Ok. just what is this YouView box all about?
To start from the beginning it is a Freeview TV receiver. It can pause, rewind and record anything it is receiving via an aerial. And that’s it.
Oh, and if it’s connected to broadband it can playback anything that’s on the BBC iPlayer or ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 equivalents.
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To make this appear seamless, the electronic programme guide goes ‘backwards’.
Plonk it on a programme being broadcast now and it plays the station via the Freeview receiver.
Plonk it on a programme from the last seven days and it finds it on the iPlayer.
Neat so far, eh?
Well, that’s about it.
There are different ‘flavours’ of YouView box. They are given to customers ‘free’ as long as they subscribe to that company’s supply of broadband delivered additional programming. BT supply this, but the most shouty of these companies is Talk Talk, having spend Millions on sponsoring the X Factor and promoting “Talk Talk TV“.
Now then, Talk Talk TV used to exist some years ago. Then it mysteriously disappeared and became unspoken of.
The old style Talk Talk TV box consisted of a single box, not unlike a Sky+ box, with every channel carrying a station, regardless of where it came from. For example, channel 1 might have been BBC1, received through the local aerial. Channel 10 might have been Sky One, fed over the broadband. The method of delivery would be unimportant to the viewer. As far as they were concerned, a channel number carried a specific station. Indeed, should the aerial signal disappear from, say, BBC1, then Talk Talk would happily pump the station over the broadband with the customer none the wiser.
Importantly, all stations, regardless of their delivery method, could be recorded, paused, rewound, etc. And all stations sat, just as they do on a Sky+ box, on specific channel numbers, regardless of whether or not they were subscribed to. Sky Sports One might be on, say, channel 70, and if a subscription is paid to Talk Talk then it’ll be there, if not, then a rolling film saying how the viewer can easily upgrade to receive Sky Sports One would be played instead.
The point I’m trying to emphasise is that Freeview channels received via the aerial sat alongside channels delivered via the broadband.
This is not the case with YouView. Instead, there’s a whole ‘player’ one has to go to called the ‘Talk Talk player‘ and is effectively a sort of bolt-on after-thought to the main box. It takes about four different key presses, and then shows all the available channels that Talk Talk can or is supplying via the broadband.
The separation between this and the Freeview section of the YouView box is almost as if you were switching off one box and switching on another.
None of the stations delivered by Talk Talk has an actual channel number. You can only get to a channel by frustratedly stepping through all the others. There’s no direct tapping in of a channel number and landing on, say, Sky One.
Even more frustratingly, there is no recording facility available to the Talk Talk supplied channels. No pausing. No rewind. Nothing. It’s like watching television back in the 1990s and not owning a video recorder. It’s also a very long way from the far more acceptable original Talk Talk TV boxes.
One has to ask why they dumped off such an acceptable system and went with this far inferior system. I’m guessing that those that know no better will think YouView tied in with a provider like Talk Talk is cool.
It isn’t. It really really isn’t.
And when you look at how much Talk Talk charges to supply its block of additional channels you can only watch in real time, can’t record or even pause whilst you pop to the loo, you realise that it is knocked into complete pointlessness by Sky+ or Virgin who charge more or less the same for a fully integrated ‘box’ that pauses, rewinds and records.
Maybe they’ll eventually crack a way to integrate the broadband delivered stations with the Freeview stations, not to mention allow pause, rewind and recording of the broadband delivered channels. Until then it’s a pile of shite. It really is.
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