YouView has released its Core Technical Specification white paper for prospective set-top-box manufacturers, and has announced that Huawei, Manhatten, Pace and Vestel have joined Cisco, Humax and Technicolor in expressing interest in developing kit for the new UK TV Platform.

The paper, which is a meaty 229 pages long, reveals a few choice details, including the fact that any YouView STB must have a minimum of 512MB of RAM (with a minimum bandwidth of 3Gbps), 320GB hard drive, and a picture resolution of 1280 x 720 (although we would hope for 1920 x 1080 for HD content).

It must offer a USB 2.0 port, HDMI v1.3  connection, two dual-mode DVB-T/T2 tuners (HD ready), and support for USB-connected external hard drives. There must also be Internet connectivity via Ethernet, although Wi-Fi support is optional.

Interesting, a Common Interface or CA card slot is not required. Pay content specific variations may appear, but the lack of one as standard hints at the move away from supporting services such as Top Up TV.

Of course, there's a hell of a lot of other information contained within its pages, but the Core Technical Specification document is intended for engineers, so can be impenetrable in places. To be honest, from what Pocket-lint has gathered so far, the minimum spec list isn't a million miles away from that for Freeview+ and similar devices.

We're still not expecting to see any actual YouView product until early 2012, but this white paper reassures that the project is now moving apace.

Are these specifications interesting? Or will they be old hat come next year, considering that both Sky and Virgin Media already offer alternatives featuring 1TB hard drives? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below...