digital tv

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In this recorded episode of [itvt]'s talk radio show, "The TV of Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," Maha Ibrahim, general partner at venture capital firm, Canaan Partners, discusses her company's investment strategy. Among other things, she explains why Canaan is interested in early-stage HD broadband video providers; outlines the criteria that guide the company's investment decisions; and talks about some of the companies in Canaan's portfolio, including Tremor Media and Watercooler.

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Sefy Ariely, VP of sales and marketing at IPTV middleware and applications provider, Orca Interactive, discusses some of the company's newest offerings. They include an end-to-end hybrid solution for delivering TV over the open Internet, social TV applications, and a personalization capability that makes use of fingerprint-recognition technology. Ariely also discusses Orca's new deployment in Russia, the company's roadmap for the coming year, the significance of IMS for the IPTV space, how the current economic crisis is impacting the IPTV market, and much more.

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In this recorded episode of [itvt]'s talk radio show, "The TV of Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," Comcast Media Center (CMC) COO, Gary Traver, and Homer Gonzalez III, product manager for CMC’s HITS AxIS offering (note: the latter, whose name stands for "Headend in the Sky Advanced Interactive Services," is a centralized platform that operates on the National Authorization System and that is billed as being designed to support developers of advanced OCAP/tru2way and ETV/EBIF interactive TV applications and to facilitate th

The [itvt] editorial team is on the road this week and next, so we are covering most stories in round-up/summary form, and we anticipate that there will be some additional interruptions of our regular news publishing schedule beyond that. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience to our readers.

As was widely anticipated, 3D TV has emerged as one of the major themes of this year's Consumer Electronics Show--and a number of pieces of 3D TV news came across [itvt]'s desk, Tuesday. Here is a brief round-up:

[itvt] has just published interviews with Sezmi co-founder, chairman and president, Phil Wiser, and with Microsoft Xbox Live general manager, Marc Whitten.

Wiser discusses Sezmi's platform (a set-top box-based offering which the company bills as "combining traditional TV content, movies and Internet video in a single, easy-to-use product and service"), its programming partnerships and its various interactive, social and content-discovery capabilities; the company's monetization strategy and roadmap for the

MIPS Technologies, a company which, among other things, provides processors for home entertainment devices, announced this week that it has met what it describes as a "key milestone" in its ongoing efforts to drive the Android platform beyond mobile handsets: two months after announcing its port of the Android platform to the MIPS Architecture, the company says it is making the source code publicly available. It has also launched an Early Access Program for a small group of its key customers, which will have access to specific hardware and code optimizations before they are publicly available. It says that participants in the program will work closely with its engineering team and provide it with feedback and market expertise.

The US's second-largest cable operator, Time Warner Cable, and consumer electronics giant, Samsung, announced Monday that they have signed a "letter of commitment" for the continued development, purchase and deployment of Samsung tru2way-enabled set-top boxes, including the MSO's first second-source DVR. "We look to offer our customers advanced set-top boxes with features that are simple and easy to use," Mike Hayashi, Time Warner Cable's EVP of advanced engineering, said in a prepared statement.

Livestream (formerly Mogulus), a New York-based company which offers a platform that enables amateurs and professionals to produce and distribute live TV on the Internet (note: the company, which offers "Free" and "Pro" versions of its platform, bills the platform as offering, among other things, the ability to mix multiple live cameras, imported video clips and overlay graphics, and as allowing producers to broadcast live from a mobile phone, use a customizable Flash player with integrated chat, and develop a branded channel page on its Web site that incorporates interactive chat--for an in-depth overview of Li

Interactive TV and conditional access technology provider, NDS, announced last week that Indonesian pay-TV operator, PT. MNC Sky Vision (operates a premium service called Indovision and a more affordable service called Top TV), has selected an end-to-end NDS solution for its Indovision service, comprised of the company's MediaHighway middleware, its VideoGuard conditional access technology, and a customized EPG. The operator has also selected VideoGuard to secure its Top TV service, NDS says. PT.

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This issue contains back-to-back recorded episodes of [itvt]'s talk radio show, "The TV of Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," devoted to the latest crop of interactive media prototypes from the American Film Institute Digital Content Lab, and to the AFI DigiFest 2008 event that the Digital Content Lab organized earlier this month in Los Angeles.

In this recorded episode of [itvt]’s talk radio show, "The TV of Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," Dean Denhart, president and CEO of BlackArrow, a company that specializes in targeted advertising management technologies for on-demand platforms (note: among other things, the company recently announced that it had raised $20 million in new funding and that it had integrated its ad-management system with Akamai’s Media Framework), provides an overview of the company and its positioning in the market.

Industry
Copyright-Infringement Lawsuit against Veoh Dismissed
MTV Networks Acquires Social Networking Firm, Social Project
Starz Closes Vongo, Will Focus on Wholesale Offering, Starz Play
CableLabs CEO, Richard Green, to Step Down
Next New Networks Names Lance Podell CEO
BitTorrent Raises $17 Million

Technology
Panasonic Demo's Comcast-Connected tru2way TV Set at CEDIA
ZeeVee Begins Shipping ZvBox Internet-to-TV Device
eventIS, sofatronic Partner on Blu-ray VOD Solution
--Virgin Media Taps eventIS for Metadata Management
--eventIS in VOD Deals with ESR, TOYA, VOO, Axel Springer
MySpaceTV Launches Direct Video Record and Upload Functionality
--Streams Episodes of "Sorority Forever"
blinkx Launches Browser-Based Version of its Broadband TV Service
--Offers