Internet video services to your TV
More details are emerging about Project Canvas, the ambitious joint venture by the BBC, ITV, Five and BT to bring internet video services such as the iPlayer from the bedroom PC to the living-room TV set.
BBC, BT and their partners have emphasised that project Canvas will be an “open” platform. Through a system they like to compare to Apple’s App Store, any content owner will be able to put its programming on the Canvas platform.
They are encouraging any broadband provider to join BT in providing Canvas boxes to their customers. Carphone Warehouse, for instance, is considering offering Canvas to customers of its TalkTalk broadband service.
For internet service providers, the commercial appeal is twofold: revenues from consumers, either through faster broadband connections or boosting existing broadband TV services as BT hopes to for BT Vision; and revenues from content owners to ensure their shows are streamed instantly, in TV quality.
BT’s Canvas will see BT Vision “very prominent” in the user interface, on the landing page alongside other channels, recordings and applications.
For content owners wanting to get onto BT’s Canvas box, they are presented with a choice between making their programmes available to “play now” or “play later”. “Play now” will provide the instant-on streaming experience which consumers have come to love with the iPlayer, YouTube and the like. “Play later” will mean consumers have to wait to download a sizable chunk of the programme before they can start watching, as on existing services such as Apple’s iTunes or Microsoft’s Xbox movie stores.
In BT’s case, that means content owners have to either pay BT to use its new content delivery network – a service already provided to online broadcasters by companies such as Level3 and Akamai – or sell their content to BT Vision, a pay TV platform.
What content owners – beyond the BBC, ITV and Five – will make of that proposition remains to be seen.
