myPVR and freeview

With the arrival of freeview digital TV in New Zealand, OpenMedia is very pleased to announce that myPVR can provide direct support for this new digital TV system.

Instead of purchasing a separate freeview compatible Set Top Box OpenMedia can provide a myPVR unit with a digital TV tuner that allows recording of the digital signal onto the built in hard drive. This direct recording provides the best possible playback quality equal to that of live TV.

freeview Options

freeview intend to transmit via both a Satellite DTH (Direct to Home) service as well as a Terrestrial DTT (Digital Terrestrial TV) service. The Satellite DTH service launches in May 2007, and the DTT service is due to start in April 2008. We hope to suport both platforms with myPVR, but for the moment we will only be offering units with DTH support.

freeview DTH

In order to receive freeview DTH you will require a satellite dish that points at the Optus D1 satellite. If you are an existing Sky TV Customer you should be able to use the same dish with an appropriate splitter. Please contact OpenMedia for more details.

At present we can offer two levels of DTH support

Single DTH tuner in addition to an existing analogue single or dual tuner card
Dual DTH tuners with no support for analogue TV

If you live in an area with very poor analogue reception we recommend the dual DTH support.

Should you wish to record off your Sky TV decoder you will require a single or dual tuner analogue card

freeview DTT

The freeview|HD service started DTT transmissions on 2^nd April 2008, and will initially cover 75% of the population. At present myPVR cannot support the freeview|HD platform due to the performance required to decode the high definition video under Linux. Development is underway on an updated version of myPVR and we hope to have more details early in 2009.

freeview Services

If you want more information on the channels and additional services that freeview will be providing keep an eye on the freeview channel page on their website. The following channels are currently available -

Ch	Widescreen	Name	Notes
1	Y	TV One
2	Y	TV 2
3	Y	TV 3
4	Y	C 4
5	Y	Maori Television
6	Y	TVNZ 6
7	Y	TVNZ 7	Launched 31^st March 2008
20	Y	TVNZ Sports Extra
21	N	Stratos	DTH Only
22	Y	Paliament TV
23	N	CUE	DTH Only
24		Te Reo	DTH Only
28	N	ChineseTV8	DTT Only
30		tvCentral	DTT Only - Regional channel for Hamilton and BOP
50		Radio NZ National	Limited myPVR Support
51		Radio NZ Concert	Limited myPVR Support
70		George FM	DTH Only
100	Y	freeview \| HD	DTT Only - HD Promo channel

MediaWorks have announced that they plan to launch additional services on freeview over the next 2 years, but no specifics as to the content have been made available.

freeview and Widescreen

As has been noted some of the freeview channels transmit in 16:9 widescreen. For more details from the various channels on how they have chosen to provide widescreen see the following links

Of the above links the first one from TVNZ provides the best detail on how the broadcasters have decided to show older 4:3 material on the new 16:9 digital platform. If you feel there is a problem with your widescreen setup I'd advise you to check the above links first, and also check out our FAQ on Widescreen.

myPVR freeview Support

OpenMedia's aim is for myPVR to offer the best level of support possible for the freeview services. As part of this we are able to offer support for the freeview MHEG-5 based interactive TV services.

Selected freeview services already have myPVR equivalents such as the EPG. The myPVR EPG allows you to select programs for recording, whilst the freeview MHEG-5 based EPG can only provide program information.

One great feature of myPVR is that it provides unified set of channels across multiple TV sources. For example you might have a combination of Sky Digital, freeview and existing analogue channels. When programming via the myPVR EPG recordings are automatically assigned to the best available input.

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