Interactive TV News Round-Up (II)

Here is the second of two round-ups of interactive TV/multiplatform video-related stories we didn't have room for in this issue:

• Prague-based KIT Digital, which describes itself as a "provider of cloud-based video asset management solutions for multiscreen delivery," has announced that it has separately acquired New York-based KickApps, Paris-based Kewego, and San Francisco-based Kyte for a total of around $77.2 million. The company enumerates the benefits of the acquisitions as follows: "1) Acceleration of KIT's product roadmap by 12-18 months by adding several key technology and product features, including advanced social media tools (KickApps), superior mobile publishing and software development kit (SDK) features (Kyte), and behind-the-firewall and digital signage capabilities for enterprise clients (Kewego); 2) KickApps' applications and development tools deepen KIT's ability to integrate new technology assets and form the foundation for accelerated client deployments; 3) support and extension of KIT's three major client verticals, adding particular expertise around transportation, automotive, manufacturing and fan-based media assets (such as sports teams and celebrity sites); 4) strong management additions to KIT's global team, including R&D and business development hubs in San Francisco and New York; 5) aggregate transaction accretive on both a trailing-revenue and EBITDA-multiple basis; 6) combined 2010 revenues of acquired companies is estimated to have been approximately US$25 million, the vast majority of which was derived from recurring licenses in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model; 7) the acquired companies have been growing between 20-35% per year historically on a standalone basis; 8) quality new shareholders, including the appointment to the KIT digital board of Santo Politi, founder and general partner of Spark Capital, the venture capital firm behind Twitter, Boxee and thePlatform."


• NewBay has launched its Adaptation and Delivery Manager (ADM), a new on-demand video component of its LifeCache Platform. "Operators or device makers using ADM, either as a standalone product or as a component of a broader LifeCache Platform deployment, can now instantly optimize delivery of millions of videos, for millions of users, to any connected device," the company states in its press materials. "In addition, this form of just-in-time delivery lowers video storage costs by as much as 60 percent, reduces network impact and improves the end-user experience for accessing videos across multiple devices...Providing the best possible user experience is critical to the success of any video service. Until now, enabling instant access to video content required preemptively transcoding all video into multiple formats to suit various device capabilities and network bandwidth. Consequently, each megabyte of uploaded content could require five to six megabytes of storage space. This approach is prohibitively expensive when scaled for operator or device-maker cloud-based video services that generate petabytes of storage. To address this issue, NewBay created LifeCache Adaptation and Delivery Manager to perform just-in-time adaptation. LifeCache ADM manages pools of dedicated hardware and software transcoders that detect client capabilities and transcode appropriately in real time, while also writing to smart video-aware caches for subsequent re-use. This eliminates wasteful storage of preemptively transcoded files that might never be accessed, and results in up to 60 percent savings for the video provider. LifeCache ADM also applies this model to other forms of content including images, audio/music and documents. Images are converted to thumbnails and watermarked, audio is transcoded and documents are converted to PDF or HTML, all behind the scenes for the end-user to enjoy from any Internet-connected device. Additionally, LifeCache ADM supports a wide range of multimedia containers, codecs and a flexible set of delivery mechanisms including HTTP Progressive Download, RTSP/RTMP streaming and HTTP Live Streaming (iPhone/iPad). The ADM can be deployed as a standalone solution or as a supporting component in an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Rich Communication Suite (RCS) and other content delivery services."


• PrimeSense, the Tel Aviv-based provider of motion-sensing and recognition solutions whose technology powers Microsoft Kinect, expects at least one US cable MSO to deploy a product this year that will allow viewers to use hand gestures to navigate their TV experience, and claims to be conducting trials with a number of MSO's, Steve Donohue reports in Light Reading Cable.