YouTube has struck a major blow towards a viable business model in the signing of Disney to provide content from ESPN sports channels and its ABC TV network. The deal provides Disney with a right to sell its own advertising opposite its content, but presumably this is a revenue share with YouTube or its parent Google can also sell some of the advertising positions. Content will include original video, sneak peeks, recaps and key moments and carry both overlay and graphical display advertising.
Encoder builder Envivio has introduced encoders which it says are designed for encoding mobile streams, IPTV and web video all at the same time, using something it calls Elite Compression tuned to optimize media playback experience on today’s most popular mobile devices. Elite Compression will debut at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas and will be in its trade up program, which offers discounts up to 35% to operators who replace their existing software encoders with the Envivio 4Caster C4 before May 31, 2009.
AT&T is preparing its own in-vehicle satellite TV service Cruisecast for launch, which will go up against similar offerings from Sirius and from ICO Communications. It has been working with RaySat, as a satellite partner, and use Synchronoss for customer care. NDS will provide conditional access, middleware and handle the overall integration, with Harmonic providing the encoders. STElectronics will provide the receiver electronics and Hyundai will help with in-vehicle receivers. God knows what the reception and energy usage will be like, but Telephony Online reported that it would have 22 TV and 20 radio channels offering a variety of kids programming news and sport taken from its U-Verse line up costing $28 a month plus over $1000 for an up front purchase for the antenna and receiver.
Microtune said this week it will supply Delphi, one of the
world’s largest OEM automotive electronics systems suppliers, with its
new MT2067 microtuner in the TV receiver systems of its factory-installed front and rear seat entertainment systems, targeted for Europe and Japan. The tuner will pick up analog or digital signals and is based on the company’s patented radio frequency (RF) silicon technology. The chip is just 7 x 7 millimeters and with the right demodulator can work with NTSC, PAL, SECAM, DVB-T, DVB-H, ISDB-T, DTMB, ATSC or ATSC-M/H.
Microsoft says it will put its PlayReady DRM into Mediaroom and that AT&T will use it in its U-Verse IPTV service. This has always been the plan, and we have been waiting for PlayReady so long now that we almost thought it was dead. Microsoft says it will be able to work with IPTV, broadband and wireless services. Nokia has been working with Microsoft on incorporating it into its handsets for over a year.
A week after EchoStar Technologies and its subsidiary Sling Media unveiled an IPTV HD DVR which can placeshift, aimed primarily at Europe, the company has come out with the EchoStar T2200S, another SlingLoaded HD DVR device which is also tru2way-based so it’s for US cable and will show it at this weeks National Cable and Telecommunications Cable Show in Washington starting today. The device can shift the cable TV service to any remote broadband served device, including a handset and it comes with a 1 terabyte hard drive for up to 1,000 hours of storage.
Cox Communications has chosen the NDS Professional Services arm, of the Israeli conditional access firm to manage and implement its tru2way system deployment. NDS says it will also implement a new user interface, EPG and various interactive applications for the tru2way system. The tru2way platform is set to launch in Summer 2009.
Google this week said it plans to commit $100 million over the next year, in VC investments through a vehicle it is calling Google Ventures to invest in consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care companies. The fund says it will operate outside of its direct interests as a company and simply manage for high returns across a wide range of investment areas.
Japan’s Softbank has joined the partnership of Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and China Mobile in promising the world’s largest mobile developer platform. Between them they have 1 billion customers. The big three are already combining their weight in LTE. The Joint Innovation Lab will focus on creating a single developer platform based on widgets, the most popular way to deliver mobile software and web services on modern smartphones, and will shoot for a common mobile widgets specification and easy-to-use developer kits.
Qualcomm subsidiary FLO TV said it was ready to expand MediaFLO mobile TV services in 19 markets around the country reaching another 10 million potential viewers once the June 12 date for the DTV transition occurs. FLO TV now plans to be in reach of 200 million consumers in 100 US markets by the end of 2009.
