ITV Hub

This beta surely isn't the ITV Hub! If it is, such a shame.

The beta is a bit odd. If it is the ITV Hub then why still all the Player branding? And if its not the Hub, then why have a beta for Player now?

As a design, its quite nice, but fairly basic, hope its not the new Hub as its not very exciting or innovating.

Although worth noting that All4 was little more than a rebadged 4oD.

Tried to access the Beta site via Firefox and is now redirecting me to the current site.

I found that I had to accept cookies. After that, I clicked the link here again and this time the beta site didn't redirect. I'm using Chrome.

Oh dear, that really is bland and boring. It needs an overhaul as well as a jump in picture quality.

Some interesting feedback has been posted via the Feedback button at the bottom. Wonder how much of it will be taken on board or ignored as the case may be.

The design appears to be a bugbear looking at the feedback at the moment, as does availability on mobile and downloads, plus the fact it doesn't always play anything (which is nothing unusual anyway). Surprisingly only one mention of lack of HD content availability.

So is this new ITV Player going to eventually just put "ITV Hub" logos onto itself? There are about a million things missing or wrong about it. ITV would be moving backwards overall, especially if it replaces the whole site as the press release says.

They made quite the song and dance about it with the press release and so on, so for it to potentially end up being this is both disappointing and annoying.

To be honest, I don't see much wrong with either the current ITV Player or the beta one. I can watch stuff, it looks pretty decent, what more does it need to be?

Really? It's nowhere near good enough.
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The general navigation sucks

Design generally ****

HD playback still not an option

Poor quality playback controls/video player UI

Doesn't list how many adverts (i.e. Ad 2 of 4)

No user account-based library of shows, "following" shows, any personalisation

No social media integration

Doesn't show viewers when a show is next on

TV guide poorly implemented

No categories of shows (Drama, Entertainment, etc)

No sign of how main site pages (i.e. Coronation Street's site) will be worked in to this design

Still no signal ITV will have a subscription service with archive/classic content

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All in all a complete and utter train wreck in its current form, if it is the supposed everything-all-in-one ITV Hub replacing ITV.com then they have absolutely lost their minds.

How anyone can think there's "not much wrong" about that is beyond me.

That's nice.

However, I'm not arsed about social media integration, personalisation, and all those complications you list. I can watch last week's X Factor, it looks fine on my iPad or on the telly, and despite what you seem to think, it's *really* easy to use. And whilst technically all the things you list would be impressive, their target audience is my mum wanting to watch Emmerdale, and I'm not sure it's in their interest to make it any more complicated than it needs to be.

I mentioned earlier that ITV Player isn't the easiest to navigate for previous episodes on the NOW TV box, but for finding the current episode of The X Factor or Downton Abbey is easy enough.

HD would be 'nice', but it's not a necessity considering ITV Player is a commercially funded service.