YouView not ready enough?

[masona2]

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@jam2000 wrote:
if that is the case then bt can expect very few customers. what a shambles. yet another provider can offer them over dsl.

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Without having a go a you, but having a go at said service -

Another provider? Are they having a laugh? SD streamed at 5.0mbps that not all their customers can access? Channels which cannot be paused or rewound? Nor can they be recorded either. And customers using powerlines are having mega problems accessing just these SS channels too.

Yeah, it sounds fantastic...  

[jam2000]

Bye bye BT, I shall be taking my phone line, DSL and TV services else where and suggest my other family and friends with BT do the same.

[Ectophile]

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@paul_c wrote:

Having read the article they won't be discontinuing the current BTVision box until the middle of next year (assuming deadlines don't slip which of course never happens with BT ) Then they'll only be for new customers, no mention of existing cutomers having their boxes replaced so I reckon it while be a while yet before the current boxes become obselete but then of course I could be wrong

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I've always believed that the reason BT are rolling out the new software on BT Vision boxes is to make them compatible with YouView.  That's not to say the Vision boxes will be compliant with the YouView specification - they are missing important features.  But with the same underlying operating system, they should happily co-exist on the same streaming video service.

So with the changes, BT should be able to support legacy BT Vision boxes for a considerable period.

But I can see BT losing a lot of customers by denying Sky and ESPN sports to anyone who can't get Infinity, which is what they are now doing.

[masona2]

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@Ectophile wrote:

I've always believed that the reason BT are rolling out the new software on BT Vision boxes is to make them compatible with YouView.  That's not to say the Vision boxes will be compliant with the YouView specification - they are missing important features.  But with the same underlying operating system, they should happily co-exist on the same streaming video service.

So with the changes, BT should be able to support legacy BT Vision boxes for a considerable period.

But I can see BT losing a lot of customers by denying Sky and ESPN sports to anyone who can't get Infinity, which is what they are now doing.

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Interesting thoughts, Ectophile.

As you know, it's a numbers game. So if one looks at the numbers, from BT's POV, it's not half as bad as some would suggest -

BT Vision has 728,000 subscribers. Of those, it is estimated only 150,000 have taken up the Sky Sports channels and of that number, up to now, BT have so far lost £1 per package per customer per month.

The fiber network is now rolling out in the UK at a very impressive rate and, as of Xmas last year, was over twelve months ahead of schedule. And it was, at the last time of checking, available to over 10m homes -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/may/10/bt-superfast-broadband-ahead-of-deadline?intcmp=239

Like I said, it's a numbers game.

[minusdot]

I think BT really messed up by not fixing it so that the BTV boxes were considered the Youview minimum spec. Then they could have upgraded us all to Youview and be done with it.

[masona2]

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@minusdot wrote:

I think BT really messed up by not fixing it so that the BTV boxes were considered the Youview minimum spec. Then they could have upgraded us all to Youview and be done with it.

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What, six years ago? Aw c'mon minusdot. Even DVB-T2 came out after the current Vision boxes and then YouView after that.

[minusdot]

Perhaps read it again? Did IQs just drop sharply whilst I was away?! ;-)

BT were supposed to be a Youview partner. They should have fought harder for the minimum spec not to demand HD tuners so that the vbox just needed a software upgrade to be considered a Youview box.

[drhowells]

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@minusdot wrote:

Perhaps read it again? Did IQs just drop sharply whilst I was away?! ;-)

BT were supposed to be a Youview partner. They should have fought harder for the minimum spec not to demand HD tuners so that the vbox just needed a software upgrade to be considered a Youview box.

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Sorry, but that would have been a terrible idea. One of the key benefits of YouView is that it is upto date and has Freeview HD as standard. Can you imagine the (even more) confusion that would have arisen to customers if some boxes were HD and some weren't. That would have killed YouView before it started.

[minusdot]

Youview is simply an interface with backwards EPG. To avoid confusion they should have used existing, understood terms. If they'd combined Youview with Freeview and FreeviewHD as appropriate then I think people would be far less confused and the vbox could be a Youview Freeview+ box and the Humax box would be a Youview FreeviewHD+ box and future TVs or STBs could be Youview FreeviewHD sets, which clearly wouldn't offer the PVR functionality.

[swedish_cook]

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@minusdot wrote:

Youview is simply an interface with backwards EPG. .....

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No, actually its not, although you would be forgiven currently for thinking this. Its a common, cross partner, hardware independent, platform for delivering HD audio-visual services, combining seamlessly (?) terrestrial broadcast transmissions, i/p broadcasts and on-demand content from multiple providers. 

As illuded to above I also believe that BT has steered its Linux based Linux Vision boxes so that they will be compatable with the same backend video transmission that they are using for Youview. So although its not labelled Youview there are elements of Youview in it.

Most of the complaints here are caused just by Youview being behind in launch and features, I don't doubt that this is because of the committee of diverse interests that they had to keep happy - having all those partners behind it though will make it the unstoppable force that you will see emerge in 2013. The fact that Sky adopted it as a platform for Now TV immediately after launch should tell you something, they would have been hoping it would die and made the call it was a winner, else they wouldn't have made their film service available.