back to article Sony, Samsung trade body to push HbbTV to Brits

UK trade association Intellect, which represents electronics companies and broadcast technology firms, has detailed how it believes the HbbTV standard should be implemented alongside Freeview - effectively sticking two fingers up at YouView, which launched last week. HbbTV - which stands for Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV - …

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  1. ukgnome
    FAIL

    Poor Lord Suralan - is youview the next Amstrad E-m@iler

  2. Lusty

    Dear TV makers

    Stop trying to put things in the TV. If you made a dumb screen and a separate set top box I would have upgraded my screen by now. All this feature creep is doing is making me wait for the next gen one which won't be quite as obsolete.

    1. Joseph Lord
      Facepalm

      Re: Dear TV makers

      Pioneer tried that and look how it turned out.

      Just buy one with the picture quality you want and add a box when the features side of the TV doesn't do what you want. They all have HDMI.

      Seriously due to the small volumes for a dumb TV it wouldn't be any cheaper but actually dearer! In all but the very entry TVs the cost of the electronics is a really small part compared to the panel and the mechanical and cosmetic construction.

      Finally how dumb do you want your screen to be? If you want it to offer any settings it needs to offer a graphics plane and ability to mix that with the video. If it needs to support non-native resolution or framerate inputs it needs scaling hardware. If you want it to support SCART, composite, VGA or component signals it needs analogue to digital converters. If you want it to support any audio you need to confirm all these again. If it is going to be sold as a TV it needs tuner and MPEG decoding (plus in the EU a CI slot if it's over 15"). By the time you have got that far you might as well add Internet services for the hardware cost of an Ethernet socket especially as you won't get Freeview HD approval without it.

      Now even if a particular level of dumb screen suits you the next person might have different needs making the market especially niche and no retailer will touch it.

      Or you could simply buy a fully loaded TV of the picture quality you require and turn off or ignore what you don't need. Or if you really really wanted buy a professional broadcast monitor for about three times the price.

    2. cs94njw
      Go

      Re: Dear TV makers

      This is a good point. When I upgrade my PC, I can buy a new hard disk or graphics card, and it's only a small amount of my monthly salary. If I have to buy a whole new PC ~£800, that's a holiday somewhere or something very significant.

      If they keep beefing up TVs (even though I do wish they'd integrate BluRay and PVR into a TV), they are going to be very difficult to purchase.

      Unlesss.... Sky does to TV what mobile companies do for phones... sell the TV as part of the deal and add the cost to the monthly subscription...

  3. Trollslayer
    Thumb Up

    Agreed

    YouView is an attempt to hang on to a market sector in one country and the YouView boxes I saw a couple of months ago were awful.

    Add to this that HbbTV is also being broadcast on European satellites (mostly German channels I think) and YouView is going to lose.

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: Agreed

      They're all trying to beat Sky using a different new medium. Until they fail and Sky buys them all up and gets another monopoly.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    try this simple test

    Pick up your TV remote control. Ask yourself, do the people who designed this have any competency in user experience design?

    The correct answer, unfortunately, is 'no'

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: try this simple test

      Differnt answer here - partly

      Some yes, some no

      Humax HDR, I still get confused with the buttons, strangely placed transport ones.

      TV pretty good

      VCRs (I have some) a couple are excellent if I knew where they are - still have to get my 950 repaired.

      Examples of bad

      -----------------------

      Controls easy to mode change so your TV turns off - I didn't even set that up - how did it guess my TV?

      Transport buttons badly layed out - very common

      [|<] [>|] [<<] [>>] less logical than [|<] [<<] [>>] [>|]

      I find

      [||] [>] over [<<][>>] wierd

      Worst was some VCRs

      standard was [<<] [>] [>>] over [||] [stop] [rec] (AFAIR) one manufacturer reversed it, cannot remember who as I owned none of them, in fact apart from a used Panacronic all of my working VCRs were Beta

    2. Jonathon Green
      Trollface

      Re: try this simple test

      [Picks up Logitech Harmony, presses single, clearly labelled and conveniently placed touchscreen "button", watches Panasonic TV, Onkyo AV amplifier, Thomson TiVo, WD media player, XBox 360, Wii, Toshiba BD player, and/or BT Vision box switch on/off, and configure themselves appropriately for task at hand]

      Seems pretty good to me :-)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: try this simple test

        So, now all you need to do is buy a TV or set-top box made by Logitech

  5. Greg 16

    The YouView and HbbTV standards are very similar. If a TV can support HbbTV, then it should also be able to support HbbTV.

    So what's the point of YouView? It's all about control and ensuring that the BBC doesn't face too much competition. Youview will just end up as another UI for HbbTV.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "If a TV can support HbbTV, then it should also be able to support HbbTV."

      Er, I agree,

  6. Chris Evans

    Option to play from say a NAS

    I realise that because of DRM they don't want you to transfer the data off their 'secure' system, but couldn't a way be found to allow unprotected data stored on your network to be played?

    1. SYNTAX__ERROR
      Alert

      Re: Option to play from say a NAS

      No, that would be far too sensible and useful.

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