TalkTalk gears up to 2012 YouView roll-out
Test in Q1, launch in the Spring
YouView, the UK's 'IPTV Freeview', is "on track" to launch in 2012, participant telco TalkTalk has said.
TalkTalk, posting its interim financial results, said: "Development within the YouView team is progressing well, and within TalkTalk we are making great progress on provisioning capability.
"We are on track to offer a value-for-money product of phone, broadband and TV in Spring 2012," it said.
YouView was to have debuted in the summer of 2011, but the release date slipped, allegedly because of disagreements between supporters over the platform's technical specifications.
Before then, during the first three months of 2012, the company will offer a test service for existing customers.
"We anticipate running 'Friends and Family' trials in [FY]Q4 which will focus on the end-to-end customer experience."
TalkTalk said it pumped £2m into YouView during the first half of its current fiscal year, which ended 30 September 2011. It's spending around £4m a year on the service. ®
COMMENTS
My experience suggests the Switchover will improve things. I don't have a clear view of the nearby Belmont transmitter; like most of the village, we have to point our aerials at Emley Moor. The power increase meant that we could stop using aerial amplifiers, and we were also getting a strong enough signal from Belmont, about 100 degrees off-axis to be get viewable oictures. So it might be worth the wait for you.
Doesn't matter which ISP you're with, it's the strand of copper between you and the exchange which is the key. Your's sounds pretty decent. Maybe the evening choke-off will ease, as capacity is added to cope with YouView. I'm not sure I want any more TV, but will I have to subscribe to be able to get useful bandwidth?
I have some "hard" questions which the sales-droids never seem able to answer. That could easily be another, but since they will be advertising the hell out of YouView, I doubt it will be as difficult as learning whether there are plans for IPv6
Depends on your broadband
I used to be looking forward to this - but I now realize it will be pointless for me - in a area where we get no broadband vendor choice, and the speed we do get (~6Mb drops by 90% in the evenings) so YouView will be SlowView or NoView for us. Mind you Freeview is the same now - 4 analogue channels is all we get now - waiting for the April switchover to see if we will get anything more. That's life in Surrey for you
TalkTalk?
Damn didn't realise they were running the show... won't be buying into that then.
