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" After emerging from years of regulatory and operational hell, YouView is now in growth phase and seeking to demonstrate that the technology underpinning its Freeview hybrid platform is sound and scalable. After all the delays and pain, could YouView really be the future of mass-market TV?  Backed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, TalkTalk, BT and Arqiva, YouView is the umbrella brand for a platform that brings together the Freeview TV and radio channels, with a range of video on-demand services, such as BBC iPlayer and Sky&amp;#039;s NOW TV.  The service, which previously had Lord Sugar as its chairman until he resigned this month, entered the commercial market in summer 2012 with a set top box made by Humax. It has since expanded to boxes offered on bundled broadband deals from shareholders TalkTalk and BT. Taking into account the latest figures from BT and TalkTalk, YouView is estimated to be in around 200,000 homes in the UK as of January 2013, but its target market is the around 11m homes that currently have Freeview on their main TV set.  The YouView partners have agreed to invest \u00A3115m over the first four years of its operation, so there is certainly a war-chest available for growth. But lack of money was never really YouView&amp;#039;s problem.  The fact that the venture even made it to market was a minor miracle. YouView was born as Project Canvas in 2008 and devised by the BBC, BT and ITV following the failure of Project Kangaroo. The goal was to evolve the digital terrestrial platform (Freeview) to offer new internet-based services, such as video on-demand.  Partially down to the involvement of the licence-fee funded BBC, Canvas faced almost immediate regulatory challenges from Sky, Virgin Media and others, which led to a lengthy investigation by Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading.  The venture survived, but its initially planned launch window of the end of 2010 was left in tatters. During the subsequent years of delays, the Canvas chief technology officer Anthony Rose quit to set up Zeebox, and the venture also faced criticism from partner manufacturers over the perceived lack of openness with technical standards.  All the while the market was moving on, including the launch of Virgin Media&amp;#039;s TiVo service, the arrival of the Google TV platform and the launch of more sophisticated smart TVs with integrated Freeview.  Even when YouView finally launched in July 2012, some journalists were left rather unimpressed with what was essentially just a fancy, internet connected Freeview PVR with a \u00A3299 price tag.  Faced with being a white elephant on the scale of Lord Sugar&amp;#039;s Amstrad E-m@iler phone, YouView rallied. The Humax box got some positive reviews from the tech press, but most importantly YouView started to find its identity after so many bruising years.    YouView was never aimed at tech-savvy early adopters. With some of the biggest telecoms and media players in the UK investing millions of pounds in the project, a niche device was never really on the cards.  Rather, the platform is aimed at those consumers who have never had BBC iPlayer on their TV. They are people who shun a pay-TV subscription, but want to watch good TV and movies without breaking a sweat.  Taking this into account, YouView starts to make sense. It lacks the bells and whistles of other platforms, but is simple to use, simple to understand and offers 85% of the most popular programming in the UK, either linear or on-demand.  Initial figures indicate the box is fostering good engagement in users. Figures suggest that 90% of YouView boxes are connected to the internet and according to data compiled by Decipher&amp;#039;s Future Media tracker in February 2013, 28.2% of the YouView base (including BT and TalkTalk) use BBC iPlayer on a daily or weekly basis, compared with 20.8% of the Virgin Media TV base and 8% of Sky homes connected to broadband. But what is more interesting for the tech community is that YouView is also beginning to show its scalability as a TV platform.    Alongside all the catch up TV services of its broadcaster partners, YouView currently offers Sky&amp;#039;s subscription-based NOW TV service and the content portals of TalkTalk and BT.  But there is scope for more services to be added via additional software updates. We would certainly be surprised if apps from Netflix, YouTube and LoveFilm do not arrive on YouView at some point this year. (LoveFilm box office movies are already available on the TalkTalk box produced by Huawei.) There are also options for other ISPs and content providers to tailor the platform for their customers. For example, regional ISPs Kcom in Hull and Jersey Telecom already have a YouView offering in their product bundles.  Everything Everywhere, the owner of Orange and T-Mobile, could theoretically look to do the same if it was so interested.   YouView is starting to show signs that it can become the overarching platform for innovation that the early statements suggested.  Just like Freeview and Freesat, YouView controls the technical standards, technical platform and user experience to ensure customers get a consistent experience, whether that is on Personal Video Recorder boxes, or future innovations such as integrated TVs and non-PVR boxes.  But one of the most exciting aspects of the platform is in how it could open up Freeview further as a broadcast platform.  IP Multicast is a technology that has never really found its calling, but has always excited those involved in TV technology.  It involves delivering real-time communications, such as linear TV channels, over an IP infrastructure in a network. In June 2010, the then Project Canvas CTO Anthony Rose explained the possibilities further.  &amp;quot;You can use IP multicast so that new linear channels are delivered over the internet much easier than linear TV, which we feel will drive the industry to finally embrace multicast,&amp;quot; he said at the time. &amp;quot;Canvas, and the ISPs behind Canvas, will help enable multicast, which is enormously exciting. I think that there is a nice sweet spot in which Canvas can offer a solution for recommendations, favourites and other content while still embracing linear, which will create a great consumer proposition.&amp;quot;  It is understood that YouView is currently developing an IP Multicast solution that could double the amount of free-to-air channels delivered on the platform from 70 to 140, by harnessing internet delivery.  This has the potential to democratise television by cutting down the high cost of Freeview channel transmission and enabling innovative and new services to reach the YouView audience.  Another potential benefit is that HD networks could be streamed using IP multicast rather than launching on Freeview HD, where there is a finite amount of capacity. It may also open opportunities for live streaming of channels to other devices, such as tablets and smartphones, similarly to Sky Go or Virgin TV Anywhere.  There are issues with the technology that still need to be ironed out, such as organisation of the channels on the EPG, streaming quality and lag on channel changes, but YouView could theoretically help IP Multicast to finally flourish in 2013.  YouView has had a very difficult birth and it&amp;#039;s not out of the woods yet. Those sales figures need to start picking up, and the platform must truly convince consumers of its relevance in the same way that Freeview and Freesat have done. The fact original Project Canvas director Richard Halton has remained with the venture as chief executive will be an important factor in both those aims.  But what we are beginning to see are the green-shoots of the platform that was initially heralded in the Canvas days; one that could quietly revolutionise the way the masses watch and consume TV.  Additional reporting by Amie Parker-Williams "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/terrestrial/news/a465636/youview-looks-to-future-after-rocky-past-feature/>