US research firm Parks Associates says that 2.5 million broadband households in the US and Canada are ready to purchase an Internet-connected TV if priced at only a $100 more than regular TVs. This figure translates into $250 million in additional revenues for the consumer electronics industry says Parks. Right now most of the devices are priced at around $350 higher, but new chipsets, including one from Intel are set to bring this down substantially. The survey also asked about Internet connectivity on Blu-ray players, digital photo frames and digital cameras.
Chinese handset vendor ZTE saw shipments up 40% in 2008 to 45 million units, according to Taiwan’s DigiTimes based on new deals with Vodafone, Hutchison, T-Mobile and other operators in Italy and Australia and will now target the US
The Open IPTV Forum said this week that D-Link, DTS Digital, Dolby and SecureMedia have all joined in its efforts to develop open interoperable specifications for IPTV.
Sony has cut the price of its PS2 PlayStation right down to $99, down from $129. Already there have been 136 million PS2s sold globally since its launched in 2000. Sony said that it will continue to support the PS2 with new titles and that demand still runs strong for the console.
Swiss set top maker, Advanced Digital Broadcast, said it would work with Evolution Digital, as a US distributor to bring ADB’s tru2way set-tops to smaller cable operators in the US.
iPhone games publisher ngmoco has raised a new round of financing led by Norwest Venture Partners and the company’s previous investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Maples Investments. The amoung raised was not released. Games continue to dominate the App Store.
You know that something new is happening when two critical things happen in a technology ‘ one is that it is taking off in droves and two is that someone says ‘I just don’t get it.’ Last week a US colleague told us they didn’t see the point of Twitter, and it’s only when something is so ‘in’ that people can’t see it clearly that something takes off this quick. Usage went up to 7 million unique visitors in February, some 1,382% growth in one year (compare that with 228% at Facebook). What’s more 60% of these are people on the move from ages 25 to 49. If you’re not Twittering, you’re missing something.
Blockbuster has now mimicked the relationship that fierce rival Netflix has with TiVo and cut its own deal to offer over the web on demand movies and TV shows to TiVo digital video recorders. Blockbuster said that it would also copy the Netflix push into offering the service over Internet-connected Blu-ray players, televisions, mobile phones and portable entertainment products.
There was a huge fall off in mobile phone sign ups in the Asia Pacific region last quarter, according to UK research company Informa Telecoms and Media. Net additions fell 22.6% from 87.7 million in 3Q08 to 67.9 million in the fourth. Some of the blame must go on economic problems, but China Telecom also went through a huge subscriber clean up culling 13.3 million inactive subscriptions during October alone from the Unicom business. Similar moves happened in Bangladesh and Pakistan, Informa said, while India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam did best with India adding 30 million net adds in 4Q08, up 10.7%.
P2P TV over the net business Babelgum has now launched in the US using a Flash-based player. Babelgum was funded with Italian money and was headquartered in Ireland and has services in Italy and the UK. The US mobile application is free and will work on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, with an Android version coming soon. Babelgum said that versions for the BlackBerry Storm, Samsung Omnia and Nokia’s N97 and 5800 are on the way. Currently most Babelgum TV is watched on PCs.
Seachange International said that it has supplied VoD systems to India’s Smart Digivision MyWay IPTV service which runs on the BSNL and MTNL broadband networks. Seachange says that it has also installed a bouquet of applications on the IPTV set tops and that its Middleware is being used by MyWay. If it is, it’s the first customer we have heard of in 2.5 years since its launch.
We often look at extremely large numbers of dollars in the telecommunications market and then realize that compared to the global market, these numbers are tiny. But the $137 billion market that researcher Ovum says the mobile broadband market will become in short order, is big, even as a percentage of global cellular revenues. The market should reach this number by 2014, says Ovum, on both laptops and handsets and represents a rise of 450% over the 2008 figure.