YouView has published its final Core Technical Specification. The document runs to over 200 pages and provides necessary but not sufficient specifications to build a box for the planned hybrid broadcast and broadband television platform. It does not yet address the middleware, programming interfaces or user experience that will enable it to do anything useful. Developers are left wanting more detail. As such, the publication of the specification is long overdue but shows how much more work is yet to be done. Read more...

Rumours abound that Apple is planning to take on the television market, either with a screen or through a new streaming service. "What will Apple do in the television space?" is a question that informitv is often asked. A number of analysts have suggested that Apple could launch an internet-connected high-definition television screen. If it does, which is by far from clear, it will not be television as we know it. Apple tends to enter new markets by redefining them. Read more...

Kit Digital will acquire ioko, the digital media systems integrator, in a deal worth almost $80 million. This follows its acquisition of Polymedia, based in Milan, having already announced the acquisition of KickApps, Kewego and Kyte earlier this year. The company calls its approach "aggressive humility" -- seeking to consolidate in areas where it can benefit from adding capabilities or joining forces with potential competitors. The expanded company expects to turnover around $210 million in 2011. Read more...

The standard BBC iPlayer is now being made available on Virgin Media, BT Vision and other network connected television devices and displays. That sounds like good news for viewers, but the dedicated BBC iPlayer user interface is now disconnected from these platforms. Consequently the user experience on the new Virgin Media TiVo digital video recorder is completely broken when it comes to viewing BBC programmes on demand. Read more...

YouTube is finally rolling out live streaming on its platform, with a special page that will feature current and upcoming live events. YouTube is also trying to attract audiences with new channels of premium programming. It seems to be part of a strategy to turn the leading video sharing web site into a more substantial online video platform. It is difficult to believe that YouTube is only six years old. So what does YouTube want to be when it grows up? Read more...

Satellite television company Dish Network will acquire the assets of Blockbuster after bidding $320 million for the bankrupt video rental business. The deal is symbolic of the decline of the movie rental store in the face of competition from other movie rental and streaming companies like Netflix. Read more...

Radioplayer is a unique partnership between the BBC and commercial radio in the United Kingdom. It brings their online audio services together in a single player with a consistent look and feel across over a 150 stations, with hundreds more expected to follow. Adopting a pragmatic approach, Radioplayer is for online radio what YouView should be for television and it is likely to have a presence on the latter platform when it launches. Read more...

The Court of Appeal has dismissed claims by Gemstar in a patent case against cable television operator Virgin Media. Gemstar, now owned by Rovi Corporation, had claimed infringement of patents covering selection of a programme from a channel grid, filtering favourite channels, and transferring a programme to secondary device. The appeal judges upheld an earlier ruling that the patents were invalid in the United Kingdom and they will now be revoked. A number of consumer electronics companies and platform operators have been persuaded to licence apparently patently obvious features to avoid the threat of litigation. As this case demonstrates, patent claims are not necessarily valid when it comes to court. Read more...

YouView has published details of the programming and service providers with which it will work initially to develop the broadband enabled television platform. While the inclusion of Sky may be a surprise to some, apart from some other predictable names it seems the initial programming proposition will be driven by traditional broadcasters. Following the appointment of Lord Sugar as non-executive chairman, the chief executive invited informitv to an exclusive briefing at their offices in the Broadcast Centre at the BBC White City campus and provided a preview of the YouView user experience. Read more...

There are now over 45 million subscribers to internet protocol television services around the world, showing a 34.6% increase of over 11.5 new subscribers in 2010, with 3.4 million added in the final quarter. Impressive though this may sound, the number of homes watching video over the top of their broadband connection is far greater, among over half a billion broadband subscribers worldwide. A new Informa report forecasts that by 2015 there will be 380 million homes worldwide viewing programmes on their television over the internet. Read more...

