0/5

iview hits refresh (but no HD still)

New-look "show pages," better Search and no more Flash amongst iview's site refresh.

Ever-popular ABC iview hit the refresh button yesterday.

There are new show pages which bring together all of the available series, episodes, extras, into one place, including more information about host, guests, cast and related links.

Some users may find their watch list has been affected by the changes.

It also has simplified its Program Search to only show results, rather than a confusing list of episodes that were provided before, as well as recognisng common misspellings for popular programs.

It has dispensed with Flash, which removes the need for the Adobe Flash Player plugin, best viewed in Chrome, Firefox or Safari (plus Microsoft Edge, IE 11* in Windows).

The new-look iview has been made available on the iOS and Android applications for mobile and tablet devices, and on the iview website. ABC says to “stay tuned” for further updates for Connected TVs and tvOS (Apple TV).

But there’s still no word on HD, promised for 2017. It last indicated, “iview content is not currently available in HD due to rights restrictions and the cost of delivering video of that quality.”

For more info on the changes go here.

11 Responses

  1. iview isn’t in HD but the current 1024×576 resolution is a massive improvement over the old 640×360 resolution.

    SBS On Demand puts out most of its new content in 1280 x 720 but it seems to be heavily restricted by a 1500kbps bitrate limit and can get quite blocky at times as a result.

    1. Be careful what you wish for…all political parties make promises to get elected…not many of them ever eventuate….does not matter who they are….*old and cynical, here*

  2. Finished watching all of Mystery Road series yesterday. Enjoyed the premise, but it got progressively poorer in my opinion, films (espeically original) by far better. Thought Judy Davis looked a bit lost at times but Aaron Pedersen as always the highlight.

    Anyway thanks ABC for not letting us wait a month to watch via broadcast.

    1. Yes I now have no exemptions in Flash blocking. Only the took the ABC what, 2 years longer than everybody else. iView’s resolution is good enough for viewing on laptop or average TV. People with UHD TVs may want more, but providing a luxury service to a minority isn’t the best use of public money. According to the OECD only 30% of Australian households had a connection good enough to be considered broadband in 2017 (the NBN will improve that).

  3. Finally. I watched all of Killing Eve and trying to find the next episode was kinda unintuitive. I hadn’t really noticed before as I’d only ever used iview as a catch up rather than a binge platform.
    HD Aus a shame, but it’s free… and the quality is soooooo much better than it used to so it doesn’t bother me that much.

    1. I agree. No HD isn’t that important when all of the content is being delivered at 576p now anyway. In some cases, iview can provide better picture quality than digital TV equivalent, since spectrum (and bitrate) is at a premium on broadcast TV and the public are still using a lot of mpeg2 only sets (and for a public broadcaster, that’s fair enough – they need to serve the needs of the less well to do who can only afford a 2nd hand TV)

      It would be nice if the ABC can be HD but they need to pay commercial rates for bandwidth like everyone else. I wonder who their current contract is with and when it expires because unlimited bandwidth contracts are being signed in the corporate world now too – where you pay for the speed of the pipe, not how much data goes down it.

    2. Yeah that’s the way it was when I watched on a Samsung TV.

      First you had to click on Ep 1 and then on the page before you go full-screen you had to go down to the Episode lists. On the bottom were Eps 1, 2, 3 and then to the right a small rectangle with a + on it and you had to open that to get to more episodes and do that every time seemed to revert to showing only Eps 1, 2, 3 after watching 4, 5 etc.

Leave a Reply