[WillPS]

It’s not really about who’s waiting for it though. It’s about an offering that is an improvement on what we have now.

OK, in which case, what will be the improvement?

Programme choice - I'm not convinced that there are scores of channels who want to be on Freeview but don't fit, unless the likes of Pluto and Freevee plan on populating the EPG (presumably at a cost/regulatory burden much higher than offering the same content via their own app). Not sure I see it...

Picture quality - this is probably the most convincing argument for a main set but given the masses who have HD TVs but still end up watching SD - even on channels where HD is available on Freeview... again I don't think there is an underserved market here.

The use case for the everyman I can see is the ability to put the set wherever and it'll 'just work' via Wifi - no connection other than power needed. That is a cool feature no doubt, but I'm not terribly convinced there's a large enough base of users there to make the platform viable.

To reiterate I don't think it's a nonstarter of an idea but it's late to market and I think there's a strong chance of it being caught in a chicken/egg cycle of people not choosing/using it because there's no advantage over Freeview, and operators not bothering with it because there's not enough eyeballs using it (ala Freesat). The lack of a 'conversion' option is utterly baffling from my perspective - even if there's just a couple of decent channels on it which I can't otherwise get I might be persuaded to buy a dongle/STB, but there's zero chance I would part with my otherwise perfectly good TVs in order to benefit. It's essentially the Sky Glass problem repeating itself.