Over the Top

Announcing the Schedule of Sessions for TVOT NYC Intensive 2011

[itvt] is pleased to announce the schedule of sessions for the second annual TVOT NYC Intensive (Monday, December 5th, at 730 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan). A PDF version can be downloaded here.

AnySource Media, a company that offers an over-the-top-TV technology, called the Connected HDTV Platform, which it says will be embedded in certain new HDTV sets later this year (note: the company has not yet announced any partnerships with TV manufacturers) and will allow viewers to access hundreds of "virtual" on-demand channels "out of the box," announced Thursday that it has signed up two more content partners for its service: GetBack Media (offers programming on past and contemporary pop culture) and ON Networks (offers a range of factual/nonfiction programming organized into six categories: "Eat and Drink," "Fun and Gaming," "Mind a

DVD rental service provider, Netflix, last week announced another over-the-top deal for its service with a consumer electronics company: starting in the fall, subscribers to Netflix's unlimited plan (priced from $8.99 per month) will be able to instantly watch more than 12,000 streamed movies and TV episodes on Sony Electronics' Bravia Internet-connected HDTV sets, as well as on previous Bravia models equipped with Sony's Bravia Internet video link module, the company said. The other CE companies that have recently signed OTT deals with Netflix are Microsoft (for the Xbox 360), LG Electronics, Roku, Samsung, TiVo and Vizio. "Sony has been a world leader in consumer electronics for decades," Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, said in a prepared statement.

ZapMyTV--a company that is developing a "family-friendly" social broadband video portal that it says will broadcast live cable programming via the Internet across multiple social networking platforms and will also provide access to a range of theatrical motion picture content on an a la carte or subscription VOD basis (note: the company's "Interactive Content Environment"--or "ICE"--platform, which is currently in early beta, is slated to launch commercially later this year)--announced Wednesday that it has signed a license agreement with Paramount Digital Entertainment. The company claims that this is the first of several key strategic alliances with entertainment companies that it is set to announce in the near future.

Rockville, Maryland-based Hillcrest Labs (note: last year, the company announced that it had secured $25 million in a fourth round of funding--see [itvt] Issue 7.58 Part 1; it has raised a total of approximately $50 million to date) announced Monday that it is now selling its Loop remote control (or "pointer," as Hillcrest prefers to call it) directly to consumers as an "in-air mouse for TV," targeting what the company says is the growing number of people who are connecting their PC or Mac to a television set in order to access over-the-top video (n

Over-the-top-TV specialist, ZeeVee, has released an Apple Macintosh version of Zinc, its Internet video browser for the living room. (Note: Zinc is a free software application that provides a simple, 10-foot interface that is designed to be driven by a remote control. Targeted at consumers who want to watch Internet video on a TV set connected to their computer, it is based on Mozilla technology and is available as a Firefox plug-in or a standalone application.).

In a post on his company's blog, Tuesday, Avner Ronen, CEO of over-the-top-TV specialist, boxee, announced the availability of a Songza application for the boxee platform, that has been built using boxee's recently launched API (note: for more on the boxee API, see [itvt]'s interview with Ronen in Issue 8.38). Songza is an application that finds and plays free, legally distributed music files on the Internet.

Verismo, a Silicon Valley-based company that offers an over-the-top-TV platform called VuNow (enabled by a small set-top box device called the PoD), announced Thursday the latest software release for the platform, VuNow 3.0. New features provided by VuNow 3.0, according to the company, include:

In a post on his company's blog, Tuesday, boxee CEO, Avner Ronen, announced the "boxee App Dev Challenge," a competition designed to encourage developers to build new applications based on boxee's recently launched API (note: for more on the boxee API, see [itvt]'s interview with Ronen in Issue 8.38). "While people are working on a variety of boxee apps," Ronen wrote, "we thought it would be a good idea to provide some extra incentive for the developers."

IPTV home-connectivity solutions provider, Entone, said Tuesday that it has integrated Vudu's broadband video entertainment services with its "next-generation" media hubs.