DTG switches from support to criticism of BBC’s Canvas

The leading industry association for TV devices has come out with a damning indictment of the BBCs Project Canvas, urging the BBC Trust, which shall shortly rule upon the BBC’s involvement with Canvas, to insist that the BBC works with industry far more closely, or turns down the project.

Canvas is a set top specification that is being pursued by the BBC and its partners ITV, BT and Channel Five plus unnamed technical collaborators thought to be Cisco, Thomson, Humax, Adobe, NDS and Blinkx. The Digital TV Group (DTG) is made up of all these organizations plus 140 other companies in the TV technology market, taking in broadcasters, manufacturers, platform operators, retailers, trade bodies and consumer groups.

Canvas is just one design of set top which will launch this year to allow video to be sent over the internet as well as DVB-T Freeview broadcast programming, running side by side. Other similar designs have included one called HbbTV, which more or less has support from all over Europe, as well as technical specifications that have been presented by the DTG. The DTG is now concerned that it is going to be left in the cold, and not consulted by the BCC on some of the finer technical points, and that all the manufacturers in its membership will have to play catch up with the BBC partners.

The BBC has been a technology “king maker” in the past, for instance when it chose a PC manufacturer to work with exclusively, and tends to do this without any regard to how much it upsets UK technology competition. The BBC Trust has a mission to make sure that BCC initiatives don’t distort either the broadcasting or supplier markets, and although it has agreed in principal that Canvas can go ahead, it has final sign off this Spring, after it has considered feedback from the community. This last bit of feedback from the DTG has the power to derail the entire project, leaving the UK out on its own in not using HbbTV, and yet without nothing similar, and it is likely that the BBC Trust will take it very seriously.

The DTG said that its membership continues to raise concerns regarding the Canvas project, especially regarding the Canvas Joint Venture’s commitment to engage with the industry. “While many of our members will provide individual responses to the Trust’s consultation, a significant number have urged the DTG in the strongest possible terms to urgently seek clarification or additional commitments from the Trust on a number of points before final approval of the Canvas Proposals is granted.”

The way the Trust has worded its assent to Canvas it looks like the BBC can get away with paying lip service to listening to the industry and then come out with its own, different design, and just say it had a deadline and there were too many changes for it to take them all on board. The Canvas team is desperate to get hardware out by the Autumn.

The DTG says that its members have noticed a parallel process in place, whereby the joint venture partners are trying to differentiate Canvas so they have a head start, and a negotiation with the DTG which is separate, specifying a different approach. There are also worried about who will end up getting royalties from the finished project design.

There will probably eventually be 10 million or more Canvas devices shipped in the UK, once the specification is set, and those suppliers that get a head start will go on to dominate manufacture for some time to come. The DTG says that issues remain with how the IP protocol is implemented, how the User Interface is built, what metadata the system uses and how things like what’s on each channel TV, are sourced. In past Freeview specifications the DTG has been involved throughout and is already working on a 3D technical standard for UK TV.