Canvas & related news roundup - 1 Sep

Posted by andrew pascoe on September 1, 2009 · View Comments 

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.
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Breaking: Additional Project Canvas information from BBC management

Posted by andrew pascoe on July 24, 2009 · View Comments 

More than 7 weeks ago the BBC Trust made its first public announcement regarding its consultation on Project Canvas: “We need more information”.

Today (at about 1pm) that additional information - given to the BBC Trust by BBC management - was published.

We’ll have a wrap-up of responses and coverage (as well as some of our own thoughts) over the new few days, but in the meantime here is:

- the full statement (including a revised consultation timeline)

- the actual additional information to the areas the Trust highlighted (most linked from that page as PDFs)

And of course, to see coverage/responses as they happen around the web, you can do a Twitter search , a Google News search, and a Google Blogsearch.

(Update - 27 July: Here’s a new post linking to some of the press coverage so far.)

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Lost: 1 new consultation timetable for Project Canvas

Posted by andrew pascoe on July 16, 2009 · View Comments 

Today (July 16) marks 6 weeks since the BBC Trust announced that its original timeline for consultation/approval process on Project Canvas was going out the window.

The reason for new a timeline stems from the Trust in the announcement on June 4 recognising that, while in principal Canvas is merited, there was nowhere near enough substantive information provided by BBC management (a call also loudly made by many stakeholders including Sky, Virgin Media, Intellect).

So the Trust asked the executive for more information. And a revised timetable was to be drawn up the the executive to reflect this development.

It’s now 6 weeks later, and there has been no new timetable publicly announced. Where is it, and when will we see it?

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Breaking: BBC Trust: Give us more info, lots of it

Posted by andrew pascoe on June 4, 2009 · View Comments 

**Breaking News**

As The Telegraph reported yesterday, the BBC Trust had today published its emerging conclusions. Under the timeline of the public consultation - which launched on 26 February - the Trust had until this coming Monday to make known their first thoughts on Project Canvas.

In summary: the Trust has recognised that the partners to Project Canvas - including the BBC, BT, and ITV - need to provide lots more information around all aspects of the proposed venture.  This will also mean the original timeline - where the BBC Trust was to make a final decision and announce it by 24 July - is no longer applicable.

From the announcement today:

“Consequently, the Trust does not now intend to publish a decision on the 24 July. We intend to delay the second consultation until after the Executive has returned with further detail in support of its application. This additional information and a revised timetable to complete our assessment will be shared with stakeholders in due course.”

The Trust is now requesting from the Executive information on areas including, but not limited to:

  • The choice of technical standards for canvas
  • The way in which the BBC will work with industry bodies
  • Control of the electronic programme guide
  • Governance arrangements for the joint venture
  • The use of editorial controls

Find the documents here at the BBC Trust’s announcement page.
Also available is the summary analysis of public consultation document (PDF), and the 392 pages of public responses (PDF - 7mb)

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Update: 12 noon: The Project Canvas partners - BBC, BT, ITV - have issued a short response to the BBC Trust’s morning announcement . In that they sound upbeat that the Trust has found “widespread support” for home IPTV, and of the BBC coordinating & accelerating it.

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5 things we’ll see in the Canvas submissions

Posted by andrew pascoe on May 22, 2009 · View Comments 

There are two weeks to go until the BBC Trust makes its preliminary findings (”emerging conclusions”) on Project Canvas known to the public.

Presumably, like with past consultations, submissions made as part of the consultation  will also be made public at the same time.

Keeping in mind that the submissions aren’t just from companies like Sky or organisations like the DTG, but from members of the public too, in no particular order, below are five themes that will arise across the submissions:

  1. Vigorous observations about the project information made publicly available to date being so lacking in detail.
  2. Highlighting of the importance of the EPG, coupled with concerns about who/how it will be controlled.
  3. From consumers there will be two parts praise for the dismantling of the oppressive regimes of both paid access and current technical trickery in getting VOD to the TV, and one part acrimony at the BBC wasting licence fee payers’ money.
  4. Protests that the BBC is reinventing the wheel of IPTV standards & should instead back an existing standards body.
  5. Complaints that special interest groups and representative bodies weren’t privately consulted for their opinions before the public consultation.
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