BBC-Microsoft Social IPTV Prototype: Includes Facebook, UGC

Here’s a new video demoing a BBC concept for an interactive, social television application, running on Microsoft’s Mediaroom platform. Showed at the IBC conference in September, the prototype includes live and on-demand video, text content, automatic geographical personalisation, map-based user-generated content feeds, sending videos to friends’ TVs and mobile phones, friend viewing alerts and links to Facebook.

No, this isn’t, strictly speaking, Project Canvas, the initiative the BBC is leading toward an open industry IPTV standard. But it’s true to say that the set-top box for BT (NYSE: BT) Vision, which last month joined the alliance, is powered by Mediaroom, so it’s possible that some of the features on display here will end up on future boxes.