Freeview playback - a full feature list ?

[lordy]

The Marketing droids have struck again -
whilst it's nice to know the lifestyle impact of Freeview Playback
without a simple easy to find bulleted feature list , dodgy so and so's
on ebay and 'down the market', will simply say every PVR is 'Freeview Playback' and Joe Public is none the wiser..

Is there such an official reference?

[creddish]

Originally Posted by lordy

The Marketing droids have struck again -
whilst it's nice to know the lifestyle impact of Freeview Playback
without a simple easy to find bulleted feature list , dodgy so and so's
on ebay and 'down the market', will simply say every PVR is 'Freeview Playback' and Joe Public is none the wiser..

Is there such an official reference?

The documents here and here are worth a read.

The problem is the Freeview Playback features are allowed to be implemented in phases and there is no requirement for manufacturers or retailers to comply with the full requirements in order to be licenced to use the Freeview Playback logo. There will therefore legitimately be units for sale with a variety of different FP features.

Colin

[Paul Shirley]

Originally Posted by creddish

The problem is the Freeview Playback features are allowed to be implemented in phases and there is no requirement for manufacturers or retailers to comply with the full requirements in order to be licenced to use the Freeview Playback logo.

That isn't completely true, they have had to implement the whole of groups 1&2 support since last June. Group3 has been cancelled AFAIK. So yes, any firmware tested before the cutoff only needs Group1 and group1 essentially just codifies what most PVRs were already doing!

The problems with FP go deeper than poor PVR implementation though. The couple of genuinely new features it brings (tracking,accurate record, series link) rely 100% on broadcaster support yet FP is optional for broadcasters. They cant be forced to support it and frankly even where they want to, they aren't doing very well. PVR makers have almost universally assumed support will be universal though, guaranteeing problems on channels that don't. Some of the 9200 bugs being reported are very obviously Playback requirements being misapplied to non-playback recording - runaway recording protection truncating legitimate, non-accurate recordings for example.

Even worse, the testing organisations seem to be incompetent. The 9200 passed testing despite using the wrong start times on recordings, passed group1 testing despite failing to reliably capture the EPG as required. That Playback logo is not a guarantee of quality, it really is just advertising.