Over the last few years there have been numerous IPTV conferences and events springing up all over the place, but the IPTV World Forum appears to have become the most important in Europe, and attracts visitors from all over the world. The exhibition features stands from major and smaller vendors alike - enough to more or less fill two floors of London's ancient Olympia venue, and many familiar faces were seen wandering the aisles. I hope the organisers manage to find an alternative venue for next year - visiting Olympia is a bit like emerging from Doctor Who's Tardis some time in the 1950s, and the local hotels are not much better... A few highlights worth mentioning: Vividas is giving an impressive demonstration of HD video streaming over the Internet, showing a 720p clip of Paramount's upcoming Transformers movie streamed at 1.2 Mbps. Vividas' solution involves analysing the user's PC and sending only the player elements necessary to support that particular device. In this way it reduces the payload to a fraction of the typical media player, and claims also to increase content security because there is no trace of the media file on the user's PC. Visiware, the French gaming company, is demonstrating its own solution to multi-platform gaming, so that a subscriber can access the same game on digital TV, broadband and a mobile phone, and even resume playing from the same point of the game on a different device. Visiware began life in the interactive TV space more than 10 years ago, and is one of the few survivors from that era with a global presence. Nortel's deal with NDS made most of the headlines, and Nortel is demoing the usual types of voice/TV application such IM, caller ID and video telephony on the TV screen. It's good to see Nortel positioning itself for these potential IPTV applications, but I can't help thinking it is somewhat late to the party - most of these ideas have been around if not on offer from competing vendors for some years. Industria is an Icelandic company with a focus on IPTV middleware and solutions. It has significant deals with Irish and Bulgarian operators and is planning further expansion as well as partnerships. I expect to see one or more major telco vendors bidding to work with Industria over the coming months. Oregan has built its business with Sony's PlayStation but is now branching out into CE retail through partnerships with Philips, Nokia, Samsung and others. It has high hopes for connected device solutions using its Media Browser software. It is demonstrating accessing CinemaNow and the BBC's video clips on a TV screen. They have had most success so far in Japan, but we expect to see significant movement in European and US markets over the next year or so. Finally we were treated to a demonstration of Ruckus Wireless' WiFi solution. Ruckus has created a stir with its unique antenna technology that guarantees quality of service for video streaming, including HD, over home wireless networks. It has significant deals with PCCW and Belgacom (Strategy Analytics clients will receive a report on Ruckus shortly).

Today's DTG summit was a clarion call to politicians and regulators to ensure that the UK's digital terrestrial platform would carry HDTV signals in the future. Margaret Hodge, Minister of State for Industry and Regions, recognised that HD was a "contentious issue", but left the meeting too soon to hear just how contentious a subject it could be. Speakers suggested the government should take the decision of how to allocate spectrum back from the regulator, Ofcom, but Hodge was "not sure that Parliament is the best place to decide on consumer priorities". Before leaving, she left a glimmer of hope by suggesting that the spectrum decision "is not about maximising money for the Treasury". Personally I would want to get Gordon Brown's confirmation of that opinion before taking it as a matter of policy. The UK's digital TV industry, as represented by the DTG, in fact primarily represents those with an interest in promoting digital terrestrial television, as opposed to alternative digital television platforms such as satellite or cable. Principal supporters are the public service broadcasters, and consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers. This constituency is very concerned, and understandably so, that the DTT platform, so successfully established under the Freeview model, could lose out on the next innovation wave driven by HDTV. Ofcom is currently consulting on the best way to allocate spectrum freed up by the switch-off of analogue broadcasting. There was a distinct feeling at the DTG meeting that the prospect of this capacity being allocated to HDTV was more or less zero unless a significant change in regulatory approach is taken, as richer companies such as mobile operators will always be able to outbid opponents in any spectrum auction. One speaker after another put the case for free-to-air HD on DTT, including Sony, DSG (Dixons Stores Group), Channel Four and the BBC. Dixons' John Clare gave perhaps the strongest argument by citing recent (February) research that showed more than 40% of buyers of HD-Ready TVs plan to watch HDTV on the terrestrial platform. His argument that Ofcom needs to examine the most recent research before coming to a decision is certainly compelling. As we said in our recent report, France has taken the lead in Europe by clarifying the HD DTT direction. As the BBC's Tim Davie put it, the UK is heading for a situation where the 2012 London Olympics will be available to all French viewers, free to view and in HD, but not to UK viewers. This is the sort of argument that is likely to get politicians thinking, if anything will.

