YouView has appointed BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) chief architect Chris Bramley its CTO, as it rolls toward an early-2012 launch.

There are three things the TV executive audience have come to expect from the annual MacTaggart lecture: the pantomime of an inter-industry dispute, an intellectual appreciation of the past year’s achievements and a warm glow of self-congratulation derived from being an industry that still matters, despite everything.

One of the YouView video-on-demand project’s seven set-top box partners is pulling out of the venture.

Didn’t see this one coming at all. UK movie streaming service Blinkbox has been an obvious acquisition target, particularly following the sale of competitor Lovefilm to Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), but Tesco? Then again, it makes perfect sense for the UK biggest retailer, particularly given its search for an Amazon-meets-Walmart online…

Looks like the idea of newspapers having their own TV channels could finally happen. Guardian News & Media, together with three support companies, has been granted public money through the Technology Strategy Board to develop TV apps for the upcoming YouView service and Android TV services, Broadcast reports.

YouView, perhaps under some pressure following its delay and its chair’s exit, has named 29 companies it will work with to finalise its specifications.

The UK’s two main industry VOD ventures to have emerged from public broadcasting are turning over some of their top staff… A month after its launch was delayed to at least early 2012, the chair of the UK’s YouView connected-TV consortium is leaving.

There’s a lot riding on YouView. BBC director general Mark Thompson has described it as nothing less than the “battle for the living room” – pitching YouView as an “open” platform based around the legacy free-to-air public service broadcasters, against the barbarians of the pay-TV world and their “closed” platforms.

Launch of the UK’s public-service connected-TV joint venture YouView is now delayed until at least early 2012, the consortium says.

The pay-TV market is nearing a subscriptions plateau - but YouView doesn’t yet look like stealing current operators’ customers. An Oliver & Ohlbaum survey of internet users found only eight percent are likely to subscribe to pay-TV services next year…

It seems YouView’s first-phase technology build is drawing to a close, even if precious few people have seen anything other than mock-ups. The UK IPTV JV’s chief technology officer Anthony Rose, who had joined in March, is leaving, although there’s no mention of a next role for him.

YouView is now asking video and audio portals and content management companies to apply to work with it on defining how content and services should eventually be distributed through the forthcoming connected-TV system. This first-phase process, involving YouView and applicants it will select against its own criteria, will produce, by…

What ever happened to TV’s internet revolution? Connected TVs are about to jumpstart the nascent IPTV and VOD sectors, perhaps even with radical new online services. But some of the UK industry’s key figures, at Tuesday’s Westminster Media Forum, lined up to give a conservative prediction - that the biggest…

Ofcom says it won’t investigate the YouView connected-TV JV under the UK’s Competition Act - essentially on the grounds that it’s not anti-competitive because it hasn’t launched yet and because few details are available on exactly how it will behave.

Once upon a time, one might have imagined a Kangaroo on a Canvas. But the former, a commercial VOD JV involving BBC Worldwide, was prohibited… So what exactly is the route to the coming connected-TV market, for BBCWW’s TV VOD archive?

Ofcom had been all ready to tell the world whether it will or will not instigate a competition inquiry in to the YouView connected TV joint venture. And then BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) put in an eleventh-hour submission of its own, as Guardian.co.uk reports. Ofcom’s disclosure could now be delayed by…

Ofcom is due to detail this week how, if at all, it will respond to the complaints submitted about the YouView connected-TV venture by Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED), IP Vision, Six TV, United For Local Television and the Open Source Consortium. For full background, see our YouView topic index, with…

Much as Apple’s app store has fuelled the success of a host of new internet companies, YouView promises to do the same by establishing a single, universal standard for the consumer interface and delivery of internet video across a wide range of devices.

Some people don’t know an opportunity when it’s staring them in the face. A group of 14 local-town TV and news operators has written a letter to The Times grumbling the YouView connected-TV joint venture is a “cartel” and “an attempt by some of the biggest players in the business…