Disney’s US national broadcast network ABC, is planning to stream high-definition video from its web site including episodes of series such as Lost, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty, in 720 resolution, starting from next month. ABC will use technology from Move Networks to deliver the streams. Move is a company that parent Disney has invested in, which specializes in something it calls Simulcoding, which is creating multiple encoded versions for each piece of video, which require different bandwidths, and switching dynamically between them as the internet allows more or less throughput.
Sony Electronics this week has begun shipping a new Blu-ray Disk player in the US with a recommended retail price of $499, around $100 cheaper than it originally announced. The BDP-S300 runs right up to 1080p definition if your TV can take it,
Everyone now has the iPhone launch on June 29 from AT&T and most analysts are guessing between 4 million and 5 million will be shipped in the current year, and another 15 million next year, which is pretty much what Apple has said all along.
TelCo Group a Russian TV equipment distributor and system integrator has integrated the Encryptonite One DRM system from US specialist SecureMedia in its eScentra middleware platform, VOD servers and set tops.
Microsoft has already fitted its Soapbox video sharing site with copyright filtering software, something MySpace managed in short time, but which Google’s YouTube has been inexplicably unable to manage. Soapbox will now conduct proactive filtering of all uploaded content, using technology from Audible Magic.
The GSM Association (GSMA) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) have agreed to cooperate on the development of mobile advertising standards and transparency around mobile advertising activity, and to develop new, innovative advertising techniques. Last week we reported that the GSMA has formed its own committee to look into this very thing, but will now work with the MMA which will lead the development of guidelines, formats and best practices.
Babelgum said this week that it will broadcast live music entertainment and dance music from the Ministry of Sound TV (MoSTV). MoSTV focuses exclusively on the dance music scene and will be delivering content from this summer’s Ibiza season over Babelgum. This is the first official content deal announced by Babelgum, and falls far short of the deals that rival Joost has managed to amass so far.
Talking of Joost, it has just had a management re-shuffle, bringing in Cisco old-timer Mike Volpi as the new CEO replacing founding CEO, Fredrik de Wahl, who will remain at Joost as Chief Strategy Officer. Volpi worked for 13 years in charge of things like Routing for Cisco and until recently had Scientific Atlanta report to him.
Qualcomm and French handset maker Sagem have signed a royalty deal to use the Qualcomm patents that relate to WCDMA handsets. Not quite sure how Sagem managed without one for so long, and we wonder if this is perhaps a crackdown on licensing, due to the situation Qualcomm finds itself in with Nokia.
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer told the Wall Street Journal this week that the company had no plans to build its own cellular handset in response to Apple’s eagerly anticipated iPhone. Instead it will focus efforts on growing its market share in portable media players. The Zune player has now sold 1 million devices, compared to Apple’s 100 million. However Taiwan’s HTC, previously the phone-maker of choice for Microsoft, until it announced its own-brand handsets, says that it has a new device that does use Microsoft Windows Mobile and does the job of the iPhone. The HTC Touch uses touch screens and a three dimensional interface to navigate services on the 112 gram device.
The European Commission has extended the deadline for Apple and the major global record labels until 20 June 2007 to respond to claims of anti-trust pricing. Apple, Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music have to respond to the EC’s Statement of Objections, which focuses on only being able to buy music from the Apple music store in their own country of residence rather than neighboring countries. Since the pricing is the same, and the currency in most countries is the Euro, we’re not sure how much damage is going on here.
Advanced Digital Broadcast, the Swiss set top maker has joined the Multimedia over Coax Alliance group MoCA, as an associate member and says that MoCA is emerging as a strong standard for video distribution.
Gadget websites, including Engadget itself have come out this week and said that AT&T plans to link its U-Verse service to the internet using Apple TV. As far as we can work out the device doesn’t actually need AT&T’s blessing, to work, but it AT&T decides that it wants to sell Apple TV, that could change the outlook for the device. The move is counter intuitive with the idea that AT&T might sell Microsoft’s Xbox, unless it will source them both and let customers decide. Xbox is being prepared as a set top for Microsoft IPTV, but it also allows video from the Xbox Live service, to be played on a connected TV.
Over the past 12 months around 65 million new broadband subscribers have signed up for high-speed access to the Internet, says researcher In-Stat
And by 2011 it believes that the total worldwide broadband subscribers will reach 567 million, almost double the current 285 million subscriber base. We just thought we’d point out that most analyst are shooting for slightly lower figures than this with around 50 million new subscribers a year.
We’re a little suspicious but a release from Widevine says that it has landed the DRM business at second tier US telco Surewest Communications for its IPTV services. Back in December 2005 Surewest was one of the first to offer HD programming on IPTV and we’re sure that Irdeto was the incumbent DRM on that deal along with Minerva for the middleware, Kasenna for VoD and Amino set tops. Perhaps the Widevine deal is about taking the content onto handsets and portable devices? We’ll let you know.
RealNetworks, after years without updating its media player brought out a new version this week to support online videos from web sites with a single click. The new RealPlayer allows watching videos, burning them to DVD, and using a RealPlayer CD format which can be played on most DVD players. The player supports Real formats, Windows Media, Flash, and Quicktime and will be available free next month. We’re not sure, but that may be more formats than any other player.
The US Federal Trade Commission decided after all to open a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of the ad serving network DoubleClick, over fears raised by consumer advocates over privacy.