The long awaited subscription-free digital TV and catch-up TV (YouView) for UK household has finally arrived. According to the YouView site, the YouView boxes are now available to buy from a range of high-street and online retail outlets. YouView ISP partners TalkTalk and BT are now offering their customers YouView set-top box as part of their TV, phone and broadband packages.
Talk Talk who is a member of the YouView project has announced that they are planning an internal trial of the service. The company said they are hoping to start in the first quarter 2012 before the general go live date in spring. YouView was suppose to have gone live in 2011 but was delayed due to different issues.
Britain's rural internet access is changing as Fujitsu unveiled plans to build a superfast fibre optic, Fibre to the Home (FTTH) broadband network for approximately 5 millions homes in rural Britain. According to Fujitsu, they have partnered with Cisco, the network solutions provider, Virgin Media and Talk Talk two of the UKs broadband retailers, to provide residents with the service.
UK broadband operator TalkTalk has signed a three-year agreement with Alcatel-Lucent to build a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which will enable TalkTalk to deliver high-quality digital TV to end-users. The CDN network will run over TalkTalk's existing high-speed IP network, and will leverage the digital media delivery technology acquired through Alcatel-Lucent's recent purchase of Velocix.
After two years in the making the BBC Trust has formally annoucnced what is to become of Project Canvas, its planned internet TV service. They have renamed it to from Canvas to YouView and said the service is expected to go live in early 2011. The service like Freeview will allow UK households to watch live television except it will be through a Set-top Box via their broadband connection. There is one added partner (Arqiva) to the original five (ITV, BT, Five, C4 and Talk Talk).
The canvas project is in its final stage of consultation and has been given a provisional approval by the BBC Trust. Project Canvas was setup to allow UK viewers with broadband connection to watch on their Television set on-demand TV such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player. Homes with compatible set-top box connected to the internet could access content provision through Canvas without needing to pay for the content.