Freeview Plus

Freeview Plus is a HbbTV application app built by myself (as lead) and the rest of the team at Switch Media.

HbbTV stands for Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV and is a standard that combines web technology with device APIs that allow web based applications to run on TVs and STBs.

The Freeview Plus app was pushed out to millions of TV sets across Australia as the standard allows for the DVB stream to carry the URL of the hosted application. Users are presented with a launcher menu over their live TV broadcast. This provides users with the option to run the Freeview Plus app (green button on the remote control) or the broadcaster’s own Video On Demand application (red button).

Freeview Plus has a range of features that facilitates the user experience: - Catch Up: Browse shows in the guide to catch up on shows you missed out on. - EPG: Browse what upcoming over the next week. - Search:Search through the extensive catalogue of VOD content from Australia’s free to air broadcasters. - Explore TV: A personalised screen showing the user content across their favourites, live TV, catch up and Freeview picks. - Record: The ability to schedule a recording on supported devices. - Favourites: The ability to select favourite shows and have is populate your personal feed. - Reminders: Set reminders for upcoming shows, episodes or movies.

The app is built with a custom framework using vanilla JS but we converted over to TypeScript during the course of a year in the maintenance phase of the project to keep it in line with the technology direction we were going with at Switch Media.