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  • Freeview launches iPhone HD TV Guide app, ignores the lack of HD content

    Steve O'Hear

    Steve O’Hear is probably best known as a technology journalist, currently at TechCrunch where he focuses mainly on European startups, companies and products. He was previously co-founder and CEO of expertise platform Beepl where he helped the company navigate its first VC round, along with seeing the product through development, private alpha and a high profile public launch. In November... → Learn More

    Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

    [UK] There are already a plethora of TV guide apps for the iPhone but now comes an official one from Freeview.

    The UK terrestrial digital television provider has released a free TV guide for Apple’s smartphone, which won’t come as good news for others competing in the space. It has ‘official’ stamped all over it and also emphasises HD content in its guide even though there are only two HD channels currently available on Freeview.

    But, hey, this is all about marketing.

    Freview set-top boxes that support HD are just hitting the market in Britain and the iPhone app is clearly saying ‘upgrade your box now’. Or anything satellite and cable TV can do, we can do too.

    As for the app itself (iTunes link), it offers the usual features such as the ability to browse by channel, filter listings by category and search via text entry. The app also has a recommendation engine of sorts via a related programmes feature.

    Perhaps more interesting, however, is the integration with Twitter so that users can get viewing suggestions via Freeview’s official Twitter feed (@freeviewtv), all within the iPhone app itself.

    • matthew

      why can’t I add a favourite program to the calandar or create an alert?

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