We’ve achieved a few unprecedented things for this kind of hardware
Richard Halton CEO, YouView
Region: UK
terms,” declares Richard Halton, CEO of the internet connected TV service which met its launch deadline ahead of the London Olympics last July - if only just.
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“Relief is the right emotion,” he says. “I am very pleased to see it in shops but the best reward for our efforts are some early reviews which understood that it does what we set out to do: that is, to seamlessly integrate on-demand and broadcast linear content.” YouView is the project of a consortium comprising the BBC,
ITV, Channel 4 and Five; telcos BT and TalkTalk; hardware firms Pace, Humax and Huawei, and the UK's digital terrestrial infra- structure provider Arqiva. Sky has since added its OTT service NOW TV. It was devised as a means to future-proof free-to-air television against payTV, and will target the estimated 9 million (31%) non-pay TV homes that have a broadband connection. “We’ve achieved a few things unprecedented for this kind of
hardware,” explains Halton. “For example, implementing commercial grade DRM and getting device manufacturers onboard with that is unusual in the horizontal marketplace. Normally payTV operators can put in place the infrastructure that enables that to happen.
he TV screen has always been the most gated or technology limited device. YouView has taken away the gate, pulled down the barriers and provided technology that enables content producers to secure access to the living room on their own
By Adrian Pennington
“We also have a box which is upgradeable in the field, which again proved highly complex in terms of lining up various manufacturers but essential if you want the ability to constantly evolve the content proposition and the nature of the viewing experience. “The third factor is dynamic ad insertion for deployment by content providers. If you look at the media specifications of efforts in Europe – they haven’t got any of those things. We recognise that to be a success in the UK with its mature broad- cast market you need to grasp those nettles. We have succeeded in creating an ambitious platform fully capable of uniting content from free to air, ad-funded and payTV.” While the UK’s broadcasters have all offered HD, on demand and catch up content for a number of years, what will differentiate YouView is the way in which it evolves over time – over 300 potential content partners are looking to join the platform.
“Access to the TV EPG is very important. We will also see people creating new connected content applications, perhaps from those who have been deterred by the constraints of the DTT spec but have innovative services to offer to the living room. “There is an expectation of catch-up services and access to on-demand content as part of the TV experience. I have had a YouView box for ten months at home and I can’t imagine what life would be like without it.”