BT has said today that it wants to start a price war over sports content provided to the consumer by offering consumers access to the premium sports content at a lower cost than its competitors.

It is waiting for a judgement from Ofcom as to whether the wholesale price of the premium content provided by Sky must be reduced to allow fair competition across platforms.

If Ofcom force Sky to reduce the fees they charge other provides, this could start a price war between them to get and keep viewers. It would allow both BT and Virgin Media, along with others, to slash their prices to their users.

This could benefit viewers all round, by offering more competition and thus more choice for where to access the premium content. Currently Sky hold most of the viewers, more than double that of BT and Virgin Media combined.

During the month of December, 2009, the BBC’s iPlayer service dished up an incredible 115 million show requests across all platforms that it is available for. The popularity is driven by Top Gear and Doctor Who. The most watched single program was the Top Gear special, racing across Bolivia.

This just shows the popularity of such a service and that the BBC and Internet Service Providers are going to have to work together to help each other out with the increased work load put forward by high definition on demand services.

As it becomes more integrated into TV sets and set top boxes, this figure will only increase, during December a massive increase in requests coming via consoles was noticed – up 74% on the previous month. This can be attributed to Wii and PS3 users (the iPlayer isn’t available on the Xbox 360).

During the year, expect to see new innovations on the service and it being more widely available via Freesat and built into new televisions using various technologies. I believe this year will see a big increase in the amount of on demand TV watched by all.

The BBC has been given the green light to start development on an internet based TV platform, along with other providers including ITV, Channel 4, Five, BT and Talktalk. Project Canvas is this platform, and is a partnership between all the above groups to bring a uniform standard to internet based television.

A uniform system would allow a range of internet tv set top boxes, or compatible televisions to display media from iPlayer, ITVPlayer and other similar systems without the need for custom work for each individual system.

As yet, Sky has not shown any interest in joining in the platform, but it has its own competing systems in its Sky boxes and SkyPlayer system where as all the other broadcasters show free to air content.

Once the platform is finalised, it will allow set top boxes and televisions to be made that will be compatible with the system. This needs to happen well in advance of any launch date.

Virgin Media and TiVo have announced a partnership that will mean TiVo supplies Virgin Media set top boxes for Virgin’s updated IP TV platform in the coming years.

TiVo are to develop a new platform to bring linear (broadcast) tv and on demand content seamlessly together in a single platform and as part of this agreement they will become the sole supplier to Virgin Media of middleware and user interface software. TiVo has proven itself capable of developing such a platform with its successful boxes in the United States of America.

This agreement is part of Virgin’s plans to improve its existing TV systems with a new IP TV based on Cisco’s Digital Headend platform.

With an internet based TV platform, this could enable the entire country to receive ‘cable’ TV even without a cable in sight via the internet allowing Virgin to expand their consumer base beyond the current limits.

The BBC have recently released some surprising figures about tv license subscriptions. The figures released coincide with the 40th anniversary of colour broadcasts but show that there are still nearly 30,000 people watching TV in black and white.

This amount is based on the number of black and white subscriptions users are paying for and is quite surprising knowing the uptake of flatscreen tv’s and the online streaming services provided by the BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and similar services is higher than ever.

To be able to continue to use these sets after digital switchover, a set top box will be required.

An advisory panel is making recommendations to protect certain sporting activities to be on a Free-to-air platform.

Rather than Pay to view providers snapping up all the main events, the recommendation is that certain sporting activities should be kept where everyone can view them without the need for a subscription to a pay-per-view provider.

The panel is calling for home Ashes, home national football qualifiers (World Cup and European), Wimbledon, The Open Golf and some rugby union to join a list of ‘nationally important’ sporting events.

These recommendations are good for viewers, a lot of sport is broadcast on pay to watch channels that a large percentage of the population can’t currently get so for more to be able to watch these events it can only be seen as good news.

What will be accepted onto the list of protected sports, we shall find out in due course.

Following on from the recent addition of the BBC’s iPlayer to the Playstation 3 platform, the BBC is shortly to release an updated version of the player specifically for Wii users.

The iPlayer is already available on the Wii, but users have complained about it being clunky to use via the Web Browser. Instead it will now gain its own dedicated ‘channel’ on the Wii.

The iPlayer is becoming a more important means of watching BBC TV Content, however with more users keen to use it it is placing pressure on ISPs who are limiting users connections with bandwidth caps or throttling during peak times.

This will only leave the Xbox 360 unable to receive BBC content via the iPlayer, and no sign of this being added any time soon.

From the BBC Internet Blog, the Red Button Controller has said his team will be switching off 2 of the 3 interactive streams used to deliver BBC content on Freeview. This will have the effect of removing the BBC News Multiscreen and closing the Red Button Interactive channel on Freeview.

This is being done to make way for the new High Definition services which are due to start broadcasting from Winterhill during December.

They have confirmed red button content such as sports coverage will continue to be accessible, but via a linear broadcasting channel rather than on the interactive stream.

The red button service will continue the same on Virgin Media, Sky and other services, including the BBC’s online service, this will just effect Freeview Viewers.

Due to start broadcasting from Winterhill during December this year, the Granada region will be the first to receive Freeview HD. From here, the rollout of HD will follow the nationwide digital switchover program.

The transmission systems will be upgraded to support the newer, DVB-T2 system to enable High Definition signals to be broadcast. The bandwidth for this new system will created by changing the compression of the BBC’s Multiplex B.

The downside to these upgrades however, is that not all televisions and set top boxes will be able to receive the new High Definition signals due to the change in compression needed to send the signals over the air waves.

While Sky users have access to plenty of high definition channels (via subscription), Virgin Media’s HD selection is more limited and currently Freeview has no HD support. These upgrades will mean the UK is leading then way with DVB-T2 High Definition TV support.

In a deal struck today between Youtube and Channel 4, we will see 4oD content being uploaded to watch on Youtube. Launching in the coming months, this will see Channel 4 content appearing on Youtube shortly after it has been aired on TV. Users will also be able to access over 3000 hours of archive TV via the site too.

The content will be available on Youtube for UK users only, it will probably also reduce the number of user uploaded snippets of Channel 4’s programming.

When the service launches, Channel 4 will use advertising to support the service. It isn’t an exclusive deal, so content will stay on Channel 4’s 4oD service too, however it will share the load and bandwidth requirements between its own service and Google, which should make it more available in the long run.

Relating to this, today Ofcom released figures showing that 1/3rd of online adults use video on demand systems, this is a key area of growth for the broadcasters as more people are preferring to watch TV when they want, instead of at the time it is aired.