Photos: Inside BT's world of innovation

The next step in BT's home offerings will be the BT Vision box, due for release around the end of October. The device is a bit like a Sky+ box in that it contains a hard-drive recorder and allows “catch-up” viewing if the user misses their favourite show.

The Vision box is IP-driven, connecting to the Internet via the BT wireless hub, and can be used to display the variety of content — such as video on demand — available through BT's portal. The TV screen will display notification of incoming calls and the box will even be capable of running video-conferences. This could let users discuss a TV show with their friends as they watched it, says BT, although the feature will not be available on the Vision box when it first comes out.

The box is also capable of supporting high definition multimedia interface (HDMI) technology.