The backers of Freeview are the free-to-air TV stations in Australia - Ten, Nine, Seven, SBS and the ABC.
In April Freeview is set to roll out a multimillion dollar advertising campaign to promote 14 HD channels that are available via free-to-air TV stations. 12 of those channels are currently available on air via a Foxtel service or via a TV that has an electronic programme guide.
Under the new guidelines buyers of Freeview-compliant devices are going to find it very hard to cut out TV commercials due to the proposed introduction of specifications that restrict ad skipping.
What Freeview is promoting as unique, say TV vendors, will be available via any integrated TV. They also claim there is no real benefit for consumers and that all the proposed marketing campaign will do is add an additional layer of confusion for consumers.
As one vendor said bluntly "Freeview is designed to slow down the skipping of TV commercials and to muddy the Foxtel message that they have over 100 channels of TV including all the Freeview channels which with Foxtel can be recorded and the advertising skipped through".
Also of concern to the TV vendors is the roll out by the Federal Government of a TV campaign promoting the cutting off of analogue TV for a digital TV service at the same time as the roll out of the Freeview TV campaign.
