BT UK Launch New Broadband TV Box Pro with HDR and WiFi

After a long wait, UK ISP BT has today finally announced the launch of a new set-top-box for their broadband-based Pay TV (IPTV) service – TV Box Pro, which among other things will finally add WiFi and High Dynamic Range (HDR) video support. But you’ll need a wait for the wireless networking to be ready.

Until now the best STB that BT’s YouView powered Pay TV service had to offer was their Ultra HD (4K) equipped YouView box (Humax DTR-T4000), but like so many other PVR-capable (Personal Video Recorder) devices on that platform it lacked WiFi and could thus only be connected via a wired (Ethernet / LAN) cable to your broadband router. The DTR-T4000 also lacked HDR support (a big oversight since BTSport can do HDR).

The good news, as hinted last year (here), is that BT’s new STB finally appears to be catching up with some of their rivals, at least on the technology front. Sky (Sky Q HDR) and Virgin Media  (Virgin TV 360) have both issued upgraded versions of their kit in the past year or so, which is something that BT can’t ignore. We actually expected this kit to surface last year, but COVID-19 is believed to have caused some development delays.

Otherwise, the new box will support 4K, HDR video quality, WiFi, 1TB of storage (double the PVR capacity of the previous BT TV box), Dolby Atmos audio, a Bluetooth remote, and it will integrate 4 Tuners (i.e. allowing customers to record up to 3 shows and watch a fourth simultaneously). On top of that, you can also expect a new image-led user interface (UI), which has been rolled out for both new and existing BT TV customers.

Similar to its predecessor, BT TV Box Pro comes with integrated search – helping streamline viewing and removing the need to remember which show is on which platform. BT TV’s set-top box also offers pause, rewind and record functionality.

Chandru Lakshminarayanan, BT’s TV and Sport Propositions Director, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’ve seen a huge growth in 4K HDR content and we’re excited that the new BT TV Box Pro supports such an immersive way of viewing.

We’ve seen such great feedback since launching our flexible TV plans and now the award-winning platform is about to enter the next generation of viewing. We’ve got lots more planned, which I can’t wait to share with our customers shortly.”

However, there are a few catches with today’s big launch, such as the fact that the new box will initially only be available to new customers taking a VIP package, but it will be added to other packages “in due course“. For £65 per month the VIP package includes a NOW Cinema, Entertainment, Sport Membership as well as NOW Boost (i.e. most of Sky’s key TV channels), plus BT Sport Ultimate in up to 4K HDR as well as Eurosport.

BT states that the new IP capable box is “designed to support the future of all IP streaming and works with BT Smart Hubs and Complete Wi-Fi as well as the BT TV mobile app,” so it may be that they’ll have further features to unveil in the future. Speaking of future features, the BT TV Box Pro is stated to be “Wi-Fi capable,” but this will only come with an “enabling update planned for later this year” (at launch you’ll only be able to connect it using wires).

A spokesperson for BT added: “We deliver exceptional experiences to our customers every day, which is why they trust us. Currently, WiFi functionality on the BT TV Pro box does not deliver that exceptional experience, so we have decided to switch off that functionality while we work on a fix.”

Sadly, BT couldn’t tell us precisely why the WiFi won’t be ready at launch or when the update will be released, but we can speculate. Our sources suggest that the update will probably follow around September 2021, and we suspect that part of the reason for this delay may be because it will need to integrate with their next gen BT Ultrafast Complete WiFi system and Smart Hub 3 router (WiFi 6 / 802.11ax mesh) – these have yet to be announced.

Finally, and we haven’t yet been able to get this confirmed, but we believe the new TV kit is likely to be supplied via Sagemcom.

UPDATE 1:23pm

Credits to one of our readers (Yatta!) for finding the manual for the new TV Box Pro device (here), which confirms that it’s still based on the YouView platform and includes the following ports: Power, TV Aerial In, TV Aerial Out, SPDIF (Audio), Ethernet (LAN), HDMI and a USB port. Apparently, the USB port enables you to connect a keyboard to the box, but no other uses are mentioned.