YouView 'launch event' to take place next week YouView may be about to finally go public with its would-be IPTV platform standard. It has scheduled an announcement next week and is today kicking off a in-home trial of the service. Next week's event looks set to reveal the timetable for YouView's launch, presumably timed to coincide with the summer's Olympics coverage. …
I can't get Sky or Virgin, so it's BT Vision for me at the moment which is decent enough but way behind the times. If BT upgrade the Vision box to a YouView box then I hope it will be good. At least give me Freeview HD, dammit.
Ideally I'd like LoveFilm integration, but I don't know if BT will hobble it so it won't compete with BT's on-demand service.
Less than 3 years late if they get it out by December. It will be interesting to see it although I still don't think it stands much chance of becoming a significant size platform in its current form without BT pouring hundreds millions of pounds into subsidising hardware (which may yet happen but isn't going to do their balance sheet much good).
Yes sign up had very onerous confidentiality conditions which I couldn't agree to so I didn't apply although I am quite curious about what they have been up to all this time.
If I remember rightly you couldn't even reveal that you are taking part or anything about the product to anyone who doesn't live in your house so I think you just breached it. Good job you are AC, hope they don't subpoena el Reg.
Icon for the legal gag.
"The platform was originally due to be launched in 2010, but technical difficulties and arguments between stakeholders ensured that and later deadlines were missed.......That makes YouView's 'one box, many services' rather less of a unique selling proposition than it once was"
And when it falls flat in the face, the "big wigs" know just whom to blame!
THEMSELVES!!
Actuall that is an error in the article. Canvas was originally supposed to launch for the Granada switchover and Freeview HD switch on at the end of 2009!
3 Christmases, one World Cup, almost all of Great Britain switched to digital, one Euro Cup and effectively an Olympics late (they don't have time to sell many boxes for the Olympics - trialists don't count in my book).
...it's passed me by. Is the idea it's a single way for BBC, C4, ITV to deliver streaming video - in effect a new additional tool alongside iPlayer which supercedes it?
Given the massive difference in quality between iPlayer and 4OD, I'd be worried it won't be as good as iPlayer is to begin with (although iPlayer implementations on non-PC platforms tend to be pretty hit&miss).
Or did I misunderstand totally?
It gives you a sort-of common interface for them, as long you're watching recent things. Anything that's been shown on TV in the last 7 days and is available to watch OD can be played directly from the Programme Guide.
Anything else and you have to launch the broadcasters' own applications; so effectively iPlayer, 4OD, whatever shit it is ITV offer.
Unfortunately other than having the OD stuff in the Programme Guide it's pretty much a pointless product, filling a hole in the market that doesn't actually exist.
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