Other than Humax, does anyone know which other manufacturers are planning to release YouView boxes?
Graham.
Am I right in thinking unlike freeview boxes, what ever manufacture Youview box you have the firmware will be exactly the same. So just like a sky or virgin box whether it's humax or Panasonic the remote control and menus will look the same
Phillips no longer make set top boxes for the UK market. Their last ones were made under licence by Pace but with rubbish software from the French Philips/Thomson team that extinguished the worth of the brand. Pace are believed to have a supply deal with one of the ISPs so may market the same box to the general public with the Philips branding.Thanks Swedish Cook,
I'm surprised that some of the more familiar high street brands do not seem to be present (Panasonic, Sony, Philips, Grundig et etc).
Or is it going to be like SKY boxes where a very limited number of box manufacturers are licensed to manufacture effectively identical boxes?
Graham
snaithg said:Thanks Swedish Cook,
I'm surprised that some of the more familiar high street brands do not seem to be present (Panasonic, Sony, Philips, Grundig et etc).
Or is it going to be like SKY boxes where a very limited number of box manufacturers are licensed to manufacture effectively identical boxes?
Graham
I don't think the iplayer spec allows you to record full stop, on any type box.
The major TV manufacturers are not Youview fans!
They are making it quite clear that they support the pan-European Hbb TV standard which is understandable, as they want a single standard for the whole trading area to reduce their costs.
Youview is bespoke to the UK so I fear it will only be available on niche equipment, so prices will be slow to fall even if Youview takes off.
What I can't make out from the Youview specs. or the Humax website is whether you can select an archived programme from the iPlayer list (for example) and record it to disc for later viewing. If Youview is solely watch-only then a standalone 'watch only' receiver is probably a better bet I suppose.
Thoughts, comments, suggestions, anyone?
Clem
The Humax box has a 500Gb hard drive for recordings and the minimum is 320Gb for full Youview compliance.I suppose that being able to search iPlayer/4OD et al via an EPG will be easier than interactively, which is the case at present. Ultimately, it depends on exactly how much a STB will cost. For something without any recording capabilities anything topping GBP90-ish would be too expensive to my mind. Still, I'm happy to wait for the manufacturers to actually offer something for sale -- speculation isn't that helpful.
Clem
Clem_Dye said:I suppose that being able to search iPlayer/4OD et al via an EPG will be easier than interactively, which is the case at present. Ultimately, it depends on exactly how much a STB will cost. For something without any recording capabilities anything topping GBP90-ish would be too expensive to my mind. Still, I'm happy to wait for the manufacturers to actually offer something for sale -- speculation isn't that helpful.
Clem
I was under the impression that there would be receiver only type boxes released in addition to PVRs for Youview. I see no value in buying a PVR (which I already have) if I can't actually record any Youview material. Far better to have just a Youview STB. Being 'forced' to buy a PVR just to get Youview features is just plain wrong in my book.
Clem
Youview material ? What is Youview material ? Youview issues a spec for what a pvr needs to do to be branded Youview, if you check the features tab of their website you'll see that a core feature is "record, pause, rewind,live tv".
Assuming by this post you want to record iplayer etc to the youviewbox ... why ? You can play it anytime you like anyway, and from a rights perspective they wouldn't want you keeping a permanent copy.
Noone is forcing you to buy it either.
Yes, that's the bit that I can't work out. On iPlayer for example, if a series has been running for several weeks it's possible to catch-up so that you're at the latest episode when it's next broadcast. My wife and I did that with the excellent Danish/Swedish series the Bridge on BBC4 recently. I dithered about recording it to begin with, then having let four episodes go by over two weeks jumped on iPlayer and caught-up on the last fortnight's episodes over two nights, then watched/recorded 'live', as it were for the remainder of the series. It's the first time that I'd used iPlayer on my Sony TV and I was really impressed with the performance -- broadcast-like quality and no glitches at all.
Having the ability to download archive episodes overnight to PVR ready for viewing is a missed opportunity in my book. The waters have been a little more muddied too by the start-up of C4's 4seven channel. I've used that to catch-up on a programme I missed last week.
To be honest, if going back just seven days is all that Youview is going to offer for the 'big four', then I'm tempted to order a Raspberry Pi computer and add a few bits and connect that to my TV and the Internet to get access to 4OD and so forth. It will work out considerably cheaper than a Youview box, especially if there's no 'stb' version of a box up for grabs. Not as elegant perhaps, but for infrequent catch-ups possibly a viable solution.
I just wish that there was kit available so that we could all get a better idea ....
Clem
Having the ability to download archive episodes overnight to PVR ready for viewing is a missed opportunity in my book. The waters have been a little more muddied too by the start-up of C4's 4seven channel. I've used that to catch-up on a programme I missed last week.
To be honest, if going back just seven days is all that Youview is going to offer for the 'big four', then I'm tempted to order a Raspberry Pi computer and add a few bits and connect that to my TV and the Internet to get access to 4OD and so forth. It will work out considerably cheaper than a Youview box, especially if there's no 'stb' version of a box up for grabs. Not as elegant perhaps, but for infrequent catch-ups possibly a viable solution.