For the TV industry, the New Year begins with the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas where new products are showcased on their way to our homes. This year, one of the highlights was the ubiquity of internet connected televisions and television devices like the set top boxes. Internet is arriving onto the television. I expect that a large share of televisions and set top boxes sold in the second half of this year will be ready for Internet connection.

Television manufacturers are at the forefront of this innovation. This year, they are introducing a variety of models enabled for content and applications via the Internet. Some of the applications were interesting where you could see consumers using them regularly, while others needed work to make them suitable for the large screen. At the BBC, we recognise this innovation as an opportunity and we have started using it by making the BBC iPlayer application available on Samsung TV, the Freesat platform and hopefully on other devices soon. We are using our standard products to deliver these.

While these devices innovate and evolve the television experience, what the market wants is an open platform. Instead of working with different technologies and gatekeepers, the content industry wants the existing Internet model on the television. We want to be able to publish directly to the consumers. This ensures that anyone with an idea can participate, enabling a flood of creativity. This is what the BBC - along with its partners ITV, C4, Five, BT & Talk Talk - aims to address in UK with Project Canvas, granted a provisional approval by the BBC Trust just before Christmas.

If approved by the BBC Trust, Canvas will provide the opportunity for software developers and content publishers to create applications to sit upon this platform according to published technical specifications: there will be no editorial gatekeepers, and without the need to do a commercial deal with the platform, we expect this to be an open platform of real scale. Further, the platform's innovative user experience and mainstream brand will, we believe, truly bring together broadband and broadcast content in a seamless way.

The innovation taking place in the market today is truly exciting and we expect next-generation, Canvas-compliant devices will have the potential to move the dial once more.

If you want to know more, the Project Canvas website aims to answer any of your questions about the proposals and keep everyone up to speed with development. If the answer isn't there, you can also contact the Canvas team via the website or the dedicated Twitter feed @canvasinfo.

Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, BBC FM&T.

As we've said before, we aim to make the BBC iPlayer available to as wide an audience as is technically possible and economically feasible. At launch, almost two years ago now, the service was only a Windows-based product on the web.

But since then, we've now syndicated the BBC iPlayer to no fewer than 25 different devices and platforms. On TV, we have made BBC iPlayer available to the audience of Virgin Media, PS3, Nintendo Wii, Cello's iViewer last week, and (in Beta) on Freesat.

This process will accelerate in the New Year, with more and more internet-connected TV devices entering what is a fragmented market with varying standards. Instead of making a bespoke product for each device, we have chosen a way that we believe represents the best value to licence fee payers - we will make available a set of standard products to all; making investment in bespoke products only where high audience reach can be achieved.

Back in March, a company called IP Vision made a formal complaint to the BBC after we declined support for a product they were developing for their Fetch TV box. After the BBC Executive's Fair Trading Complaints Panel rejected the complaint in May, IP Vision appealed to the BBC Trust, which published its findings and conclusions today.

The Trust has rejected the main substantive points of the appeal, but, in terms of process, we do note that they have ruled that we should have assessed the competitive impact of our decision.

We also note the Trust's view that October's clarification of our syndication guidelines represented a change in policy that should have been ratified by the Trust. The clarification will now be considered as part of the Trust's review of the BBC's on-demand syndication policy, which begins in January 2010. We will rely on our pre-existing policy until the Trust complete their review.

It has been a great year for our audience as they access BBC iPlayer on multiple platforms - on PCs, mobile and TV. I look forward to building on this success next year with more platforms and devices.

Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, BBC FM&T.

There were multiple challenges on this project. The design challenge was to make the iPlayer work on the television screen in a simple way. The team streamlined the user journeys. We have used the rumble feature on the controller to give feedback. A search feature allows you to find the content easily. The design team went through multiple iterations; user testing and got to what I believe is an experience you would like.

The technical challenges were many. The technical teams had to optimise and innovate in every part of the technical chain to make iPlayer work on an embedded device. Due to the limited processing power and memory available on these types of devices, most of the effort went into optimising data requests, minimising client side processing, reducing network traffic and balancing the remaining processing power available for video decoding with interface and interaction features.

This release is part of a challenging programme to expand the reach of BBC iPlayer in the living room by syndicating it on television devices and platforms. I will keep you updated.

Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, BBC FM&T.

• Rahul's previous post: BBC iPlayer Standard Products on TV Platforms.


• Erik Huggers at Future Media on the iPlayer on the Wii and other new things from the BBC.


• BBC and Nintendo joint press release on the iPlayer on the Wii.

17 November 2009, new images from the Wii added below:

My colleague Kerstin Mogull has recently clarified how we plan to make BBC iPlayer available to audiences on other platforms and devices.

The BBC intends to develop and make available standard iPlayer products.

The standard products on TV platforms are:

1. MHEG-IC (MHEG-5 Interaction Channel).

MHEG-5 is a standard that has been used for developing and presenting interactive television in the UK for nearly a decade. Recently, the Digital Television Group supported by BBC R&D, has extended the standard to use the interaction channel for handling Internet video. This standard has been adopted by Freesat and incorporated into the DBook 6.1 used in Freeview HD devices. We have been developing BBC iPlayer using this standard. I expect to start a Beta deployment by the end of November using capable Freesat devices.

2. HTML.

Creating a product that would work with minimal alterations in devices using HTML browsers has been a challenge. While most devices claim to use HTML4 -compliant browsers, we often find proprietary tags, plug-ins etc. Although there is increasing support of HTML5 work and its standardisation of audio and video interfaces, most devices have their own proprietary media players and interfaces. To maximise the availability of the BBC iPlayer to connected television and television devices, we have chosen to take the route of accepted standards mixing it with pragmatic use of APIs where necessary.