We're attending this leading IPTV event at London's Olympia today. The conference kicked off with presentations from Orange and the BBC, amongst others. Orange's Eric Abensur suggested that quadruple play services are already gaining a significant foothold across Europe, with 16% of homes now "equipped" to receive such services. He also emphasised Orange's view that it is necessary for any operator to "control the mobile and broadband infrastructure in order to control the customer experience". This suggests a disregard of competition from any web-based service such as Joost (see here). Indeed, Mr Abensur seemed bemused by an audience question on the threat from Joost - it was not clear if he had heard of the service or whether there was something lost in the question - but in any case he dismissed the idea that Joost and similar services are a real challenge to managed IPTV services, arguing that they had no clear revenue model and that TV ultimately always has to be paid for. I suspect he may need to read up on what Joost and others are planning... The BBC's Ashley Highfield as always gave an interesting perspective from the UK's leading public service broadcaster. It contrasted with Orange's approach in discussing IPTV as a web-delivered service that should not be targeted to compete directly with the UK's existing digital TV services from Sky and Virgin Media. Instead, IPTV should be seen as changing TV by offering improvements in engagement, amplification, distribution, discovery, innovation and navigation. The BBC's iPlayer is of course the foundation of the BBC's strategy in IPTV. The BBC is still learning how its users want to search the vast archives of TV and video content that may one day become available, but it believes that the discovery element of IPTV is likely to prove one of its critical USPs. Mr Highfield also touched on the controversy over the BBC's choice of Microsoft's Windows DRM platform. He suggested that they would be "happy to work with Apple if they supported time-based DRM". The BBC sees it as critical that its solution can support 7-day online access to broadcast programming that is now a standard part of its rights contracts. We also look forward to hearing more about the BBC's plans for a hybrid DTT/IP set-top box. As I suggested recently, this is a further sign that the DTT platform in the UK is fragmenting, and I hope to hear more from Ofcom on this subject at this afternoon's DTG meeting.

Watching punch and counterpunch in the Murdoch/Branson battle is tremendous fun, but their private war is beginning to suck in reluctant bystanders. Sky's announcement of its own pay digital terrestrial service has serious implications of the potential of the UK's Freeview platform and its various partners. Sky plans to switch off its current three Freeview channels and use the capacity to launch four pay channels instead. To get the new channels viewers will have to install a Sky DTT box (based on different conditional access and codec technologies to those already deployed) - they will not be available through any existing Freeview box or IDTV, or through other Freeview-compatible devices like BT Vision. The UK's regulator, Ofcom, will investigate Sky's proposals to establish whether the variations in licences necessary for Sky to launch its new service should be permitted. One key concern is that the introduction of MPEG4 technology on the DTT platform will begin to make legacy DTT equipment redundant and could reduce consumer confidence in DTT in general. This is particularly important given that the switch-off of analogue terrestrial services begins in 2008. On balance we believe that the introduction of MPEG4 in itself will not be seen as a disadvantage, but that Ofcom should encourage a consensus approach from all DTT partners towards its introduction in order to minimise consumer concerns and ensure a smooth transition. The most contentious issue is likely to focus on establishing an appropriate balance between the number of free-to-air and pay channels across the DTT platform. The key to Freeview's success (apart from the massive investment of licence fee money in digital channels by the BBC) has been that it requires no contract between the viewer and a service provider. Plug-and-play access via a low-cost device, as well as confidence in platform stability, have ensured rapid consumer take-up. If "Freeview" in fact becomes dominated by pay services, this model is disrupted. Ofcom's challenge is to accurately predict the market impact of alternative packages of pay and free channels so that overall policy goals are achieved. It will face considerable pressure from vested interests on both sides of the "pay" and "free" divide and its perceived independence is likely to be severely tested by this dispute.

...after the out-of-this-world experience of Las Vegas, that is. A visit to retirement-age parents in suburban Essex is a good way to be reminded of the down-to-earth realities of how digital technologies are used by typical users, in contrast to the techno-geeks that frequent CES.

