Project Canvas - IPTV in the Living Room
Published on 25 Feb 2009 at 1:51 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Misc, Broadcasting, Internet, Television Licensing, IPTV, Project Canvas.
Blog author: Tony Ballard
In an article in the Financial Times in early January this year, Mark Thompson wrote that the debates last year on the future of public service television had missed the most serious challenge - how it could migrate beyond traditional television to digital platforms, and how demand for universal high speed broadband could be stimulated by content delivered free at the point of use. It has been widely assumed that when he spoke of restructuring the industry he was speaking of the well-known elements - Channel 4, BBC Worldwide, Five and Project Kangaroo - and the debates that have followed, including Ofcom’s public service broadcasting blueprint, Carter’s Digital Britain and the Competition Commission’s rejection of Project Kangaroo as anti-competitive, can hardly be said to have grappled with this challenge.
Could it be that the missing element is Project Canvas? This has had relatively little coverage in the press or on air and it is not referred to in Digital Britain. But it could transform public access to digital programming. It was announced yesterday (23 February) that the BBC Trust is to launch a consultation into this IPTV service.
Project Canvas is a proposed open software platform that allows applications and content from any source to be delivered to TV sets in the living room. It is backed by the BBC, BT and ITV. It would be loaded onto a set top box, a games console or the TV set and it would be linked to the internet via a domestic broadband connection. It would be based, no doubt, on BT Vision’s technology, Freeview and Freesat receiver technology along with the BBC’s iPlayer and the ITV Player. It would no doubt incorporate an MHEG engine and would also have PVR functionality. It would bring Joost, Babelgum and Vuze onto the living room TV set as well as BBC and other content. But its outstanding feature would be its use of open standards so as to be open to all - it would enable web content to be delivered from any source.
Quite apart from the public value and market impact assessments that would be included in the public value test that the BBC Trust will no doubt apply, the platform will present some interesting regulatory challenges. Will the set top box be treated as terminal equipment subject to the R&TTE Directive or is it part of the 2002 regulatory framework for electronic communications, in which the Framework Directive appears to cover consumer equipment used for digital television? To what extent will other communications providers have mandatory access to the box under the Access Directive? Will the platform operator be caught under the upcoming extension of content regulation to VOD under the AVMS Directive? Is it amenable to the instruments of UK broadcasting policy and the central planning conventionally applied to public service broadcasting, such as the regulatory regimes in Part 3 of the Communications Act?
Perhaps when Mark Thompson wrote in his FT article that what UK broadcasting needs is simplification, consolidation and the right kind of public-private collaboration he was not talking about Channel 4 or Five at all but Project Canvas, which more than any other current project appears to be at a regulatory crossroad. Is simplification needed if it is to address public service broadcasting’s most serious challenge of all - the transition to digital platforms offering content free at the point of use?
Tony Hirst on 27 Feb 2009 at 6:01 pm: 1
A Project Canvas Consultation document was released by the BBC Trust yesterday, and republished in a commentable - and linkable to - form at http://writetoreply.org/projectcanvas