YouView will soon be adding live streaming channels to its programme guide, alongside the regular broadcast channels.
The forthcoming Internet Channel update will allow a ‘possibly infinite’ number of channels to join YouView. Initially, only those with BT and TalkTalk boxes will benefit from the update. Only pay TV channels available on those platforms – BT Sport and Sky Sports for example – will be pulled onto the same page as BBC One and Channel 4 and the rest.
Future updates will ensure that all YouView customers will be able to benefit from extra channels, regardless of their broadband provider.
Read Recombu Digital’s guide to YouViewAs well as this, YouView plans to let you recording of Internet Channels in a separate update that’s due to land sometime this Autumn.
While this is great news to BT YouView and TalkTalk TV customers wanting to record live football, this will also let customers record up to three programmes at once – two via digital terrestrial and one Internet Channel. It’s expected that this update will be rolled out before the start of the footballing season, but there is currently no fixed launch date for this.
Internet Channels will otherwise look and act as if they were regular TV channels and will be available in SD and HD. You’ll be able to look for future programmes using the same Now & Next and Search functions as you would normally (click to enlarge thumbnails).
Aside from pay TV channels, there’s no word yet about what other channels could land on YouView, nor where they’ll appear in the programme guide. YouView was keen to stress to us that the channels on display were purely for test purposes, so you shouldn’t go away thinking that MTV and TLC will coming to YouView.
It’s expected that the Internet Channels will sit between 400 and 499 in the YouView EPG. Digital UK, which manages the digital terrestrial programme guide has recommended that IP-based services sit here, below interactive services and above digital radio.
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