I’ve not been paying attention.
Is this a rebrand of Freeview/Freeview Play, or is this essentially a replacement with updated codecs, etc?
It’s a replacement which works through the Internet, suspected to use DVB-I. From a user perspective it should look and work just like Freeview (but without the aerial)
My understanding is that at this point there are no solid plans to actually switch off Freeview (or Freesat); this would be an additional service, rather than a replacement. They may well wish to stop the Freeview/Freesat broadcasts at some point in the future (because spectrum space is very valuable and very finite and there’s no particular reason why TV should be hogging any of it in an era of omnipresent broadband), but they’re a very long way away from that. It’s doubtful whether they would be allowed to do if for as long as there are broadband blackspots in the country, as is still the case.
Very true, but the TV broadcast spectrum which Freeview relies on is only guaranteed to be available until the 2030s. This is a replacement just like digital was a replacement for analogue, but it’s going to take a while to switch over (and there may be a skeleton broadcast service for a long time after, for emergencies or broadband blackspots)
