We should have known really but the Sony Bravia internet Video Link, which will be bundled with all of the top of the range US Sony flat LCD TVs, so that they can watch internet based TV, was provided by Norwegian browser specialist Opera and will be used to enable browsing of Internet video content that can be streamed directly to the television from providers such as Yahoo!, AOL and Sony’s own Crackle (nee Grouper).
French encoder specialist Ateme, has been picked by Korea Telecom to supply its Kyrion encoders for encoding VoD movies for its new MegaTV web TV service, which it is pushing, given the speed of fiber downloads there, as an IPTV service. KT plans to deliver 2,000 hours a month of material to subscribers. Ateme has also landed a contract with international luxury network Luxe.TV for H.264 encoding for HD satellite transmissions.
Conditional access market leader NDS said that Yes, the local Israeli satellite broadcaster, will implement NDS VideoGuard PCTM to secure its new web-based video portal. This is the first installation for VideoGuard PC, which integrates the current Yes headend with standard web technology. NDS also said it signed a deal with cable operator Serbia Broadband for a system to guard its national cable TV service and with Korea’s Maxian’ to protect content on portable media players using its Secure Video Processor specification. Hey that’s one deal for each screen this week.
ECI Telecom said that Bharti Airtel, one of India’s incumbent telecos, has chosen ECI equipment for its nationwide optical network expansion from 2.5 Gbps to 10 Gbps and Metro wide DWDM. This one-year contract will use ECI’s advanced XDM Converged Multi-Service Provisioning Platform to allow Bharti to add broadband data, voice and leased lines.
Californian videogame and virtual world developer Trilogy Studios, said this week it has closed a second $3.2 million round of funding, and will use the money to expand its virtual world and massively multiplayer online gaming capabilities.
Samsung Electronics will become a new supplier to UK DTH supplier BSkyB for HD set-top boxes and DVRS joining existing suppliers Thomson, Amstrad and Pace. BSkyB has just agreed to acquire Amstrad, but the deal is under regulator investigation.
The UK’s National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) has agreed to a settlement of $130 million from Bertelsmann, relating to its involvement in the illegal file sharing version of Napster, the online P2P download service which the NMPA accused of copyright infringement. Previous settlements with Bertelsmann were for $60 million with UMG, for around $110 million with the Warner Music Group and with EMI for an undisclosed sum, possibly around $100 million. In all Bertelsmann has shelled out $400 million simply because it made an investment in Napster.
Uruguay has decided to commit to using the DVB Project’s DVB-T and DVB-H standards for fixed terrestrial and mobile TV broadcasting. The decision was announced last week by Presidential Decree and the decision was taken over the US ATSC and Japan’s ISDB-T, which Brazil has already agreed to use.
UK interactive TV specialist ICTV said it would show a new personalized navigational mosaic at the IBC show next week. The P: Mosaic system can combining linear, on-demand, and broadband programming, in a video mosaic which can be tailored to show only those programs which are of interest. It picks up the preferences by learning from the remote control or allows viewers to create customized profiles on all the content that comes through the ICTV’s ActiveVideo Distribution Network, which delivers programming to set tops regardless of hardware, middleware and guide differences.
Cidana and Siano will show a hardware software combination at IBC, based on the DVB-T capabilities of the Siano mobile TV chip, which will work with PDAs and Smartphones. Due to battery issues, DVB-T has not been perceived adequate for mobile devices until this announcement and Siano claims that this system can supply 3 hours of TV viewing. This means the device can show TV, on a mobile handset in any country that uses the DVB-T terrestrial TV standard, which is around 30 so far and climbing rapidly.
Research in Motion, the Blackberry company has been the subject of a rumor this week that Microsoft was about to buy the company. The rumor created a small surge on the stock, but it is considered unlikely by US financial analysts given that RIM has such a high valuation right now. The rumor began over the idea that Microsoft will want to cover the much hyped Google phone launch expected soon.
French video service company Thomson, which owns Technicolor, said this week it would launch a new service, called Midas, which stands for Media Ingest, Distribution and Storage, around its brand new acquisition Syncast, a content delivery network. The idea is that Technicolor gradually transforms from a secure series of truck rolled celluloid delivery services into a secure digital network delivery, mostly of films to digital cinemas, we guess, offering complex digital rights management back-end integration with billing and payment platforms and services for storing, managing, securing, and reporting the consumption of digital content.
Harmonic said formally this week (where it has hinted broadly before) that DirecTV the US DTH market leader with more than 16.3 million subscribers, has deployed its DiviCom Electra 7000 high definition (HD) MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) encoders for its national HD channel expansion, including its ProStream 1000 stream processing platform with DiviTrackIP statistical multiplexing, system and its NMX Digital Service Manager.
US IPTV DRM company Verimatrix, said that its Video Content Authority System (VCAS) has been deployed to secure Volan’s new IPTV offering in the Czech Republic. The IPTV system uses middleware from Itonis and set-top boxes from Motorola’s Kreatel unit. The network will run on ADSL2+ lines which reach around 40% of fixed lines in the Czech Republic.
The Fraunhofer Institute says it has a simple to use projection method so that when video is projected onto curved surfaces, it looks the same as it does if projected onto a flat screen. The system will be shown at IBC and is targeted at Planetariums and domed movie theaters. Instead of using several manually tuned projectors the Fraunhofer Institute has developed a system which automatically calibrates the projectors and superimposes the images with pixel-precise accuracy on any shape.
YouTube has got UK royalty societies which collect money for 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers to authorize their use of recorded music on its video-sharing website. The agreement to license 10 million pieces of music to YouTube in return for a flat fee, which has not been disclosed, is the first of its kind, the company said.
Sound processing pioneer Dolby Labs says that it has solved the loudness problem associated with TV broadcasts, where it appears that the advertising has been recorded at twice the volume of the programs either side of it. Actually the advertising audio has been companded, a process of compression, and this makes it appear louder. The system is a constant loudness monitor on the transmission that calculates the level of noise in the same way a human ear would perceive it, the company says.
Broadcom said that its Blu-ray and HD DVD system-on-a-chip has been selected by Samsung Electronics to power its new dual format BD-UP5000 player, using the BCM7440 chip announced last month.