Freeview claims HbbTV is connected in 580,000 homes but refuses to provide usage figures
The Freeview Plus screen with its Red and Green buttons.
Industry TV body Freeview has released its first numbers on the uptake of its Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) service, Freeview Plus, claiming enabled TV sets are now in some 900,000 Australian homes.
Freeview says that figure sees it pass its previously stated aim of passing 10% Australian household penetration, although it has also acknowledged that only 65% of the TV sets are connected – meaning that some 580,000 households are connected to the HbbTV service.
Freeview currently refuses to provide usage figures for the service but says it is pleased with the growth it is seeing now that eight out of 10 smart TV manufacturers are now carrying the Freeview Plus-enabled devices.
hbbTV is the 2016 equivalent of Austext. That too was a defacto feature on TVs through the 90s and networks offered services on it. Yet it never really took off, then the Internet arrived.
There’s nothing compelling about hbbTV content beyond ‘more of what you already have’. In the age of global streaming providers like Netflix, choice won’t save TV. The majority of Australian networks can barely scrape together a compelling main channel schedule, let alone a compelling hybrid offer. And I’d wager that 7’s tennis coverage did better over mobile, web and tablet than it did over HbbTV.
Alas, Freeview was, as the streakers like to say, a good idea at the time. It has been plagued with technical issues, born mostly out of the lack of a clear and united vision from the networks. My five year old TIVO is more user friendly than anything else I’ve seen recently but it, too, never got off the ground here. Hopefully the networks have learned something from the Freeview experience and will not make the same mistake again as they seek to find a way to collaborate in the face of new entrants. They have a good model to follow of course. TX Australia has managed to run their collective transmission systems for nearly 20 years without much squabbling.
Just wanted to get the facts straight about Freeview. Freeview is the free digital television service in Australia. It is not an industry TV body.
Well bugger me. It wasn’t until I read the article and checked the new TV that I too am one of the ‘Freeview enabled households’. Just shows how useless that metric is. The ONLY thing that matters is usage.
#3 Scott “Freeview” isn’t free to air TV. “Freeview” is a brand name for digital TV dreamt up by people who are looking to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
For a manufacturer to sell a digital TV there is nothing more to do. To be “Freeview” means having to sign a licence agreement with numerous requirements to be met.