DRM and standards etc.
Unfortunately, a fair amount of broadcast content is made by companies other than the BBC, ITV, Ch4 and Ch5. Some of these don't like the idea of people recording content. Add on the self-interested views of the PRS, who'd probably object to people recording anything containing commercial music, as the artists wouldn't be getting their royalties. DRM keeps the novice consumer happy as they can still record the content, but it also keeps the content providers happy as it makes it very difficult for users to copy the recordings to other platforms (oh, and allows them to delete the content after an arbitrary period of time).
As for mandating a single DRM standard, I would have thought the reasoning to be obvious - it's far easier to just bundle one form of DRM into the boxes than a different one for each channel / content provider.
Virgin is apparently unhappy because it's going to be an immutable standard - i.e. they can't add their own stuff to it unless it's provided through the Canvas interface.
Sky are apparently unhappy as they'd prefer to let each individual hardware manufacturer devise their own spec and let the market decide, rather than a bunch of content providers. Oh, and they're not happy about Canvas forcing a UI on the user.
Personally, most consumers would be happy if there was a single UI (perhaps with minor colour scheme / logo tweaks for individual manufacturers), as there doesn't seem to be a consistent UI with FreeView, and many UIs are cr*p (remember Teletext Extra?)
But one feature that would be welcomed by almost everyone: a channel list that auto updates itself. It's hardly an incentive to test out DTV before switchover if you have to spend 5 minutes doing the retune dance every time there's a channel change.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
