News Round-Up

Here is a round-up of some other interactive TV-related stories we didn't have room for in this issue:

• A new patent application from Apple, which has just been published by the US Patent & Trademark Office, suggests that the company is planning to expand its MobileMe service into video, according to an article in Patently Apple. "Generally speaking, Apple's patent relates to synchronizing media state across multiple devices," Patently Apple writes. "Specifically, the patent provides us with a scenario whereby you'll be able to partially view television or any video content on your iPhone, say during your lunch hour, and then switch to Apple TV when you get home and continue viewing that content from exactly where you left off at lunch without having to manually reposition playback of the content."
• As expected (see the article published on itvt.com, October 15th), BSkyB has announced a deal with IP Vision to make its Sky Player broadband video service available on the latter's hybrid DTT/IP Fetch TV SmartBox devices. The service will be available on the Fetch TV platform alongside Freeview linear-TV channels, Fetch TV's own VOD service, and the BBC iPlayer. "Existing Sky TV customers will be able to access a range of content for no extra cost based on their core subscription, whilst non-Sky customers will be able to sign up to a choice of TV packages via a monthly subscription paid directly to Sky," BSkyB says.
• Canoe Ventures, the company tasked with implementing the US cable industry's plans for interactive and addressable advertising (note: its backers are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House), claims to be "on track to have an underlying advanced ad platform in place by year's end, giving its MSO backers, programmers, and advertising agencies a system that can scale to millions of cable subs," according to an article by Jeff Baumgartner of Cable Digital News. The Canoe Advanced Advertising Platform (CAAP), as the platform is called, is designed to connect operators' and programmers' various advanced advertising and business systems with ad agencies' ad-buying and billing systems.
• Cox Communications has announced the line-up of fall-season primetime shows that it is offering on its MyPrimetime VOD service. The service makes available episodes of primetime series from ABC, NBC, Cartoon Network, FX, TBS, AMC, USA Network, Travel Channel, TNT, Disney and other programmers free-of-charge, the day after their linear broadcast.
• Emirates Telecommunications Corp. (Etilasat) has acquired a 16.6% stake in SoftAtHome, a company created by France Telecom-subsidiary, Orange, that aims to help service providers deliver convergent applications for the digital home.
• The Independent Film Channel (IFC) last week tapped live streaming video specialist, Ustream, to power live streaming coverage on IFC.com and PythOnline.com of the 40th anniversary reunion of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Ustream also allowed users to embed video of the event in blogs and other Web sites.
• Ooyala has announced the launch of native support for closed captioning on its Backlot broadband video platform. "In addition to making content more useful and accessible to international audiences and individuals with hearing impairments, the additional metadata will make the videos more discoverable via search engines," the company claims in a posting on its corporate blog.
• SeaChange International says that it will be demo'ing broadband-based video delivery to mobile devices, TV's and PC's at the Cable-Tec Expo in Denver next week. "Historically known for being the leader in video-on-demand, SeaChange has expanded its capabilities into the mobile sector supporting leading operators including Vodafone, 3 UK and O2," the company states in its publicity materials for the show. Adds the company's chief strategy officer, Yvette Kanouff: "We have taken our leadership position from the world of television and expanded into the mobile and PC environments--and the proof is in the numbers. What makes SeaChange different is that we are already delivering video to three screens. SeaChange supports high-quality video delivery to more than 1,500 mobile handset makes and models, including Apple's iPhone, and is delivering more than 40,000 hours of mobile video per month. Combined with the 42 million set-top boxes that SeaChange supports, it is evident that the company's move into the mobile and PC sectors allows SeaChange to continue to make TV personal on any device."
• Tim Hanlon, widely recognized as one of the US's foremost experts on interactive TV ads and other forms of advanced advertising, is set to leave Publicis Groupe--where he currently serves as EVP/managing director of the company's VivaKi Ventures unit--at the end of the month, according to a report in MediaPost that was subsequently seemingly confirmed by Hanlon himself via Twitter. For more on Hanlon, see [itvt]'s August 23rd, 2006 interview with him here.