Broadband Video

Kaltura, a company that offers what it bills as the first open source broadband video platform, and LongTail Video, a company that offers an open source video player, will today announce that they have formed a strategic partnership which they claim will boost open standards, flexibility and innovation in the broadband video space.

In a posting on its corporate blog, Wednesday, broadband video publishing solutions provider, Brightcove, announced that it is powering Liv, a recently launched online TV channel from Virgin Media Television's Living TV brand which offers free, exclusive, original short-form content that is refreshed on a daily basis. The ad-supported channel is available on http://livingtv.co.uk; and is also distributed to a range of third-party Web sites and social media platforms, including Facebook, via Brightcove's distribution and syndication technologies.

San Francisco-based Reality Digital on Tuesday launched Reality Digital Spotlight, a white-label broadband video management and distribution platform. According to the company, Spotlight is an SaaS-based platform that eliminates the need for technical or video expertise and that makes it easy for businesses to:

Broadband video company, Magnify.net, has launched an application for the Boxee over-the-top-TV platform which it says will allow Boxee users to browse and view its over 60,000 broadband video channels on their home television sets. The company bills the new app as part of an ongoing strategy to provide cross-platform access to its video content, pointing out that 90% of Boxee's 600,000-strong installed base have apparently connected their computer to a flat-screen television. The deal will give Boxee subscribers access to a line-up of content that includes video from New York Magazine, Bicycling.com and Tasteofhome.com, and a range of community and niche channels.

The BBC said Wednesday that record numbers of people watched coverage of this year's Glastonbury Festival on-demand through its dedicated festival Web site and through its BBC Red Button interactive TV service. According to the corporation, the site--which offered highlights of around 60 acts playing on the festival's main stages--received 7.2 million video requests. Lady Gaga's performance proved the biggest draw, the BBC says, with 1.3 million requests, followed by Lily Allen's with 762,000 requests, and Blur's with 538,000 requests.

The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) last week announced the results of a study of broadband video users and their viewing habits that it commissioned from The Nielsen Company. The report, entitled "Crossing Over: Understanding Viewer Multi-Screen Migration" and billed as based on a complex, multi-dimensional segmentation analysis that was developed by Nielsen, focuses on a segment of consumers whom it dubs "Extreme Techies" and who it says watch significantly more broadband video than other consumers.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable MSO in the US, announced Thursday that it has signed a carriage deal with Smithsonian Networks, a joint venture between the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks. In addition for calling for the Smithsonian Channel to be added to Time Warner Cable's line-up of HDTV linear channels, the new agreement calls for Smithsonian Networks to offer a range of its programming on the MSO's HD VOD platform; on its broadband service, Road Runner High Speed Online; and on its interactive TV services, Start Over and Look Back. "We're thrilled to be a part of the Time Warner Cable family," Smithsonian Networks general manager, Tom Hayden, said in a prepared statement.