It is easy to use and not very expensive and according to Lynch it has a range of

It is easy to use and not very expensive and, according to Lynch, it has a range of applications outside conventional television. “The interactivity makes it particularly useful for distance learning and e-government initiatives,” he enthuses.But how confident is he? Sky says it will have sold 300,000 Sky+ boxes by the summer, but Lynch won’t reveal his sales targets. All he will says is: “The economics of this mean that we can be profitable with surprisingly few subscribers. And we can easily roll it out to other areas of the country.”Other, however, do not share his enthusiasm. HomeChoice had its chance before Sky, cable and Freeview cemented their positions – and messed up, according to Dario Betti, media analyst at Ovum Research. “In the technology business timing is everything,” Betti says.

He is concerned that HomeChoice may be too early and too late to be successful. “It’s an outstanding product but it will depend for success on the uptake of broadband to work commercially, and that is happening very late in the UK,” he says.”By the time enough people have broadband, I fear that there will be little or no room in the digital TV market for a new player. They will need to steal customers from existing platforms, and that will be very, very hard.”. The relief among staff at The Daily Telegraph that the Barclay brothers had beaten Richard Desmond to become their new proprietors has given way to apprehension over the possible arrival of the brothers’ henchman. According to one Telegraph executive: “There’s a feeling among many that they are quite frightened at the prospect of the arrival of Andrew Neil. He doesn’t take prisoners and he does interfere.”One of the reporters predicted that if Mr Neil were to arrive at the group’s headquarters in London’s Docklands he would quickly fall out with some existing executives.”He wouldn’t really fit in with the culture, which is old Tory,” he said “He’s just a bit Murdoch- that’s where he grew up. He’s a lot harder and not as genial and probably would put a few backs up.”Another senior member of staff said the potential arrival of Mr Neil was widely seen as “a bit of a worry”.Gossip among staff in the Telegraph offices in Canary Wharf has included the possible working relationship between Mr Neil and Sarah Sands, deputy editor of the daily newspaper.In one of a series of articles about The Daily Telegraph in his column in the Evening Standard, Mr Neil blamed Ms Sands for making the features pages “unoriginal, sometimes even stale”.The Daily Telegraph went out of its way yesterday to point out that Mr Neil “was not involved in the negotiations” to buy the papers..

Directors of Hollinger International, which publishes The Daily Telegraph, will meet today to see if they can block the sale of a controlling stake in the media empire to the Barclay brothers. However, Lord Black’s sale of his stake in Hollinger Inc, the company which controls Hollinger International, seemed to make the Lazards process largely irrelevant, analysts said.Richard Desmond, publisher of The Daily Express, and the company behind The Daily Mail, were among the businesses that were negotiating with Lazards to buy the Telegraph. However, Lord Black’s by-passing of the Hollinger board and Lazards is said to have left the board furious.Instead of buying the newspapers, which Lazards wanted the Barclays simply bought Lord Black’s controlling share in Hollinger International – at a knock-down price. The number of people dying from the incurable disease, which can take between 30 and 40 years to develop, is expected to increase from 3,000 a year to more than 10,000 in 15 to 20 years’ time. Legal cases normally take so long that the victim is dead before payments can be made.The compensation awarded to Mr Guthrie signals a huge and increasing bill for industry and its insurers as cases of mesothelioma increase in the next two decades. A man with little more than a year to live has won a record £285,000 in compensation after contracting cancer through exposure to asbestos. The shadow Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, said the Conservatives would do everything they could to help any review “which leads to the removal of miscarriages of justice”..