EE TV Promises DVR And On-Demand Harmony

Carrier EE is launching its own TV service, EE TV, promising to bring together free-to-air and on-demand content with smartphone and tablet viewing and control. The new set-top box, which will be offered free to EE's UK home broadband subscribers, claims to eschew the usual ugly and impenetrable user-interface of traditional cable boxes and instead borrow heavily from smartphones and tablets; meanwhile, those devices themselves can be used to navigate through the UI, with the EE TV app, and then "flick" content from mobile to TV.

Streaming to mobile devices, meanwhile, is supported for up to four phones or tablets simultaneously, with either live or recorded playback possible. That can be four identical streams to different rooms, or four different streams altogether.

Inside the box there are four Freeview HD tuners with support for 70+ free-to-air channels, while a "Replay" feature allows content from the past 24 hours not specifically recorded to be rewound and watched. BBC iPlayer, Demand 5, YouTube, Daily Motion, and other on-demand apps are supported too.

Up to four recordings can be running at any one time, storing to the box's 1TB drive which EE claims is good for up to 25 days of content. If you start watching a show midway through, a "Restart" button will automatically jump back to the beginning.

The EE TV box itself has HDMI, gigabit ethernet, WiFi b/g/n, S/PDIF, an IR receiver, and analog audio outputs, and supports up to 1080/60p video.

Anyone on an EE Broadband plan – kicking off at £9.95 per month – can get the smart box free.

SOURCE EE TV