It's a big week for UK broadband TV

FINALLY, UK TV broadcasters have managed to get their thumbs out of their asses and start offering some form of broadband telly services. The only questions are whether they are any good and are they needed?

You must remember that these services have been coming and coming longer than the end of the world. In the past week the BBC, C4 and BT have all announced the availability of Internet TV and high-definition broadcast services, most of which have spent the last year being delayed, railroaded, sidelined, tweaked, overhauled, beefed up, trimmed down and generally put off until the last moment. I'm actually surprised many of them managed to make it in time for the Silly Season.

They are, however, entering a market where Sky rules like some massive, Jabba The Hut, licking its lips at all those profits. The newcomers are hoping, nay banking, on broadband and high definition offerings, finally giving them a chance to woo the non-Sky devotees. So what's on offer?

Channel 4's Internet offering went live today and gives you the chance to download all - yes all - of its home-grown programmes. You get to download shows for up to 30 days after airing. Renting them for 48 hours costs 99p and owning them £1.99. In February, C4 will introduce a £3.99 monthly subscription to let you watch all shows aired for a month and £4.99 to watch all movies. Archive material is also being unearthed and some US imports like Desperate Housewives is also on offer. C4 recommends at least a 1Mb broadband connection which should - when the entire neighborhood is not contesting your connection - allow you to download a 30 minute show in a few hours. How appealing. C4 said that a 30 minute show using a 4MB connection would take a more reasonable 45 minutes, but already you can see that most people, those with thinner pipes, will be facing vastly longer download times.

The BBC has offered some content for download already but finally made it's big push last week, announcing its high-definition (HD) sporting line-up for the New Yew. Footie and rugby take centre stage. Ironically, like Sky and others, it's the sports fanatics - albeit couch-ridden - of the world that seem to be driving the uptake of newer, leading edge TV services like IPTV and HDTV. Sports is at the core of most new offerings. The Beeb does offer viewers the chance to download some past TV programmes but is hoping to get approval to allow people to watch the past week's TV free. Now, that would be good.

BT has been humming and hawing about its BT Vision service for some time and it finally went live this week. The premise is that you don't pay a monthly subscription to get it. Around the UK, the ears of Sky subscribers pricking up. Hang on though, there's a catch. Instead, you buy a BT total Broadband package for 12-18 months, get a set-top box/DVR device free (apart from £90 in install and other charges) and off you go. Oh yes, you must also have a BT phone line (£11 per month, I think).

Apart from the 40 or so Freeview channels, the paid-for content on offer is a lot more patchy. There's a mix of live and ‘near live' footie promised for 2007, some movies, music and some gigs. So, does scrapping monthly TV subscription fees and replacing them with monthly broadband subscription fees of, between £18 and £27, really count as subscription-free TV? Not really.

As for ITV, it's playing the tortoise in this race, with nothing expected until next Spring at the earliest.

I think all the new entrants are a good thing if, for no other reason, than competition is a good thing and I still can't figure out how to use my DVR. But frankly, dodgy quality and slow broadband speeds remain a problem. Already, there are some reports of pixellated, highly compressed content being delivered via BT Vision. Add in high contention ratios on most basic broadband packages and you are looking at an annoying night's viewing. This is still first-ish generation IPTV offerings on the back of a slowly evolving broadband infrastructure. While I'm glad there's more on offer and I can finally get hold off the TV I regularly miss live, I have no intention in investing in any of it yet.

I'll download as I go, maybe, but I'll wait a year or two for the subscription services and the technology underpinning it to move up a gear or two. And, at the risk of sounding fiscally restrained, I think £2 to own an episode of anything is too much - especially since the DVD boxset of any TV series is better value at the end of the day.

So the verdict: nice to have the option but no compelling reason to bother. Maybe when the HD content becomes vastly more varied than close-ups of toads' eyeballs and footballers hairy legs, I'll give it a whirl. Maybe. µ