In a report released yesterday, The UK’s House of Lords Select Committee on Communications says that the government should prepare for all television broadcast to be transferred to the internet. The committee is right.

Indeed, the strongest driver of people moving from basic to superfast broadband will be people wanting to access on-demand television. We see this is the case right now during the Olympics. Over the past weekend, the BBC iPlayer saw 1.7 million requests for the Olympics opening ceremony. If the content that people want is available online, people will want to access it. And having all broadcast content moved onto the internet will facilitate more control of that content by viewers. Moreover, it will facilitate more precise targeting by advertisers and brand owners, and experience creations that bring together TV, social and additional online content.

A caveat here is that this will need a much improved broadband network beyond the government’s target of having everyone able to get 2Mbps by 2015. The committee calls this target "flawed" and liable to widen the digital divide between those communities with fast internet access and those living in broadband blackspots.

Instead, the committee argues that the government should ensure that every home is eventually connected to the internet by fibre. Although BT has been rolling out fibre, with 11m homes now connected, the committee highlights that BT is only installing fibre to street cabinets, with old and weather-sensitive copper wires carrying the signal to the doorstep.

The committee’s recommendation about preparing for all television to be broadcast via the internet is especially pertinent given a growing number of households are just as likely to watch TV via a broadband connection as they are to watch it via an aerial or satellite dish. Recent figures from Ofcom show that the number of UK adults with home internet who catch up with TV via the internet at least once a week has climbed from 23% of all adults in 2008, to 37% in 2012. This is highest among 16-24s, 48% of whom do this.

The choice of on-demand entertainment is set to grow. Sky, BT, Virgin Media and, as of last week, TalkTalk all now retail internet TV services bundled with a broadband connection. Ofcom data shows that average total of VoD views per month to Virgin Media homes has nearly tripled in four years, climbing from 33m in 2008, to 90m in 2012.

Superfast broadband take up will remain slow whilst online video remains uncompetitive.

Ofcom’s just published ‘Communications Market Report’ shows that although nearly 60% of homes in the UK have access to connections providing downloads faster than 25Mbps, only 7% of households have actually signed up to them.

On the surface, this will not be good news for the British government, which aims to make the UK a broadband leader in Europe by 2020. It also shows that the UK is far from achieving the EU's Digital Agenda goal, to have half of Europe’s households signed up to 100Mbps broadband services by 2020.

Ordinarily, I would say that the provision of superfast broadband is a classic example of a ‘if we build it, they will come’ approach (remember the Millenium Dome anyone?). However, I don’t believe this is necessarily the case here. It is no good having online content services in place that require fast broadband when the fast broadband infrastructure isn’t in place.

Cue this week’s partial launch of Sky’s ‘Now TV’ internet on-demand service. In a sign we are in transition to a post-satellite world, Sky is going to use the service to attract some of the remaining households not signed up to Sky’s satellite service or to its competitor, Virgin Media. Yet it is Sky’s hold on the top-tier movie line up that has helped constrain take up of superfast broadband. Recent launches of Netflix and Lovefilm’s UK online movie subscription services have not helped superfast broadband take-up because they don’t have the rights that Sky has. This said, these services together with Google TV and YouView launches will add to the mix and continue to bring on-demand to people’s attention.

So, we will see people taking advantage of superfast broadband as the content becomes available that people want, but don’t expect this to increase rapidly. A caveat remains that we need a competitive market around film and other on-demand content, which we are unlikely to have whilst Sky is able to retain its dominance around premium movie rights.

YouView’s Chairman, Lord Alan Sugar, appeared on ITV’s Daybreak this morning to show off YouView to the general public.

Like Freeview, the service is via a set top box, and following purchase the service is free. People will be able to access content from the last seven days from around 300 channels, and record shows and receive programme recommendations. Although the service will be transmitted over the internet, the idea is that people will experience it like traditional television.

At the inception of the You View project (originally conceived as ‘Project Canvas’) in December 2011, its joint-venture partners, which include the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five, believed that the service would radically shake up the broadcasting landscape.

Unfortunately, the £115m project’s long and convoluted route to market dramatically undermines these hopes - from disagreements with BSkyB about how much the BBC would be able to control the project, to on running changes at the top, culminating in Lord Sugar’s inauguration as Chairman last March.

