Chief technology officer of YouView Anthony Rose, has dismissed accusations that the project to bring VOD services to Freeview and Freesat is an anti competitive cartel.
Twelve companies including both Virgin Media and BSkyB submitted objections about the YouView project to Ofcom, but the communications regulator gave the green light so that the project can proceed, saying potential harm to competition would be offset against the benefits to viewers.
Rose said in a statement:- “I think the top two more important misconceptions about YouView are: No 1, it’s a cartel, and No 2, it’s the BBC. Neither of those are true,” Rose said.
“There are seven shareholders, clearly they are all contributing their money for some purpose; but to me, it’s a little bit like the [movie] Usual Suspects. There’s a body somewhere, police have arrested eight people, they’ve all done something in the past but they are probably not directly connected with this.”
“When you see the way the user experience team and the technologists work to solve very basic problems it becomes very clear that it’s nothing to do with these cartel aspersions.” Rose was also quick to clarify the point that YouView is constructed of BBC staff. Only a “small fraction” of people at YouView are from the BBC, he said.
“It was started by the BBC some years ago as an idea but actually there are about 10 people from BBC R&D who are now seconded to YouView, the rest of the team are YouView employees. The entire proposition is by no means a BBC proposition,” Rose also said.
Rose joined YouView which was formerly known as Project Canvas on 1st May after a spell revamping the BBC iPlayer during his tenure as controller of vision and online media department. YouView remains on track to launch in the first half of next year, targeting the 7m Freeview households that have broadband access. YouView-enabled television sets are “unlikely” to be available by next year, Rose said, but a 2012 range was more likely.
Speaking at The Future of Digital Media Distribution conference in London, Rose confirmed that the video-on-demand platform will be open “in the sense that anyone can create content for the platform”, but that there would be a regulatory process.
“If you look at the app store models – on the one hand there’s the Apple one and there’s the Google Android one. Where do we intend to play in that spectrum? What we say is the equivalent of an MOT,” he said. “We don’t seek to have any editorial input on what’s good or bad, we set some baseline conditions.”
Asked how open he would describe platform, in relation to the aforementioned policies of Apple and Google, Rose said: “It’s open in the sense that anyone can create content for the platform. The question is, does it have a URL bar and can you browse the open internet?
“If you make it fully open you end up with each manufacturer having to give updates and your trusted TV starts becoming about as frivolous as your computer, and there’s nothing like watching the iPlayer on your TV set through your computer when Windows decides now is a great time to install updates.”
“The problem rights holders have with Android is that as you enable an open platform, there you are recording some content and another app can go read that and share it.”
“You have a tension between what rights holders want in order to make premium content available on the platform, and what consumers want. I’m not hearing any consumers right now saying ‘I need BitTorrent on the platform’.”
Read more from this story here:- http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/22/youview-chief-anti-competitive