Canvas & related news roundup - 1 Sep

Canvas news:

• Today (Sep 1) sees the close of the BBC Trust’s latest public consultation on Canvas. The next step is for the Trust to publish their provisional conclusions, sometime in the autumn, which will then kick off a final four week consultation period.
• NDS, the middleware provider, has reportedly said it wants Canvas to use its audience measurement system. C21 article here (subscription only I’m afraid, so I’m basing this just on tweets).
• In this Telegraph article CEO of Five, Dawn Airey, uses the example of micropayments as a way to watch episodes before linear transmission.

IPTV & VOD-related news:

The two biggest related news stories this week first:

• Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) was launched. It’s a consortium made up of European / pan-European companies including Canal+, France Televisions, SES Astra, ANT, and OpenTV. Like Canvas, it is about specifications that bring broadcast and internet content together into devices. Unlike Canvas, it is aiming to be a pan-European effort. Will HbbTV have made a submission to the BBC Trust’s consultation that closed today?
• James Murdoch uses his McTaggart Lecture spot to blast the activities of the BBC. He has called for either a greatly reduced scope (& licence fee) in the activities the organisation provides for free.
• Dawn Airey, in the same Telegraph article, says two VOD-related announcements will be made “imminently”, but has ruled out either to have any Hulu connection. That would leave Arqiva & YouTube as the most likely - but of course, far from the only - candidates.  Update: 3 Sep: One of these announcements has now been made: it is a trial with Sony on their internet-connected Bravia TVs. The Guardian article here.