couldn’t get the TV to display a picture from the module, because it wasn’t programmed to do that, unless it was tuned to a channel with an encrypted transmission.

But what about Sky Sports?

The CI/CAM system has worked pretty well in the past, so why would Sky have problems with it? One of the issues is the way that the CAM decrypts the broadcast and transfers it back into the receiver in the clear. When you’re just using a TV that’s not so much of a problem, but these days many people use recorders (PVRs), and the last thing the owner of rights wants is the ability of people to save unencrypted, unprotected copies of their broadcasts.

Some people have said “But it’s only sports, which is ephemeral” and there may be a degree of truth in that, but if other content were to follow later, like movies, that might be of more concern, and so no one’s going to settle for anything less than the strongest protection they can agree on.

There are already a few recorders out that that will save programmes unencrypted on the hard disk and have easy ways of transferring those to PCs. It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that with premium content, some people won’t be happy with CAMs for that reason.

They can also cause issues for users too; with live TV, a CAM is straightforward. With recorded TV, it’s less so. For example, if you’re watching one encrypted channel while recording another, what can happen is that the CAM is used for live TV, and the recording is saved to disk in encrypted form, then decrypted on playback (and which point some recorders let you save a decrypted version too). But if you don’t watch for a while, and the encryption keys are updated (for example with your  monthly subscription data), you can find that a recording on the hard drive won’t play any more. That’s obviously very annoying for users, too.

Step forward CI Plus

The CI Plus logo - already appearing on some equipment, like the Humax HDR Fox T2

The CI Plus system is designed to solve, or help solve, lots of these problems. Physically it looks just the same, and a CAM will fit into a CI Plus slot and work just the same. But for the broadcasters – and the user – it brings some useful advantages.

Since I started this piece by talking about Sky Sports, let’s look first at the broadcaster’s point of view. Where a standard CAM has a straightforward unencrypted link back into the receiver, in CI Plus that’s replaced by a secure encrypted link. Think of it as a bit like a secure connection between your web browser and an online shop. This allows for the module to pass information back to the receiver, including details of ‘entitlement,’ which is the jargon for saying what you can do with the material.

The decrypted programmes can be stored on the hard drive using a different encryption system, like AES, so that they can’t simply be copied (or uploaded to the internet), but without the potential problems caused by things like monthly updates to the smartcard. So the programme remains protected, even though it’s been decrypted, which is obviously appealing to companies like Sky, or anyone else with premium content.

From the user’s point of view, that’s probably not an overwhelming reason to embrace CI Plus. But it does also improve on the interface between the CI system and the equipment. Where CI allowed only basic text menus, CI Plus allows for a much richer, browser-based sort of system. That means that it can display graphics, and be much more interactive and – potentially – show you menus within your TV or PVR interface with options for buying pay per view content, and other fancy things like that.

And, to go back to the beginning, with the ability to ensure content is protected on the hard disk of recorders, to all intents and purposes, CI Plus will allow broadcasters like Sky the same control over their content as they get with embedded encryption systems, while giving customers the benefits of being able to choose their own equipment – albeit from the more limited range of CI Plus kit, though that already includes some TVs and recorders, including the new Humax HDR Fox T2 Freeview HD recorder.