YouView lands on Sony's Bravia TVs next month, no set-top box needed
After announcing a tie-up earlier this year, we now know that November 4th will mark the launch of YouView on Sony's 2015 range of Bravia TVs. Arriving a little later than originally planned, the update for Sony's Android-based TVs will add YouView's time-travelling EPG and various other content discovery features. It will be the first time YouView has ever been available without a dedicated set-top box, which is actually a pretty big deal in the advent of Freeview Play. One of the unique features of YouView is being able to scroll back through the past seven days of programming and jump seamlessly into catch-up services when you come across a broadcast you'd rather not have missed. Well, it was unique until Freeview launched Play, a new service that affords exactly the same functionality.
What's more, the next generation of Freeview will be baked into future TVs, so it was about time YouView broke free of set-top boxes to level the score, even if it means losing DVR capabilities. As YouView and Freeview Play offer extremely similar features, it's now up to both brands to persuade TV manufacturers to integrate one over the other. For us, though, it doesn't really matter, because we get to take advantage of seamless catch-up services either way.
