Project Canvas news update - 24 March
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.)
Related news roundup - 12 Feb
So, as the saying almost goes, it’s been a long time between IPTV/VoD drinks here at the blog. Below are some news clips to do with all things VoD & IPTV from February so far. Over the weekend we’ll post a backlog of related news items (from the ‘not so fresh’ bookmarks, all the way back to Dec), and we’ll be back early next week with all the coverage of the DTG’s submission to the BBC Trust - where they claim Canvas is being developed as a ‘parallel standard’ to the DTG’s own work (if you’re not aware, this could have big implications - it is the DTG after all who is supposed to be helping the Project Canvas group develop the Canvas standards).
- 9 Feb - Tubefilter has a look at the possible reasons why Hulu is getting involved in original web series (Simon Fullers’ ‘If I can dream’)
- 10 Feb - Freeview’s upcoming ad campaign will focus on the HD part of Freeview HD, and not mention the internet connectivity of the Freeview HD boxes, nor any specific connected TV opps like Samsung’s iPlayer syndication - Broadband TV News. And a survey commissioned by Freeview suggests that 360,000 Sky+ HD households are “likely” to switch to Freeview HD - Guardian article. Lastly, Freeview is solidly entertaining the possibility of 3D channels being available on its platform in the future - possibly in 5 years. Broadband TV News.
- 10 Feb - VAST is a new template for video adserving that aims to standardise video ads around on demand content online & boost advertiser adoption. It’s backed by the IAB, both in the US and here in the UK - and the IAB Video Council here has all the big adservers (except Atlas) and most of the big video content providers (4, ITV, Sky, et al). BrandRepublic blog.
On a related note, the IAB UK Video Council also have a pretty active community over at their site here. - 10 Feb - On a related note, New Media Age reports that ITV & Channel 4 have cut their online video rates to boost uptake - perhaps by as much as half.
- 5 Feb - Channel 4 is wanting to start selling pre-rolls alongside its contet on BT Vision, the IPTV offering from BT. IPTVNews
- 4 Feb - In the US, Hulu’s ‘ad selector’ ad placement - the one where the viewer gets to select which brand they’ll see ads from during the program - has been chosen as best online video ad unit, by Publicis unit VivaKi. MediaWeek article
- 3 Feb - TellyLinks is a new consumer offering that attempts to capitalise on second screen interest, by showing viewers, on the TellLinks site, links that are relevant to the program being watched on the TV screen . It’s run by Jeff Henry a former ITV Consumer MD. Guardian article here. Its first public trial - an episode of Numbers on Five - didn’t go so well, with the site crashing (one blog post on that night here).
- 1 Feb - Views of Virgin Media VoD service increase 50% year on year, to a total of 750m for 2009. VoD is used by 59% of Virgin’s 3.9mill TV customers. Media Guardian.
Related news roundup - 2 August
Once more into the breach of VOD/IPTV/regulation/general video news from the last fortnight:
- Arqiva, the broadcast & radio infrastructure provider, was confirmed to have purchased the assets of the Project Kangaroo VOD project. The Guardian (article - 24 July) has the purchase price at about £8million and covering the hardware, software technology, related IP, and the intended to be consumer-facing “See Saw” brand name. PaidContentUK (article - 24 July) has more info from Arqiva’s strategy director, saying the purchase is a “natural progression” for them, that the offering will be one to consumers, and that they are currently busy actually doing content deals. NMA (article - 31 July) says that Arqiva has it rumoured to have appointed Pierre-Jean Sebert as CEO of the new Kangaroo. The article says that Sebert for the last 3 years has been director of the rights negotiation and multimedia channel development at Reel Enterprises.
- Microsoft UK got a lot of coverage of its announcement that it will launch a free-to-view VOD service, showing archive content from BBC Worldwide. It’s launching with (just) 350 hours of programming - shows include Peep Show, Hustle & Hotel Babylon. (Independent article here - 30 July). Pre-roll ads will be used to monetise (with launch ads all being bought by GroupM agencies including MEC & Mediacom - TheRegister article).
- ITV has closed its future technology department. The department, headed by Simon Fell, was involved in ITV’s launch of HD & mobile & online services (including those ads to be inserted into VOD clips layed over white/blank spaces) (article from BrandRepublic).
- BT Vision continues to struggle to acquire new customers in any sizeable numbers. From Broadband TV News (article here) after accounting for inactive customers[(I'm not sure what BT are defining as an "inactive"] they have added just 10,000 new customers for the quarter ending June 30.
- Sky will launch a true pull VOD offering to its HD customers next year, according to Paid Content UK - article here. (HD customers because the HD set top boxes have the ethernet connection needed.) Still with Sky, its like-for-like profit rose by 4% year on year (the total profit rise was much larger for the year to July, due to much less of the ITV stake writedown occuring in the last financial year than the previous one). Sky added 124,000 new customers in the last quarter. Telegraph article is here.
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Related news roundup - 15 June
In video & industry-related news from the last week:
- BBC News: Setanta is still around, and is reported to be talking to Endemol about the producer taking a stake. There’s also a bid for 51%, for £20, from Access Industries.
- FT.com: Dan Marks, CEO of BT Vision (and also deputy MD of BT consumer) has quit. He has cited Sky’s dominance in sport rights as a critical factor in such poor BT Vision uptake.
- The Independent: Expands on the story of BT officially coming out and claiming that video-intensive content providers like the BBC should subsidise the cost to the ISP with an article that no other ISPs are prepared to make similarly public claims.
- Ofcom: FIVE has officially been awarded the last (last for the next 3 years) HD Freeview slot.
- ITProPortal: Ofcom’s latest report from their tech research programme suggests that the costs needed to upgrade ISP networks to handle video demands equates to an additional £1 - £3 per subscribing household per month. The full report is available here on the Ofcom site here (PDF). That particular section is on page 4.
- Brand Republic: Blinkbox is to start offering paid streams (DTR) of films, after a change in their agreement with Warner Bros.
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