YouView takes the Freeview HD free-to-air
terrestrial broadcast and adds on-demand and catch-up TV over the internet to
it. The newest TV platform available in the UK, it’s completely designed from
the ground up to use the internet. YouView is available from a number of
manufacturers, with a choice of set-top boxes. We’ve used the Humax DTR-T1010
($396 from www.amazon.com).
Interface and remote
As this system is designed to use the
internet, the interface is very advanced, cleverly combining live TV and
catch-up services in one view. It’s incredibly easy to use, too, with an
easy-to-navigate EPG that displays a thumbnail view of what's currently on TV.
YouView
takes the Freeview HD free-to-air terrestrial broadcast and adds on-demand and
catch-up TV over the internet to it
What’s clever is that as well as navigating
forwards to set up recordings, you can step back in time, too. Provided that
the content is available on one of the catch-up services (BBC iPlayer, ITV Player,
40D and Demand Five are all supported), you can simply select it to view, as
though it were a live program.
The show is then streamed through the
relevant player over the internet. Catch-up is integrated throughout the
system, not just the EPG. So, if you select a program that’s live or on in the
future, YouView will show you other episodes available on demand. The same is
true of search, which brings up on-demand and live programming alike
Program information is also pulled from the
internet, which means that you get more information than is available on the
standard Freeview EPG. As you’d expect, you can set standard TV programs to
record. YouView supports both single episode and series recording so you’ll
never have to miss an episode of your favorite show again. We particularly like
the way that if you hit record on a standard-definition channel, YouView will
check if there’s an HD version and ask if you want to record that instead.
BBC,
ITV, Channel 4 and Five
Recordings are all managed via the MyView
section of the interface giving you the option to filter by Watched and Not
Watched, as well as sorting by Date or A-to-Z. It’s simple, but we’d have liked
a bit more granularity, particularly when there are a lot of recordings. We
like the way that recordings can also pull in extra information from the
internet, so you’ll see still-image thumbnail previews of what you’ve recorded.
Scheduled recordings are managed in a separate view, which makes it easy to see
what you’ve got coming up and manage everything from one place.
Remote controls vary from manufacturer to
manufacturer, although we have to say that we really like the responsive Humax
version. It’s clearly laid out and has all the shortcut keys you’ll need. Of
primary use is the YouView button, which takes you to the YouView menu. This
lets you select the EPG, on-demand content and access the settings.
Live content
A decent range of Freeview channels are now
available although as it’s all free it’s lacking compared to Sky or Virgin
Medias services. In particular you get fewer HD channels (just BBC One and Two
HD, ITV HD and 4 HD) and there’s no premium content, such as films or sports.
Essentially, it comes down to what you want to watch If you mostly use the main
terrestrial TV channels and aren’t into sport, YouView should cover most of
what you want to watch.
Catch-up and on-demand
This is one area in which YouView excels.
The platform provides catch-up services from all the main TV channels (BBC,
ITV, Channel 4 and Five). As we mentioned before, these are integrated into the
main EPG. However, you can also access each on-demand platform individually.
The quality varies, as each provider is in charge of its own player BBC iPlayer
is excellent, for example, and the only one with an HD mode, whereas ITV Player
has fewer features and makes it harder to find content.
Each
on-demand service has its own player
A dedicated on-demand section lets you
browse what’s available by category, including films and TV programs, collating
content from all of YouView‘s providers In addition, the search facility is
global, so you can find new programs and films using one consistent interface
regardless of where they‘re actually stored, much like Virgin Media’s TiVo
search function.
YouView was also designed to be extendable,
so you can add new TV content which will be streamed over your broadband
connection. Such services can either be available to all customers, such as
Sky’s Now TV, or they can be locked to a specific internet service provider.
There’s no reason why in the future YouView won’t have other services, such as
Netflix or LoveFilm, or extend its catch-up services to other channels.
