Thought I might as well post a proper thread about Freeview OnDemand being launched(?).

The reason I have the question mark is because there's been no official indication from Freeview about it, however it as appeared in the AIT under the url hbbtv-prod.fvpnz.co.nz. Interestingly it seems only specific TV's are supported at the moment: 2017 and 2018 Samsung and Panasonic TV's along with a specific emulator, everything else will redirect to the old app (hbbtv.fvpnz.co.nz). This is done in the javascript on a user-agent basis, so perhaps there's a workaround, but it won't be tidy.

As I don't have a smart TV I'm not able to test it out, but I tried it in a emulator, but it didn't register my keypresses so it didn't start up. If someone else has success let me know.

I'm hoping they follow through on the promised Smart TV apps, so that I can use it on my Android TV box, so I can move away from the rather tentative apps I put together for TVNZ OnDemand and ThreeNow.

I also have my suspicions this wasn't a proper launch, especially with the limited support, and posts on the freeview forum up to 18 hours ago indicating that it was coming soon.