A few months ago my parents purchased a smart new Sony Bravia 32" LCD TV with integrated digital terrestrial (DVB-T/Freeview for anyone searching these terms on Google). It's worth noting, particularly for Americans that buy and never use the ATSC capability of their IDTVs, how easy the original installation process was and how impressive the results. Plug in device, tune in channels and enjoy. Use existing roof-top aerial installation. There really was little else too it, and the transformation from analogue terrestrial was indeed like moving from night to day.

Visiting the same household this weekend I was therefore surprised to see a 14:9 image on the 16:9 digital display. The explanation, apparently, is that one of the two main users prefers the analogue teletext service, with which he has become familiar over the past 20 years, and therefore often tunes the set to analogue broadcasts. 14:9 images are regularly transmitted by the BBC's analogue channels.

One of my many personal peeves is the apparent irrelevance to many people of the basic shape of the TV picture they are supposed to be watching. Ever since the arrival of 16:9 TVs in the early/mid 1990s I have lost count of the number of widescreen TVs on which 4:3 pictures are happily viewed in various distorted formats by an apparently oblivious audience. And then I spend my time with firms like Silicon Image who want to squeeze the next ounce of image quality out of displays, while apparently failing to realise that the vast majority of TV viewers don't even seem to recognise when the basic picture shape is distorted.

OK, maybe I'm being a little unfair - my parents do tune digital channels on a regular basis, and watch full 16:9 pictures, although we did have an interesting debate as to whether these were truer to life than 4:3. But after I demonstrated the BBC's digital interactive text services, I was told this was the first time they had been seen, and that in any case they were more difficult to read as they didn't fill the whole screen (they are designed around a live picture-in-picture video feed).

It's a familiar story from the UK (not that the UK is by any means unique) of rapid technology adoption but variable and misguided usage of that technology. These particular Freeview "users" were unaware of the impending switch-off of their analogue signals. Once the UK's digital transition begins in earnest next year I suspect we will be hearing a lot more from the analogue minority that remains.

On another subject, I was watching The Simpsons on Sky One on a friend's Hi-Def Sky Digital system today. And then we switched to Sky One HD expecting to see the same programme transformed. But of course it turned out to be an extremely old episode that just about merited the description colour, never mind HD. To be fair, Sky's small print does not claim HD for every programme on its HD channels, and they clearly label each programme that is actually transmitted in HD format. Sky admits that only a "selection" of programmes will be in HD. "Selection" is certainly the word - between 12.30am tonight and midnight tomorrow only 4 out of 24 hours' programming on Sky One HD are broadcast in HD.

The big picture behind all this? For all the talk from the industry about transforming the experience for users, the reality is that the majority of consumers are happy with a lot less than the best the industry has to offer. And many of them pay for experiences without really understanding what they are supposed to be getting for their money. A sober and useful reminder of real-world issues after the hype of the CES and Apple jamborees.

The BBC's primetime consumer rights programme, Watchdog, has been featuring BSkyB's digital TV PVR service, Sky+, in recent weeks. According to the presenters they have been inundated with viewer complaints about Sky's service. These seem to focus in general on unreliable set-top boxes (customers often have had several replacement devices), or programmes that have not been successfully recorded.

I have been a Sky+ user since the first weeks of its launch back in 2001. I have seen demonstrations of many other PVR services from around the world over the years, and have personally also tested TiVo's UK version (now withdrawn). In general BSkyB as usual has done an excellent job of hiding complex technology beneath a friendly and intuitive user experience.

But there have always been technical problems with Sky+, and one has to wonder why the BBC is jumping on this particular bandwagon five years down the road. (News Corp and the BBC do seem to enjoy any opportunity to stick the knife in.) The fact that there are nearly 2 million Sky+ subscribers (8% of all UK homes) probably has something to with the "noise" being generated by the average Watchdog viewer.

I had planned to comment on Sky+ a week or so ago, and so it was frustrating but fortuitous to experience another glitch in the system over the holiday period. In fact, the problem appears related to the EPG in general rather than Sky+ in particular, but that wouldn't be apparent at first sight. It relates to Sky's interactive football service, Football First, which presents time-delayed "as live" transmissions of football matches taking place in the previous 24 hours. On 26 December a full round of Premiership games took place and at 9.45pm that night Sky Sports viewers were able to select, as usual, extended highlights of any of the matches. Customer service representatives confirmed to me yesterday that a technical fault meant that viewers were unable to select a match by using the up-down cursor on the EPG menu. If they used this method, the feed would revert to the main broadcast. Selecting the match using number keys on the remote control resolved the problem.