Motorola Mobility will acquire Dreampark, a Swedish software company that enables operators to deliver internet protocol television services. Dreampark will become part of the Motorola Mobility Converged Experiences business. Their product portfolio is expected to be integrated into the Motorola Medios service management software suite. Terms of the transaction, which was announced at the IP&TV World Forum in London, were not disclosed. Read more...

Sky has released an incredibly impressive interactive Sky News application for the Apple iPad. It blends live and breaking news with access to recent stories and supporting graphics, galleries and graphs to provide context and analysis. It has been described as television news for the tablet generation. Sky pioneered interactive television news a decade ago with its multistream application. The Sky News app for the iPad shows what is possible today. It may also provide a pointer to what will be possible in a world of network connected television. This may be the future of interactive television. Read more...

MGt has secured further funding of £5 million from its existing investors to support the expansion of its PayWizard multi-device payment system. The British company believes there is a need for a flexible and independent global payment system that is not tied to specific devices or operating systems. MGt recently invited informitv to view the PayWizard system at its London offices and showed how it could manage a customer account across different devices, from an Apple iPad to a network connected television. Read more...

A recent update to the Apple iOS operating system brings live streaming capabilities to the second generation Apple TV. It is currently limited to baseball and basketball, but opens up the prospect of new interactive television applications for the Apple TV. Although it remains something of a hobby for the company and its users alike, Apple TV is increasing its usefulness within the Apple ecosystem. Read more...

The finals of the Wimbledon tennis championship will be shot in 3D in a deal with Sony and shown in cinemas around the world. The live 3D production, in partnership with the BBC which is the host broadcaster, will also be offered internationally. The irony is that British viewers will be unlikely to see the coverage in 3D on their television screens, even if they have invested in the necessary technology. The BBC has no current plans for regular 3D programme production or transmission. Read more...

Pay-television technology company NDS has announced two new products to help service providers extend their offering over the internet. A Service Delivery Platform provides open interfaces to support applications on a wide range of devices. More significantly, their Infinite TV Exchange supports a marketplace for programmes, enabling operators to move from hundreds to thousands of special interest channels. If it lives up to its promise, it could transform the way channels are created and managed, opening up the market to many more specialist programme providers, or what NDS is calling "micro broadcasters". Read more...

Forming Sky News into an independent public company could offer a way by which News Corporation can acquire the remaining shares in British Sky Broadcasting, assuming it can agree an acceptable price. Jeremy Darroch, the chief executive of Sky, was a keynote speaker at the FT Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference in London. Beyond suggesting that there will effectively be no change for Sky News, he demonstrated that a customer focussed strategy would continue to deliver results for Sky, based on what he called "the marriage of content and innovation". Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, was also due to speak. He was instead called to the Commons to deliver the news of his decision not to refer the case to the Competition Commission. Read more...

Richard Halton, the chief executive of the YouView, addressed a packed annual summit of a television industry group, having recently announced that the consortium was delaying the launch of its proposed platform until 2012. He began by saying that his wife had been due to give birth earlier in the week, pre-empting any quips about being overdue. There is now the suggestion that the straight-talking Lord Sugar, who knows a thing or two about set-top boxes, might be brought in to sort things out. In which case, the team at YouView may be wondering which of them will be fired. Read more...

Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, opened the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference in London by comparing his role to the Wizard of Oz, "a vainglorious title but a rather small and pathetic, more uncertain figure behind the curtain". The keynote speech may not merit an Oscar, but he tentatively painted a conservative picture of a broadcasting world that has perhaps changed less than he might have previously predicted. Nevertheless, he took the opportunity to suggest the need to focus on mobile television and gave the first indication of pricing for a new international BBC iPlayer subscription service. Read more...

Amazon has bundled unlimited streaming of movies and television shows into the Prime subscription service which offers members free delivery of many products. Around 5,000 movies and television shows included with an Amazon Prime membership can be watched instantly on Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac personal computers and nearly 200 compatible models of internet-connected televisions, Blu-ray disc players and set-top boxes. Although currently no match for Netflix, Amazon is well-placed to become a leading online video distributor, particularly in Europe. Read more...