Freeview extends on-demand to remaining 40pc of viewers
Hundreds of thousands more households will be able to watch free-to-air television at a time of their choosing.
Freeview has extended its FreeviewPlus ‘‘on demand’’ service to the 30 per cent of Kiwi homes who use its satellite service to watch free-to-air television.
About another 45 per cent of homes can already receive FreeviewPlus though its ‘‘terrestrial’’ service, FreeviewHD.
Freeview chief executive Sam Irvine said Freeview satellite customers would be able to click back through their electronic programming guide (EPG) to catch up on most prime-time programmes as well as locally produced daytime programmes that they might have missed during the previous seven days.
They will also be able to watch other ‘‘on demand’’ content provided through TVNZ On Demand, 3Now and Maori Television On Demand.
Freeview satellite customers would need a compatible set-top box or television that was hooked up to broadband to access FreeviewPlus, Irvine said.
Most Dish set-top boxes or big brand televisions bought during the past year would fit the bill, he said.
Freeview’s satellite service has been regarded as something of a poor cousin to its FreeviewHD UHF service.
That is partly because satellitecapacity constraints have limited it to showing programmes in standard definition.
But adding FreeviewPlus to the satellite service would help close the gap, Irvine said.
‘‘We are always looking at how we could move to HD on satellite but it is a difficult one with the lack of spare capacity on the satellite that is not being used by Sky.’’
Many households, even in urban areas where FreeviewHD is available, still chose the satellite service, as it is easy to tune in through an existing satellite dish, Irvine said.
They would find the picture quality of some shows improved when they watched them through FreeviewPlus via broadband rather than by satellite, he said.
FreeviewPlus could allow broadcasters such as Television New Zealand and MediaWorks to sell pay-perview programmes or subscription video on demand (SVOD) to viewers.
However, Irvine said the domestic SVOD market was now very crowded: ‘‘I think it would be a brave business that would launch a new SVOD service in competition to the existing players.’’
Those existing players include Netflix, Spark-owned Lightbox and Sky Network Television’s Neon.
Sky said its free-to-air Prime TV channel had concluded a deal with the BBC that would see ‘‘a wide range of prestigious BBC programmes’’ premiere exclusively on Prime in New Zealand.
Those programmes would include documentaries such as The Story of China, Stephen Fry in Central America, the second series of Coast Australia, Rick Stein’s Long Weekends and the two new travel series Greece and Ireland with Simon Reeve, it said.
Prime had also secured the new BBC drama series The Durrells, based on the memoirs of naturalist Gerald Durrell, and Michael Mosley’s new documentary series Nine Months That Made You, it said.
Sky said it would also screen all 51 UEFA European Championship 2016 football matches live on Sky Sports’ ‘‘popup’’ channels in June and July.