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Freeview launches online Guide, but….

Two and a Half Men on Seven? 24 on Nine? Freeview launches a new online TV Guide with a bit of a 'typo'...

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Home and Away on ABC1? My Kitchen Rules on ABC3? Two and a Half Men on Seven? 24 on Nine? Little Mosque on the Prairie on ONE?

Freeview has launched on online TV Guide on its website with on-air titles for the forthcoming seven days for its city and regional broadcasters members.

But the image Freeview supplied with its Press Release (pictured) had titles that didn’t align with the correct channels, which would be a bit of a worry if it was replicated online.

Thankfully, it isn’t. The official site with its content from HWW is all in working order.

Viewers can choose from “Now” and “Primetime” schedules, with channel, title and start and finish times (in theory anyway), ratings classification, closed caption availability, plus synopsis and genre. A Search function is also featured.

Freeview CEO Robin Parkes said, “The Freeview online TV Guide is a fast and very convenient way for viewers to look up all their favourite programs, and has been developed as a direct result of viewer demand.

“Viewers look to Freeview for information about content on all Freeview channels, and this new TV Guide is a great way of finding out for free all there is to know about what’s showing on Freeview.”

The Freeview EPG which has been delayed several times due to copyright and technical hurdles is now earmarked for later this year.

Freeview is a join venture of major Free to Air broadcasters.

24 Responses

  1. “Somehow I think my local printed lift-out may be correct with The Bounce at 12:30am (where all AFL should be). ” Nice one Kenny lol. I couldn’t agree with you more.

  3. This web page may be the only useful thing the whole Freeview campaign has produced so far.

    It’s definitely a better layout than the Yahoo or YourTV offerings (no popups or ads for starters), however it is missing the option to extend the duration of the guide (ie: Rest of Day). Maybe some of those features will come with time? It does seem they are experiencing some teething problems, so they are probably still tweaking things, which means they might easily add features yet.

  4. Way too late and doesn’t work properly unless you’re on the eastern seaboard. Doesn’t have any of the SBS channels so it’s useless for me.

  7. I’ll try it instead of YourTV, just because it seems more user friendly (no popup windows, etc). Still could do with a *lot* of improvements. The region dropdown doesn’t even work properly (clicking the down icon does nothing – you have to click the text instead). Too short a timeframe of shows too, with no shortcuts to jump to a given time – if it’s say 6pm and you want to see what’s on at say 6am – there’s a lot of clicking to do! And no ability to filter which channels you can see! Little things that are very easy to do (I’m a software developer), and make a huge difference to usability. It’s also not hard to refresh the contents (such as when navigating to the next timeframe) without refreshing the whole page. So while they’ve probably hired OK web developers, they certainly haven’t hired good (or better yet, great) ones.

  8. It seems to be stuck on Eastern states time. I’ve set it to WA – Perth, yet when I click ‘Now’ it continues to show what’s on now in the Eastern states!

  9. Wed 7:30pm PRiME Wollongong reads RSPCA Animal Rescue & Crash Investigation, but PRiME W’gong been madly promoting The Bounce for that time. Who’s wrong? Somehow I think my local printed lift-out may be correct with The Bounce at 12:30am (where all AFL should be). Take a deep breath. We are in NSW!
    Can’t see myself running off to my PC to check what’s on, trying to remember, or writing it all down, before shutting down the PC and going back to the TV.

  10. Hardly the easiest to use comapred to yourtv especially when both have identical data from HWW. Amazing that Freeview won’t list time changes when everyone knows Viewer Demand was for accurate EPG not just a rehash on their own website

  11. Wow, there’s lots of unnecessary channel listings there making it painful to scan through. No need for SBS ONE and SBS HD, 7 and 7HD, 9 and 9HD, ONE and ONE HD – they all simulcast the same shows. I guess Freeview is happy that it makes it looks like there are more channels than there actually are!

  12. Neon Kitten, HWW is owned by Ninemsn which is owned 50% by PBL Media and Microsoft. Its this ownership of HWW that lead to the court proceedings with ICETV over copyright.

  13. I’ll stick to my printed guide. So much easier. Don’t bother with the digital “EPG” on the HDTV either. Everyone seems to be running that program called “No Information” all the time (LOL).

  17. At least the online guide isn’t a huge failure accessibility wise.

    However, localisation wise it’s a disaster. Firstly, how hard is it to use Geolocation technologies to deliver the correct regional guide to the user. If I’m connecting to the site from WA – It shouldn’t default to a location on the east coast. Not doing this adds a layer of unnecessary user interaction.

    And even when you do switch to your local area, it has no logic for timezones. So of course flipping to WA right now (and pressing the now button) will show you all programming from 10:30am onwards, and not 8:30am.

    Once again, Freeview show how little they care about the consumer. Lack of testing, poor user experience, I could go on.

  20. Networks send guide data to HWW. Freeview and many other tv guide sites use HWW. If freeview is representing the networks shouldnt the epg data be sent straight to freeview without going through HWW?

    1. Daniel maybe it is cheaper for Freeview to use the outsourced data from a specialist company than hire a staff / software to assemble in-house. Anyone who has seen amendments here knows what a big job it is!

      Ozzie, the IceTV widget is obviously just a primetime snapshot of what’s on “TV Tonight”, but it links to a bigger version on IceTV if you want more.

  21. seriously, who cares !!! This is about 3 years too late and there are already this service available on numerous websites including seven, nine and ten’s own websites. On top of that, it is actually out of date. Nine Adelaide and Perth have rebranded their logo to include the balls version yet the online guide has the old logo.

    Now when they get the EPG working properly and properly I mean it shows program over-runs that will be something useful.

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