IPTV UK: failure to launch?
Rivals fear YouView. They may not need to
Britain's broadcasters are struggling with the internet. Efforts to design a single, consistent IPTV platform have become mired by the need to accomodate participants' existing services - some with commercial agendas, others without - and mud slung by competitors is beginning to stick.
At the centre of IPTV unification is YouView, a would-be standard platform for the delivery of on-demand and catch-up services into the home through an internet connection. YouView is backed by some powerful names, in particular the BBC, which defined catch-up internet viewing with its iPlayer, launched in 2007.
The BBC is accompanied by the state-owned Channel 4, along with ITV and Five, all of whom will deliver their catch-up and on-demand services through YouView.
The service is a delivery platform for pay TV offerings too, and is supported by both ISP TalkTalk and telco BT, both of whom have pay-to-view services they are keen to push. YouView is also supported Arqiva which, apart from owning the UK terrestrial TV transmitter network, runs SeeSaw, a pay-to-view video website.
Presenting a single, unified front end for such services is undoubtedly a good notion. Equipment manufacturers can deliver all these services to their customers by implementing one YouView app. Today, they are struggling to create separate apps for each service. A number of set-top boxes and TVs can provide access to BBC iPlayer apps, but few if any present ITV Player.
For that very reason, the YouView content companies see the platform as a way of getting their material in front of many more British eyeballs than the currently do. Some undoubtedly see it as a stepping stone to the delivery of parallel pay-to-view services, if not for Brits then certainly for overseas viewers who are not obliged to buy a TV licence, a television tax, every year.
But not every UK IPTV stakeholder is keen on YouView. Cable TV company Virgin Media, for example, is unhappy with what it calls the closed nature of YouView - the development process is currently open to members only - and believes the platform will mandate content delivery over broadband internet.
Virgin currently sends YouView content providers' video-on-demand and catch-up services over its DVB-C cable TV system, an approach that makes for better picture quality and, Virgin argues, eliminates the problems encountered when a broadband connection used for video is simultaneously used for web browsing, email and downloading software: dropped frames and/or reduced video bit-rates.
Virgin portrays its beef with YouView as an attempt to stand up for consumer choice, but it is clearly motivated by self-interest too. If catch-up services remain separate and incompatible, Virgin's ability to combine them for a price is more attractive than it would be if there were an alternative, free-to-access unified service.
Next page: All for one, one for all
COMMENTS
Re: Virgin Media is now Sky
To set the record straight, BSKyB does not own Virgin Media. Sky acquired the Virgin-owned channels, not the company itself.
Why would...
...YouView care how you get the data to your local system? Data is data. Suck it down as you see fit, your local client (whatever that may be) just has to be smart enough to buffer far enough ahead. I call "FUD" from Virgin.
They may be worried about people storing the content and want it all DRM'd to heck. Well, I have news for them. By-passing DRM of that nature is a piece of piss and all it does is irritate the hell out of people who would otherwise behave responsibly and push them towards illegal avenues.
Does it do Porn?
History has repeatedly shown that one of the quickest and most-effective ways to accelerate the adoption of a technology is for it to provide quick and easy access to a diverse range of quality porn.
Unless "YouView" addresses this sector, it's doomed to failure.
[I'm sticking with my Bloomberg subscription - my porn begins with $$$$$]
Stuttering?
> The lack of stuttering alone is worth paying for
I get no stuttering on iplayer.. But then I get all my data via get_iplayer, and stream it across my LANs with sshfs.
If the BBC hadn't been so hostile towards Linux users - all 600 of us - at the start, we'd never have had these tools written. So maybe Ashley Highfield isn't[1] quite the penile stump we all claimed he is.
Vic.
[1] I lied. He is.
For once, self-interest == consumer choice
" Virgin portrays its beef with YouView as an attempt to stand up for consumer choice, but it is clearly motivated by self-interest too. If catch-up services remain separate and incompatible, Virgin's ability to combine them for a price is more attractive than it would be if there were an alternative, free-to-access unified service. "
To be fair, Virgin are in the right here. Virgin's On Demand system is vastly superior to broadband iPlayer, and people currently find that a service worth paying for. The lack of stuttering alone is worth paying for, and the difference in video quality is night and day.
Capitalism is build on consumer choice, and YouView does threaten to take picture quality out of the equation, commoditising video on a compromised, compressed quality level.
As everyone's investing so heavily in SD, now seems a bit of a silly time to start throttling the video bandwidth unnecessarily.
