What happened to the new freeview recorder

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FPR

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Master Geek

#243067 25-Nov-2018 22:08

Hi,

as the subject line says, what happened to the new freeview recorder that was

going to be released in the first 1/4 this year. Have I missed it in the shops ?

was it cancelled or is it very very behind schedule.

Thanks.

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sbiddle

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#2134049 25-Nov-2018 22:37

What brand?

With the FreeviewPlus features now and integrated on-demand I'd imagine the demand for recorders is pretty minimal these days.

djtOtago

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Ultimate Geek

#2134051 25-Nov-2018 23:18

@FPR Are you talking about this anouncment https://freeviewnz.tv/news/freeview-set-to-transform-tv-in-new-zealand/

MikeB4

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#2134068 26-Nov-2018 07:10

Following the above linked story I recall some noise here from Dish regarding this. I does not surprise me that the new device is awol as Dish is not exactly a stellar company and it's products are mediocre at best.

Bluntj

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Ultimate Geek

#2134171 26-Nov-2018 09:44

MikeB4: Following the above linked story I recall some noise here from Dish regarding this. I does not surprise me that the new device is awol as Dish is not exactly a stellar company and it's products are mediocre at best.

The entire Freeview experience has been negative to me.

Lack of ability to contact Freeview when broadcasting issues arise
Frequent loss of signal mainly due to no backup power source when electricity supply is lost
Signal for terrestrial is average at best due to line of sight issues from transmitter and vegetation growth over time.
Total lack of quality hardware ie set top boxes that record etc. Both the quality and the feature list from the NZ offering is lame and clearly lacks competition although Panasonic advise they have sold thousands and thousands of units. Australia is much better served.

xpd

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#2134203 26-Nov-2018 10:12

Bluntj:

The entire Freeview experience has been negative to me.

Lack of ability to contact Freeview when broadcasting issues arise
Frequent loss of signal mainly due to no backup power source when electricity supply is lost
Signal for terrestrial is average at best due to line of sight issues from transmitter and vegetation growth over time.
Total lack of quality hardware ie set top boxes that record etc. Both the quality and the feature list from the NZ offering is lame and clearly lacks competition although Panasonic advise they have sold thousands and thousands of units. Australia is much better served.

Any email querying anything to Freeview, just comes back with the same message every time for me. I don't think anyone checks the inbox and its just an auto-response.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon

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tripper1000

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#2134228 26-Nov-2018 10:33

That's the price of leading the market with new standards. The Australian Terrestrial Freeview system (when I was there) was an older standard so there was plenty of mature chipsets on the market. They still had their unreliable, clunky cheap stuff from K-mart etc, but it was much faster than both our cheap & expensive stuff. As I understand it, our system is a newer standard with some proprietary add-on's (eg EPG) which means we have less hardware choices and can't easily piggy-back off the rest of the world.

Despite living in terrestrial coverage I use satellite simply because it is faster. No push-the-button-and-wait-10-seconds syndrome.

sbiddle

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#2134237 26-Nov-2018 10:50

tripper1000:

That's the price of leading the market with new standards. The Australian Terrestrial Freeview system (when I was there) was an older standard so there was plenty of mature chipsets on the market. They still had their unreliable, clunky cheap stuff from K-mart etc, but it was much faster than both our cheap & expensive stuff. As I understand it, our system is a newer standard with some proprietary add-on's (eg EPG) which means we have less hardware choices and can't easily piggy-back off the rest of the world.

Despite living in terrestrial coverage I use satellite simply because it is faster. No push-the-button-and-wait-10-seconds syndrome.

That was the case 8-9 years ago. It's in no way the case now.

NZ was one of the first countries in the world to launch with DVB-T H.264 which meant there were few options available at launch - for a few months the Zinwell box was the only option for Freeview|HD and that device wasn't great. NZ was also one of only a handful of countries to use MHEG5 middleware for the EPG.

Where we where then is completely different to where we are now. MHEG5 slowly became the norm across most new networks, and that then followed by NZ adopting HbbTV which was already in use by many networks. What we have now is very much standards based using standards that are deployed across a large number of countries. There are really only minor changes required with some (bot not all) hardware to work in NZ.

Australia is still a disaster in many ways with it's own unique 7MHz channel stepping combined with both VHF and UHF for DVB-T.

One of the simple issues in NZ is that the market for recorders is small (and getting smaller by the day with the new Freeview HbbTV capabilities) as there is no real need for many people to record things as you can simply click on them to watch a show from say last night just as easily as watching live TV.

Groucho

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Ultimate Geek

#2134332 26-Nov-2018 11:54

MikeB4: Following the above linked story I recall some noise here from Dish regarding this. I does not surprise me that the new device is awol as Dish is not exactly a stellar company and it's products are mediocre at best.

Yes it was Dish TV that were producing the all bells and whistles box incorporating other third party VOD services. I contacted Dish earlier in the year on another matter and asked which at that time there were some manufacturing delays. I do wonder if they are almost here as Christmas is looming and in The Warehouse last week I noticed they were selling the T2200 (terrestrial dual-tuner recorder) on special for ~$189. As the RRP is $449 I wonder whether some old stock is being cleared in preparation?

NZ really lacks a set top box that is all things to all people which will be maintained longer term. I'm fed up with "smart" TVs and BluRay players that come with apps installed... then two or so years later the apps are no longer supported or work. Why does it have to be such a drama for an average user to watch anything these days? Most things have Netflix installed but why should you need multiple devices and some technical know-how to cast other mainstream services to a large, HD/UHD "smart" TV whose apps no longer work?

FPR

162 posts

Master Geek

#2134565 26-Nov-2018 15:23

djtOtago:

@FPR Are you talking about this anouncment https://freeviewnz.tv/news/freeview-set-to-transform-tv-in-new-zealand/

Yes that's it, wow that press release was Oct 2017 over 12 months ago and the recorder should of been released

about 6 months ago. rather poor from Freeview & Dish.

MikeB4

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#2134570 26-Nov-2018 15:35

FPR:

djtOtago:

@FPR Are you talking about this anouncment https://freeviewnz.tv/news/freeview-set-to-transform-tv-in-new-zealand/

Yes that's it, wow that press release was Oct 2017 over 12 months ago and the recorder should of been released

about 6 months ago. rather poor from Freeview & Dish.

I maybe wrong but I believe that this box is purely a Dish TV developed device and has nothing to do with Freeview NZ.

JimmyH

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#2134851 26-Nov-2018 18:38

I called vapourware on this announcement back in March

I'm sticking with that call. It doesn't look like Dish have anything. If they do, 14 months is a long interval between announcement and release, so I suspect they don't.

Jase2985

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#2139322 4-Dec-2018 16:23

maybe its this?

https://www.smartvu.co.nz/

Groucho

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Ultimate Geek

#2139327 4-Dec-2018 16:31

Jase2985:

maybe its this?

https://www.smartvu.co.nz/

Hmm, curious. This doesn't appear to have any recording features which was one of the initial features of the new box as well as having dual terrestrial and satellite inputs from memory. This appears to be streaming/on-demand only.

I have the previous model SmartVu HDMI 'stick'. It's OK but a bit sluggish. This new model looks to be a pretty well featured unit.

Jase2985

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#2139342 4-Dec-2018 17:09

its the only thing they have recently released

steve2222

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Ultimate Geek

#2139523 5-Dec-2018 08:22

What about this:

http://www.freeviewnz.tv/new-freeview-recorder/

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