Inview ties up with Acetrax

While many of the video streaming services such as LoveFilm and Netflix are only to be found on the higher end TV sets from companies like LG, Panasonic and Samsung, Swiss firm Acetrax is looking to extend its reach still further.

The company – which offers content on a pay as you go basis, with material to rent or buy – has teamed up with Inview to roll out the service across set top boxes that support their new connected TV platform.

Acetrax, running on Inview's new connected TV platform

Inview is perhaps best known to some people in the UK as the providers of the EPG data that drives the Radio Times Extra (formerly Teletext Extra) and TopUpTV services, but they also have a connected TV platform rolling out, which is available royalty free to ‘tier 2’ equipment manufacturers who don’t want to have to create their own. Inview then makes its revenue as a share of that generated by content providers such as Acetrax.

Acetrax is going to be on that new platform, along with Grooveshark and some other services, around the middle of this year. A spokesperson for Inview wouldn’t reveal the names of the brands involved, but I understand that it’s likely to appear in FreeviewHD set top boxes and connected TVs from the house brands of major UK retailers, and similar brands around Europe. There will probably also be some SD kit that includes it too, though given the closing gap between the prices of SD and HD kit, I suspect all but those on the tightest budget will be looking at HD, especially with the Olympics coming up this summer.

The new platform apparently integrates apps and a recommendation engine with Inview’s 14 day programme guide, rather than splitting content services off into a separate part of the interface, as is common with most of the ‘smart TVs’ I’ve looked at recently. It’s only slated to appear on new equipment; most of the kit that has the existing Inview software isn’t equipped for IPTV anyway.

Inview's TV guide

Aiming at second tier manufacturers, Inview's platform will try to integrate IP services with the EPG

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.

So long, 4TV

If you own a Thomson DHD-4000, a Sony SVR-S500, an Inverto IDL-7000T or one of a few Digifusion models of Freeview digital TV recorder, you’ll have noticed by now that the programme guide isn’t working properly.

Do not adjust your set. As explained in this news item on Digital Spy, the company that broadcast the programme guide isn’t doing so anymore, leaving users with a box that may display now and next, and on which scheduling recordings won’t be very easy at all.

A lot of people have, understandably, been getting quite hot under the collar on various web forums, wanting to know if they can complain, or take someone to court, or do something to get their EPG back. So, how has this happened, and is there any redress?

A little bit of history

Freeview now has a 7 day programme guide, which uses an industry standard, and so can be picked up by any box that understand that standard. But it wasn’t always like that – the guide was rolled out in the second half of 2004. Without a full guide, it’s hard to make a recorder that’s easy to use, and when the first Digifusion models were launched, the Freeview guide wasn’t available. So, a system was set up where a programme guide would be broadcast overnight (when capacity is cheaper and easier to come by) and the boxes would automatically save it. The company broadcasting the guide was known as 4TV, later to become part of InView.

Alongside the Digifusion boxes, the others I mentioned at the start of the article used the system – even though some of them were launched after the Freeview guide had been rolled out. Perhaps it was cheaper to use that, rather than re-write the software to use the industry standard; perhaps they thought that the 14 days eventually offered by 4TV was a good marketing point, compared to the 7 days of the Freeview guide.

Either way, boxes carried on using the 4TV guide when there was a free alternative – and the free alternative now has information for things like series links, and automatic rescheduling when programmes run over, which just isn’t possible with a guide that’s transmitted once a day.

Where are we now?

Perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that no new boxes use the 4TV system, all preferring instead to use the standard, and the Freeview+ features is provides. Meanwhile, the part of Thomson that made their box isn’t operating in the UK; Inverto doesn’t appear interested in the Freeview market, Sony abandoned their PVR (which in any case was made for them by Beko), and the Difigusion brand was subsumed into Beko too – and they don’t appear to be involved in the Freeview market anymore either.

And so, as is the way with contracts, the one for the broadcast of the guide data came to an end, and there was no one to pay for it. InView’s a business, and you can’t really blame them for not carrying on, when they wouldn’t be paid for it.

You can’t, really, blame Freeview, either – they were never responsible for the 4TV guide being there in the first place, and it would be an awkward precedent if they (and don’t forget, Freeview is really just a marketing thing, for the idea of free to air TV) stumped up the cash to take over from someone else’s failed business venture, when there’s a perfectly standard guide that’s broadcast, for anyone to use.

Something must be done!

In law, the only people you have a contract with are the people who sold you the box; you have no relationship with InView/4TV, so no redress – and only the most venal of ambulance chasing lawyers would even suggest they owed you any duty of care.

So, can you go back to your retailer, and demand they do something? Well, frankly, you’d have a pretty hard job, in my view. Yes, as some people will point out, there are rules and regulations that say you may have a claim for up to six years – but that’s not set in stone.

In particular, those rules really relate to faulty products; the recorder you have isn’t faulty – it’s just that a service provided by a third party is no longer available. And just as you didn’t have a contract with InView, nor did the shop where you bought the box.

Even if you could claim that a recorder should last six years – and in a field like Freeview, a clever lawyer will argue that’s pushing it a bit – any compensation you could get would have to take into allowance the fact that you have had a certain amount of use – you’re not going to get back the cost of something, after using it for four or five years.

In short, there’s not really anything you could achieve through the law, other than making lawyers happier and richer.

An appealing prospect?

An appeal to the better natures of the companies involved is about the only thing that might be possible. But even then, frankly, I doubt it would do any good. InView aren’t going to spend their own money when they don’t have to. The water company’s not going to give you free water, just because your landlord has gone bust and stopped paying the bills, are they?

In theory, it might be possible to update some of these boxes to use the standard guide – but they’re old, the people who worked on the software will have moved on, and in most cases the companies that created the equipment either don’t exist in the same form, or have decided not to compete in that market anyway.

And if a big company like Beko, for example, isn’t competing in the UK market for Freeview equipment, under its own name or another one, there’s really little incentive for them to do anything. The cost of creating new software, or arranging the broadcast of an EPG is probably far more than the cost of any goodwill that might be lost through not doing anything.

Let’s face it, relatively few people are affected, and fewer of those would even know which company to blame, or whom to thank if an EPG suddenly appeared. Who’d go out and buy a Beko fridge because the programme guide started working again on a five year old Thomson, Digifusion, or Inverto PVR?

I’m sorry, but there’s not really any other way to put this – if you have one of these recorders, time’s up. Start saving for an alternative, because nothing’s going to bring back the programme guide.