Lord Sugar's YouView loses set-top box supplier

Lord Sugar has begun to make his presence felt at the helm of Freeview's much-delayed video-on-demand service, YouView, with one of the project's seven set-top box partners pulling out of the venture. Sugar replaced former Ofcom mandarin Kip Meek as chairman of YouView in March with a brief to ensure the problem-plagued service is available to consumers by early 2012. The £115m initiative, which is backed by Channel 5, BT, TalkTalk, ITV, Channel 4 and Arqiva, was originally due to launch in June. "We can confirm that Technicolor have decided to withdraw from YouView set-top box development," said a spokesman for YouView. "However, they were one of seven manufacturing partners and Youview remains on track for a consumer launch in early 2012." Sugar was brought in for his set-top box expertise. His company, Amstrad, at one time made home computers but had focused on TV technology by 2007, when it was sold for £125m to BSkyB. Technicolor's departure leaves six remaining device partners: Humax, Huawei, Pace, Manhattan, Vestel and Cisco. YouView was intended to "future proof" Freeview and Freesat by generating video-on-demand revenues for their founder broadcasters, but delays have allowed Virgin Media and Sky to get a headstart with their own internet TV services. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook