 At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco last week, Yahoo! and Intel announced plans to launch the Widget Channel, an application framework which they say will allow operators, content providers, advertisers and others to develop Internet-based mini-applications, dubbed "TV Widgets," for broadband-connected TV's and other  consumer electronics devices, using Web standards and tools such as JavaScript, XML, HTML and Adobe Flash.
In this recorded episode of [itvt]'s talk radio show, "The TV of
Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," Dalen Harrison, CEO of
Ensequence; Peter Low, president and COO of Ensequence; Bill
Niemeyer, chief of analysis and research at BlackArrow; Gowri
Shankar, SVP of sales and business development at
Late last week, Integra5--a Burlington, Massachusetts-based company
which specializes in technologies for converged services and which has
secured around 30 operator customers to date--announced its first win
with a tier-one operator: Canada's third-largest cable company,
Videotron, has deployed the company's i5 Converged Services
Platform (i5 CSP) and is using the platform's i5 TV Caller ID
application to offer a service--branded illico Caller ID--to all its
subscribers (note: Videotron, which offers broadband, telephony and
In this recorded episode of [itvt]'s talk radio show, "The TV of
Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," Fred Singer, CEO of
Anystream, and Russell Zack, the company's VP of product
management, discuss its new partnership with NBC that sees it
powering the delivery of the broadcaster's on-demand coverage of the
Beijing Olympics to VOD, Web, electronic sell-through and mobile
platforms. Topics covered include the capabilities of Anystream's
Media Lifecycle platform; how the company is using Microsoft
Dublin, Ireland-based interactive TV advertising and authoring
solutions provider, emuse, has teamed with Carat to create a
video-enabled ITV advertising campaign, dubbed "Join the Quest," for
Disney's new "Chronicles of Narnia" movie, "Prince Caspian."
According to emuse, the new campaign--a bespoke version of which
was also created for the Sky satellite platform--is the first interactive
advertising campaign to launch on BT Vision, the Microsoft
Mediaroom-powered IPTV service of UK incumbent telco, BT (note:
the service offers a range of on-demand content via a hybrid set-top
box that also receives channels from the UK's free-to-air digital
terrestrial service, Freeview). The BT version of the campaign provides
New York-area MSO, Cablevision, has signed deals with MTV Networks and BET Networks,
under which several hundred programs from MTVN's MTV, MTV2, VH1, VH1 Classic, CMT, Comedy Central,
Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Noggin, The N, and Logo channels, and from BETN's BET channel have been added to its iO digital cable platform's VOD
service. The programs, which are available on the service free of charge, include "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" (Comedy Central),
"Exes & Ohs" (Logo), "Baldwin Hills" (BET), "Blue's Clues" (Nick Jr.), "Franklin" (Noggin), "From G's to Gents" (MTV), "Brooke Knows Best"
(VH1), "Trick My Truck" (CMT), and "Degrassi: The Next Generation" (The N). Cablevision claims that its VOD service offers around 3,500 titles.
In other Cablevision VOD news:
CNN's user-generated news service, iReport, has launched a
user-generated short film competition. Entitled the iReport Film
Festival, the competition invites voters to document this year's US
presidential campaign from their personal vantage point, whether they
are volunteering for one of the campaigns or simply have compelling
stories about the election that they want to document creatively. "CNN
was the first network to launch user-generated news coverage, with
iReport, and then pioneered its integration into political coverage
beginning with last year's groundbreaking CNN/YouTube presidential
debates," Jon Klein, president of CNN US, said in a prepared
US broadcast network, ABC, announced earlier this month that the
Move Networks-powered ABC.com Full Episode Player achieved its
best viewership figures to date in May, thanks in large part to the
availability of the season finales of the primetime shows, "Lost,"
"Grey's Anatomy," "Desperate Housewives" and "Ugly Betty."
According to the company, citing data supplied by Move Networks,
ABC.com users watched a record 815 million minutes of full-length
episodes on the player during the month, representing a 53% increase
over the previous month and a 110% increase over May, 2007. In
addition, ABC says, viewers watched 37 million episodes, representing
an increase of 27% over the previous month, and each viewer generally
The BBC has launched a new version of its broadband video
player/catch-up service, the BBC iPlayer. Among other things, the new
version integrates TV and radio in a single interface, which the BBC
bills as allowing smoother and easier navigation between TV and radio
programs. In addition, end-users can now choose between listening to
BBC Radio shows from the past seven weeks, with what the BBC
claims is better sound quality, or listening to live BBC radio
broadcasts; and the player also offers a pop-out widget that lets users
listen as they browse other Web pages.
Other new features include "Last Played," which allows users to
--Signs Programming Deals with Sony, Crackle, CBS, Showtime
Adobe Systems has released its first update to Adobe Media Player, the
customizable, cross-platform media player software (enables playback
of streamed, downloaded or locally stored video in the FLV or H.264
formats) that it launched in April (see [itvt] Issue 7.77 Part 2a).
According to the company, the new version of the player features
significant user interface and navigation enhancements (making for
what the company describes as a "clean, more intuitive user interface");
a new home screen; notifications that update users about new content
available through the player; and the ability to download content in the
background while working on other tasks.
DVD's-by-mail company, Netflix--which recently teamed with
streaming media specialist, Roku, on a $99.99 set-top box, dubbed
The Netflix Player by Roku, that allows Netflix subscribers to
stream a selection of movies and TV shows from Netflix' library
directly to their TV sets, recently signed a deal
with Microsoft to enable its customers to instantly stream movies
and TV shows from its library on their television sets via
Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console. The exclusive deal
designates the Xbox as the only game system that will allow
consumers to instantly watch titles streamed from Netflix. The new
service will be available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also
Netflix subscribers, and will enable them to access Netflix titles at
no additional cost.
CaribeVision Television Network--a 24/7 advertising-supported
channel targeted at Latino and general audience viewers who have an
interest in the culture and lifestyle of the Caribbean (it is carried by a
number of MSO's, including Time Warner Cable and Comcast, and is
available in the New York, Miami and Puerto Rico markets)--has
signed a deal with Tactical Wireless that sees the companies
developing an SMS-based service to accompany CaribeVision's shows.
In addition to enabling CaribeVision viewers to submit opinions and
commentaries to a shortcode (note: the shortcode, 95057, can be
accessed by customers of any US carrier), the service will eventually
offer a subscription system and mobile alerts: viewers will be able to
Harmonic, Inc. says that cable operator, Bresnan Communications
(which has around 300,000 subscribers) has deployed its Narrowcast
Service Gateway (NSG) 9000 and 9116 edgeQAM's with Privacy
Mode encryption, in order to increase its VOD capacity. According to
Harmonic, the NSG product's integrated support for real-time
encryption at the network edge will allow Bresnan to reliably protect
VOD assets as they are delivered to the home; and the NSG 9000 will
also provide the operator with the option of migrating to a modular
cable modem termination system (M-CMTS) in the future. Both NSG
products are billed as performing a range of other functions at the edge,
including multiplexing, program routing, PCR restamping, QAM
--ANT Names Jim Denenny GM for the Americas
UK-based digital TV software company, ANT, has generated a fair
amount of news over the past few weeks:
- Unihan, a wholly owned subsidiary of AsusTek, has licensed the
company's ANT Galio Browser for its new set-top boxes. The first
customer for the new ANT-powered Unihan set-tops is Japanese
content delivery systems integrator and service provider, Cool.revo,
which is planning to launch new IPTV services in Q1, 2009. "We
selected ANT Galio Browser for our latest set-top box solution as it is
one of the most flexible solutions available," Unihan general manager,
Steve Huang, said in a prepared statement. "By using it, service
Cork, Ireland-based interactive TV and IPTV technology provider,
DigiSoft (note: the company, which has racked up some significant
successes in the Italian market, also operates offices in the US, the UK,
Singapore and New Zealand), has announced the general availability of
its eRental Movie Download Platform, which enables consumers to
download standard- and high-definition movies from in-store kiosks to
a portable storage device for later viewing. According to DigiSoft,
eRental combines increasingly affordable portable memory technology
with the latest security technology from Verimatrix and support for
video compression standards in a patented package. The solution was
|
|
The 2nd Annual TVOT NYC Intensive
The second annual TVOT NYC Intensive took place on Monday, December 5th at 730 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. We would like to thank everybody who participated and attended for making the event a success!
Read more about the highlights - video and photos to be posted soon.
To find out about future event sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, contact us at swedlow@itvt.com or 415-824-5806
|
|
