Project Canvas news update - 24 March

Posted by andrew pascoe on March 24, 2010 · View Comments 

Quite a few noteworthy items from the last few days around Project Canvas:

  • 22 March - The project announced that Arqiva has joined as the seventh partner to the venture. (Arqiva is the communications infrastructure company; it has a share in Freeview, and it also launched SeeSaw, the VoD project that came out of the defunct Project Kangaroo).  News release here (PDF). Arqiva have made no secret of their desire to bring SeeSaw to the TV.
  • 22 March - At the same time, it was announced that Project Canvas made a submission (on its own initiative) to OFT (the Office of Fair Trading). The goal is to satisfy OFT that the venture is not any form of merger. Post on the official Canvas site here. The submission has triggered a consultation. There is a page here on the OFT site, but it is not clear how to comment, or who is eligible to comment. Comments close on April 7.
  • It was mentioned in an article (which we can’t relocate!) that the BBC Trust’s final ruling on the BBC involvement would be delayed from the spring target - apparently tied to the OFT consultation - but we can’t find any official mention of this. (Do you know more? Drop us an email - ProjectCanvasUK@gmail.com)  (Update - C21Media & TechRadar are 2 sites that mention the delayed final ruling.)
  • 23 March - From the IPTV World Forum, Julian Clover (from Broadband TV News) tweeted this:  “Halton: Canvas in ‘private discussions’ with HbbTV to ‘take two programmes into alignment’ ”
  • 18 March - BSkyB made public its full submission to the BBC Trust’s final consultation on Canvas. It is available here as a PDF.  PaidContent:UK has their usual good summary.
  • 17 March - BSkyB COO Mike Darcy argues in The Guardian Sky’s main objections again (that the market will develop standards, shephered by the industry body DTG (Digital TV Group), & that the BBC should not be using license fee money) and also says that BT could be one of the biggest (unfair) beneficiaries of the BBC money, with Canvas boosting it’s ailing BT Vision product.
  • 23 March - Presumably in response to Darcy’s piece, perennial supporter Michael Cornish, CEO of VoD provider Blinkbox, has a piece in the Guardian pushing the benefit to end consumers of an open standard. (On this note, the PR guys must be very happy - check out all the tweets that mention the whole takeaway of “great for consumers” alongside the article link.)

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Canvas & related news roundup - 25 Aug

Posted by andrew pascoe on August 25, 2009 · View Comments 

In Project Canvas news roundup:

  • Digital Spy have a Q&A with BBC’s director of IPTV Richard Halton here. The resulting article is here (in which Halton restates the 2010 launch aim).
  • We mentioned it on Twitter when it happened, but early last week, Sky hit out again at the BBC Trust over its handling of the Project Canvas consultation - FT article here. Sky’s two main issues: that the Trust has not submitted Canvas to a full public value test, and that the 5 weeks between the release of the further detailed info and the close of the consultation period (Sep 1) was vastly insufficient.

In VOD & IPTV-related news for the last few weeks:

  • Channel 4 is to run a week of 3D programmes in autumn. 3D glasses will be available from Sainsbury’s. The programmes include unspecified movies, and footage of the Queen’s coronation.
  • Speculation continues around a UK launch for Hulu: The Tele yesterday on its site ran two different articles: one claiming ITV is signing up imminently including exclusive rights on a few of its programmes; the second saying no content partners have been signed (and also that Channel 4 is reportedly going to start showing full length episodes on YouTube); both saying a 2010 launch is the earliest possible. PaidContent points out that no one at Hulu itself (or any of the potential content providers) has ever come out and given timing objectives around the UK launch.
  • Blinkbox adds BBC Worldwide content. Some shows will be free/ad-supported while others will be paid (Broadband TV news article).
  • ITV will launch ITV1 HD on Freeview, starting with London by end of 2009 - Broadcast Now article.
  • A consumer survey by Deloitte & Yougov has found more than half of people wouldn’t watch more VOD even if they had a faster, more reliable broadband connection. 29% said they didn’t see the point in watching TV online. Media Guardian article here.
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