Freeview is a failure. There, I’ve said it.
Not a particularly popular point of view, perhaps, but one occasioned by a recent examination of what’s been going on in Italy’s digital-terrestrial television (DTT) environment.
For a variety of reasons, since 2003 the Italian government has chosen to subsidise DTT receivers containing a Java-based interactive TV technology called MHP (for Multimedia Home Platform). This is an open-standard system officially encouraged by the European Commission, and until Murdoch’s Sky Italia platform complained about it, Brussels was happy to allow the subsidy - because the declared aim was to offer e-government services over the DTT platform.
The plan appears to be paying off. In the Lombardy region, if you want to know if you’re entitled to free dental care, you can insert your ‘citizen card’ – an ID card carrying a computer chip – into your digital-terrestrial television (DTT) set-top box, link into the local health services database, and get the answer in a few seconds.
At the moment, only triallists in possession of a special code can access the service, but it should go live later this year. Meanwhile, numerous Italian government information services can already be dialled up on MHP-capable DTT boxes, just by pressing the red button on the remote control.
Why does that make Freeview a failure? One reason is that nothing like the Italian system looks as if it will ever be available on the UK platform.
When the BBC and others specified the Freeview receiver spec, they left out just about every possible interface they could in order to keep the price down. In the vast majority of Freeview boxes, there’s not only no integrated modem, but nowhere to plug one in. That means no interactive advertising.
There’s also no smartcard slot. With TV watchdog Ofcom deciding just a few weeks ago that it is now permissible to offer pay-TV services on Freeview frequencies, that decision is looking decidedly foolish, since no smartcard slot means no pay-TV.
To sum up, the Freeview platform can’t be upgraded – and there are already 10 million-plus Freeview receivers out there.
Left to its own devices, the specification might have evolved, but the BBC’s insistence on promoting only cheap Freeview adapters in its digital TV promotions has maintained a downward price pressure on the sector and encouraged the public to see Freeview as a £40 impulse-buy.
This means manufacturers have no incentive to add new interfaces to Freeview boxes (because that increases the price), or invest in Freeview-capable PVRs (because consumers don’t associate Freeview with a £100-200 price-point).
Finally, the ‘cheap adapter’ strategy has discouraged sales of digital TV sets (iDTVs), because it means the BBC does not tell viewers that they can get Freeview by simply specifying an iDTV when they come to upgrade their TV set.
All of this represents a big problem for Digital UK, which launched its analogue switchoff campaign last week. For a start, although 70% of UK homes have digital TV, 62% of the TV sets have yet to be converted, since the UK has high multiple TV ownership.
As a result, according to recent research, only 35% of UK homes will have converted all their TV sets to digital by 2012
Meanwhile, almost every one of the UK’s TV homes has at least one VCR, which will also have to be converted to digital by 2012 unless it’s to stop recording. Current government thinking is that buying a cheap adapter for a VCR just won’t work, because the set-up process is too complicated. That means swapping out a VCR for a PVR.
But penetration of Freeview PVRs is currently negligible, as pointed out above, largely as a result of the BBC’s digital TV promotion policy. So to 40 million or so TV sets requiring conversion, add another 25 million or so VCRs.
Meanwhile, the UK is saddled with a non-future-proof DTT platform which can’t generate new revenue streams, and won’t allow poorer families without a PC to access e-government services.
Which is to say that it all looks like pretty much of a failure to me.
