Lord Sugar's internet TV venture is unlikely to grip the nation

On Wednesday Lord Sugar will unveil the chronically-delayed YouView internet television service. If the £115m project had been a task for his apprentices, then those who had failed to get the product to market in time to showcase the London Olympics would surely have been fired.

YouView, we were informed when the idea was launched in 2010, would be the living room box that changed everything. It would allow us to scroll backwards for a week on programme menus, as well as forwards, and offer interaction with social media sites. YouView would have "bleeding-edge technology" and a "massive range of content", chief executive Richard Halton told me during a guided tour two years ago.

We were led to expect channels from a host of new internet broadcasters, ranging from arts organisations to charities, and we were promised that the service would be available from last summer.

In fact, the reveal this week feels like a panicky attempt to tell the public that YouView is "nearly there", but it won't be over the line in time for the most important British digital broadcasting opportunity of them all. The BBC announced last week that it would be streaming 24 channels of Olympics content on Facebook, the first time the broadcaster has partnered with the social media giant in this way. The BBC's coverage of the Games could transform the public's idea of the potential of internet television.

Meanwhile, Apple TV already offers television, films, YouTube streaming and all the content from your other Apple devices for £99. Smart TV providers such as Samsung give access to the BBC iPlayer, YouTube and film providers Netflix and LoveFilm. Sky will launch its Now TV internet television brand imminently. Virgin Media, which is planning something similar, already provides most of the features that YouView will offer. Sony has announced that it will be bringing Google TV to Europe from September, while the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox consoles are being positioned as home entertainment hubs with internet access, television and film content as well as gaming.

Into this crowded market, YouView will emerge this autumn, with a price tag somewhere over £200 for the box but no charge for its basic service. Its core market will be the 20 million households that currently take the free-to-air Freeview service. Lord Sugar will not be amused by news that millions of Freeview customers face bills of up to £212 for installing filter equipment to protect their television signals from interference caused by the 4G mobile network that is due to launch next year.

Much is riding on YouView. The partner organisations (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BT Vision, TalkTalk and Arqiva) are expected to invest more than £16m each in the system, which is based on an idea Halton, a former senior BBC strategist, had five years ago. An earlier incarnation, Project Canvas, was launched in 2008 but became "stuck in the regulatory weeds", said Halton. YouView has also struggled, and Lord Sugar was brought in early last year to "cure or kill" the scheme.

Marc Watson, chief executive of BT Vision, told me last week that the company was "actually pretty relaxed about the timing" of YouView's launch, arguing that "things have not moved on as fast as we feared they might" in the market and that the public were now receptive to the benefits of internet television. "We still believe it has the potential to be a game changer," he said.

But the exciting talk of two years ago has gone. YouView will not be capable of searching the internet and it will launch without those non-traditional broadcasters who could revolutionise the viewing experience. Social interaction and obscure content are pleasures that customers must enjoy on their mobiles or tablets. "We don't see any evidence that customers really want to search the internet on their telly – they have got other devices they can do that with," said Watson.

Instead, the marketing message will focus on YouView's simplicity of use. The final weeks to launch will be spent on improving the speed of navigation of its library of about 20,000 programmes, plus film and music services. Users will be able to scroll backwards and forwards through the channel guide and watch programmes recommended for them based on their viewing habits. "The thing we thought was very important was that this remains a television experience," said Watson. "We wanted to make this as unintrusive as possible."