My impression of this project from the media coverage over the last year or so was that it is a standardisation effort for Internet connected set-top boxes. i.e. consistent user interface, applications, widgets, hardware capabilities, etc, and a joint effort between all the UK television channels (with the notable exception of Rupert Murdoch/News Corp, who are un-surprisingly a little bit anti) and some hardware manufacturers.
i.e. it's not so much about creation of new technologies, more about making sure that manufacturers and content providers are all working from the same page?
So that we can avoid all the crap that has been seen with the many set top boxes recently where one does hulu or whatever, another does iPlayer, another does Netflix, and each one doesn't do the others, and needs a custom app for each platform.
Reading through the comments on here, no-one seems to be looking at it from that point of view - but seem to be taking the stance of 'OMG!! We don't need new IPTV protocols/containers/codecs/etc'.
I always thought that their intent is really not too disimilar to GoogleTV - standardise the platform so everyone can get on with watching stuff, or selling people stuff to watch without worrying about which versions of which devices etc.