Those of us who had set our PVRs to record a particular game found that, after a few seconds of the expected match (in my case - yes, you guessed it - Spurs-Aston Villa), the video reverted to (of all things ;-)) Man U - Wigan. Not a happy outcome over the festive period...

Sky's answer (after 40 minutes in a phone queue, including a diversion to the wrong department...)? "We can only apologise." Indeed. Boasts that viewers need never miss another programme have understandably become less prominent as BSkyB has grown to realise the true fallibilities of its technology.

There is no question that Sky's hard-drive set-top boxes are not 100% reliable. I don't know of any technology that is. Over the past five years I have regularly seen errors to do with failed recordings, incorrect programme descriptions, failed instant rewind, lost recording capacity, and many others, and have had boxes replaced. It's all part and parcel of the integration of a complex digital media technology with a sophisticated multi-channel broadcast service and most viewers probably accept these glitches as inevitable. Clearly Watchdog's complainants fall into a more exclusive category. In spite of the problems, I can assure each and every one of them that there is no better alternative digital TV PVR platform on the market. More importantly, I think the BBC also knows this, but I suspect we may never hear such an admission.

For BSkyB, Sky+ is an early illustration of the company's growing dependence on the reliability of consumer devices. However much it likes to sell the PVR as a "service" (for which it charges a monthly fee), the reality is that it is a sophisticated software/hardware device that is likely to go wrong. These challenges will only increase as it rolls out HDTV, broadband TV and other advanced services.

So I thought I’d start out with a few personal perspectives, bugbears and gripes to kick things off. That way you’ll get to know me a little more personally, and those of you who are clients will hopefully recognise some of what follows from our various communications over the years.

The rate of change continues to accelerate. We will see more innovation in the digital consumer space in the next 5 years than we have seen in the past 10, probably 20. The two sides of that coin are frightening and compelling. The opportunities are unprecendented, but matched by the risks.

Everywhere we look we see underestimation of the rate of change. I was asked, by a TV advertising executive, at a conference 2 years ago whether online TV and video would become a reality within 20 years. Yes, you read that right – 20 years. Our research in early 2004 was some of the first to show that broadband adoption was leading to a decline in TV viewing, but the TV industry didn’t want to know.

I haven’t the faintest idea how consumers will be getting most of their video in 20 years’ time, but it surely won’t be a scheduled linear broadcast one-way model. And the TV industry does seem finally to be waking up, fortunately more rapidly (not that this is difficult) than the moribund music industry did 5 years ago.

There was at least one empty seat at last night's Tottenham game against Southend. I had a ticket but was unable to attend. Sky chose to show the Newcastle-Chelsea game so I delved into the world of live internet TV football. TVU Networks (http://tvunetworks.com/index.htm) is one of a number of largely Asian websites offering live streaming of television channels from around the world, but again largely Asia-based. So I found myself watching KBS, the Korean public broadcaster’s, live transmission from the other side of the world of a game taking place 60 miles away from my home. Such is the power of the connected world. And I paid nobody an extra cent.

At least it worked for maybe 20 minutes, during which time quality was bearable. I get BT’s “up to” (one of my list of marketing phrases to be banned once the Mercer government is formed) 8Mbps broadband service, and should peak at 6 according to my local friendly BT engineer. Realistically it probably caps out at 3-4, and I use WiFi between PCs and BT's Home Hub. KBS’s stream was certainly not reaching my PC at anything near that rate but the experience demonstrates why any picture is better than a thousand words (so why am I writing this then?). Blurred images and barely identifiable players are preferable to any radio commentary, although I have admiration for the skill of sports radio commentators. But internet TV couldn’t last the required two hours and after several frozen screens and dropped connections I gave in to the power of Murdoch and turned to the digital radio commentary on the BBC’s Five Live Extra via Sky's set-top box.

The big picture question is: can pay TV survive in a world where everything is available anywhere at any time? Look for sports rights holders to pursue the renegade TV redistributors (why haven’t they already?) through the courts, just as the record companies chase down P2P downloaders. But the stable door has surely opened. OK, so the user experience is not up to the job today but it’s only a question of time. Cisco, Skype and others are all planning to turn this into a real rival to "television", and I for one will not bet against at least one of them succeeding.