The HTML application will be written in HTML4.01/Javascript 1.5/CSS2.1. This means devices that run standard HTML4 compliant browsers should be able to run the BBC iPlayer user interface. We will define a media playback API that will allow 3rd parties to play the iPlayer media assets. The API uses the ongoing work in the W3C HTML working group, for playing video and audio. Third parties can now use the APIs to interface to their media players. If support is provided for the HTML5 audio and video elements, we expect these APIs to work directly.

Caption: iPlayer on TV image from dantaylor on flickr

I am expecting a Beta release of this product in November. The Beta period will be used to validate and improve the above approach.

In addition to this, BBC iPlayer can be accessed by pointing to our Big Screen implementation at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bigscreen. This can be used without changes.

3. Flash.

We are seeing Internet technologies that deliver richness in presentation, such as Flash, being adapted for embedded devices. This has gone hand in hand with an increase in processing power in television devices. Flash is getting traction within the television industry. To exploit the presentation possibilities, we are planning to make a standard product available in Adobe Flash Lite 3.1. I expect the Beta to be ready in April 2010.

Our success with BBC iPlayer on Virgin Media, has shown that there is an appetite among our audience for BBC iPlayer on the television. I'm very excited to be working with other partners to bring that success to our audience on other platforms and devices.

This is a fast changing and evolving industry. Many of our assumptions will be challenged with time. We will keep coming back to the products and update them where appropriate.

If you believe your product can carry any of the standard products, please contact us at syndication@bbc.co.uk.

Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, BBC FM&T

Firstly I can absolutely understand why some of you disagree with these changes. It affects the content you love to watch, and I want to reassure you that we are doing everything we can in conjunction with our colleagues in Sport to schedule events to ensure that we try and accommodate all the major sporting events on Freeview; that we continue to provide schedule information online and this is made available to TV listings magazines to help you know when which sport is on and to remind you that BBC Sport video available via the Red Button is also available on BBC Online/Sport.

During major events we will also look to free up bandwidth available to the BBC across Freeview as we did during the Summer Olympics in 2008.

From October 27th, Freeview viewers will see some changes to the BBC Red Button service that is part of a government backed UK strategy to bring HD broadcast channels to a wider audience, first announced by Ofcom back in 2008.

In order to make space for HD broadcasts in the future we need to now switch off two of the three interactive streams we use to deliver BBC content on Freeview. This means that Freeview viewers will no longer be able to see the BBC News Multiscreen and the interactive stream (known as 302) will also cease to be used for Red Button content.

So what does that mean for you watching on Freeview?

Read more and comment on Press Red blog

Then, I blogged about how getting BBC's on demand content into the living room and onto the television was a big deal. It seems, our audience agree. Since June 2008, when we went live with the final phase of TV iPlayer, we have had more than 100 million programme views.

I had high expectations but even so, this is a staggering result.

Gideon Summerfield, product manager for TV iPlayer, is going to give more details next week.

Virgin was the first platform because of the size of the addressable audience (3.4 million households). Since then, we have been working at making BBC iPlayer available on other platforms and devices. Our challenge is to maximise reach this emerging market whilst maintaining a familiar and trusted BBC iPlayer service and remaining cost-effective.

I'll keep you posted on our future plans.

Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, BBC Future Media & Technology

As of this morning, anyone with Virgin Media TV can press the red button from any BBC channel and access the iPlayer directly on their television.

Getting the iPlayer into the living room is a big deal for me. Since its early development, I've been asked often whether it would be available on television. Why? Well, because the programmes are made for television, and mainstream audiences like to watch them from the comfort of their armchairs and on the TV.

We've already launched a version on the Nintendo Wii, which enables users to access the iPlayer via their consoles and watch via their TVs. With today's launch, we are now able to offer broadcast-quality on-demand programmes in a navigation constructed for the television audience and which works on the remote control. A couple of clicks, and you get full-screen video at high quality with no buffering.

The programme offering is pretty much the same as that which you get on the web, although there are some exceptions due to rights. Regional variations, radio programmes and some acquistions are not available at present. However, we hope this will change in due course. We also hope to be able to offer High Definition programmes too!

It has been a long and challenging project. The first challenge was around navigation: how do you help people find the programmes which they want to watch when there is so much to choose from, and in a way which is easy to do on a TV with a remote control?

Fortunately, we were able to build on years of designing interactive television services. Simplicity is the key to attract a wide range of viewers, including many who are in no way tech-savvy. After user testing, we arrived at simple list-based navigation.

But I think the real winner may well be the Search - something which had never really been tried on a TV before, but which we thought was essential to have in such an extensive service. It proved really popular in the user testing. For the next version, search will be more prominent.

The second challenge was technical: the assets are encoded in MPEG2 format. The application, like our other interactive applications, is written in Liberate. The assets are played back using Virgin's Seachange VoD systems. The integration across the systems of BBC, Red Bee, Siemens and Virgin took a long time. Problems we faced included metadata work (much longer than any of us expected); reducing the time it takes for a programme to appear on the TV to within an hour (the technical term for this is "propagation latency"); increasing application speed and making it work on many different variants of set-top box.

The next step is to make it available elsewhere, so that BBC iPlayer is available on a range of TV platforms - where technically possible, of course. Talks are underway, and I'll update you as soon as possible.

And if you're a Virgin subscriber, please try it and let us know your feedback - and any ideas for improvement.

Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, BBC Future Media & Technology