I remember writing back in 2009 that unless it came to market quickly, it would miss the boat. Originally scheduled for late 2010, then pushed back to summer 2011, then Spring 2012, now in beta-trials with 2,200 users and not planned to be fully up and running until the fourth quarter of this year, the boat has long departed.

The DVR element is important. A half of households own a DVR, and recent research shows DVR households generally prefer using their DVRs over video-on-demand because of the control over content they have, including not being restricted to seven day catch up. So why not just buy a DVR for under half the price of a YouView desk top box? Further, as DVR penetration has risen then so the market of people likely to buy a DVR has shrunk. If they haven’t bought one already, they are considerably less likely to buy one now, especially one that costs nearly £300.

The main proposition of course is ‘like iPlayer, only straight to TV’. Yet that space is getting smaller. Virgin Media has a fifth of all fixed line broadband households, and Sky has Anytime+. This leaves Freeview only homes, which currently stands at around a third of all households.

Many analysts and YouView believe that Freeview only homes will be YouView’s main market. But just who is this one third of households? Nearly half of them are aged over 55, which makes them much less likely than average to buy a YouView box. A quarter are aged under 35, yet two thirds of under 35s already watch VoD via their games devices. Even people with internet connected TVs (‘smart TVs’) are more likely to watch VoD via their games devices than they are via the apps on their TVs.

All of this isn’t to say YouView won’t shift some boxes. It will. But I doubt these will be sufficient to justify the significant amount of time and investment that has gone into the four year project.

There are rumours that Apple want to produce television sets. In theory, as with the iPhone and iPod, doing so would likely lead to people giving Apple a further role in their everyday routines, only this time embedded in the routines of whole households rather than individuals.

However, unlike with personal music devices and mobile phones, it is unclear that Apple has a major role to play. Apple gave us ease of use and content through touch screens and apps, among other things. Translated to the television, this means that Apple would have to change the content and navigability parts of the value proposition.

Navigability would be the simpler of the two to accomplish. But navigate what? Content wise, Apple would need to go beyond being able to access web content. Most likely this would mean iTunes, with people being able to access, rent and buy programs they want. Other media companies are already taking up this space, but within the confines of rights agreements. Any game changer Apple would have to make would be around rights - something over which Apple has less control than it does over technology. A major complaint about YouView is its short catch up period (seven days). This illustrates just how reluctant content owners are to cede ground over licensing.

Today brings news that Sony and Google have partnered to make Google’s TV service available in the UK. Google TV set-top boxes will launch in the third week of July for £200-£300. Apple’s TV box currently costs £99.

People will be able to use the Android run devices to browse the internet and access applications through their televisions, as well as watching broadcast TV.

The obvious question is, who is likely to buy it? There are a couple of issues that will impact take up.

Firstly, most people’s experiences of Google is that it does search, maps and documents. Even those few who know Google owns YouTube are likely to think of it as being ‘online’. That’s quite a different proposition from people considering it a hardware creator (unlike Apple with its Apple TV) to which they are willing to give a central role in providing valuable household front room entertainment.

Along with this, will be a concern among many people that it will be complicated to use – a bit ‘geeky’ perhaps. Applications? On TV? Research from Touchpoints 2012 show that only one fifth of people who own internet connected TVs (TVs with apps that people can use to access VoD content) actually use the VoD apps on their TVs. In contrast, just under half of internet connected TV owners use games devices and services such as X-Box and Virgin Media to watch VoD content on their TVs.

Much of this is due to ease of use and people’s willingness to use devices that are already embedded in their television routines. Some of the proof is in the numbers. Touchpoints 2012 shows that only 9% of households own a connected TV, and only 2% of households that do not own one expect to buy one over the next twelve months. In contrast, 42% of households access VoD either through a games device, Sky or Virgin on Demand at least once a month. Like rain running down a road, people find the simplest and quickest routes to get to their destination.

For people who do not own a games device or do not use these services, there is another simple choice to make. Spend £200-£300 for a Google TV set top box, or £250 on an X-Box or a PS3 and get VoD plus games, video, music and photos thrown in?

Of course, this opens up questions about the launch of YouView, but that's for another time.