Chinese TV maker Chengdu Geeya Technology Co. bought U.K. manufacturer Harvard International...
Chinese TV maker Chengdu Geeya Technology Co. bought U.K. manufacturer Harvard International and its Goodmans brand name, after nine months of talks. Harvard had previously sold its Bush and Alba brands to Home Retail, which runs the U.K.’s Argos store…
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chain, and relinquished its half share of the Grundig brand to Beko of Turkey. Harvard also markets the iLuv range of accessories. In September, Harvard, which will operate as Chengdu Geeya’s British subsidiary, will start a new brand, “View21.” The flagship will be an Internet-capable HD DVR set-top that will conform to the U.K.’s Freeview+ HD standard for free-to-air HD recording, but eschews the recently unveiled YouView IPTV system for seamlessly blending backward-facing broadband catch-up TV with forward-facing live TV received terrestrially (CD July 5 p13). Harvard Chief Technology Officer Martin Wilks said he regards YouView as View21’s “main competitor,” but if the basic Freeview standard is “enhanced” to allow for backward- and forward-facing electronic program guide listings, the View21 box can be easily upgraded. “The buzz is that Freeview will shortly announce an enhanced EPG, probably for next spring,” Wilks said. “But we have not yet decided whether or not we will do that. We want to differentiate in other ways, such as ease-of-use apps that really make sense in a set-top box and second-screen options.” Prototype View21 boxes shown at a London media briefing last week come with BBC iPlayer catch-up TV, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter apps, but these offerings will expand for launch, the company said. Second-screen apps let iPads and iPhones and Android tablets and smartphones function as a View21 remote control, and stream live and recorded programs between the box and the screen of the mobile device. There are no plans for View21 to support Windows Phone, Wilks said: “When you have iPhone and Android, you're done.” The View21 box has no native Wi-Fi but connects via Ethernet cable to a home Wi-Fi router, which then connects by Wi-Fi to the portable, the company said. So a box in one room can serve as a second-screen portable elsewhere in the home, with the portable displaying the box’s electronic program guide and its library of recordings, it said. Unlike Sony’s new Google TV box, which has a remote control with cursor control touch pad on one side and mini Qwerty keyboard on the other, the View21 remote control has only a standard numeric keypad. Text entry for the View21 will need to rely on using an iPad remote or displaying a soft keyboard on the TV screen, the company said.