Just after we went to press last week, the Federal Appeals Court in Washington temporarily stayed a district court’s order in favor of Tivo against Dish Network. This means that, at least for the time being, Dish customers can keep using their DVRs while an appeal goes ahead, but it’s looking grim for Dish, after the District Court told it to switch off the DVRs and pay TiVo $103 million more in a patent dispute.
BigBand Networks said that its has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with China’s Jiangsu Broadcasting Television Network, an 11 million subscriber cable operator, which is consolidating existing infrastructure into a single network and migrating to digital cable from analog. Back in September, BigBand said that Jiangsu had selected its Broadband Multimedia-Service Router and will now take more BigBand gear.
Miranda Technologies has launched a new lip-sync probe module, the Densit’ HLP-1801, which performs automated detection of video and audio synchronization errors. The system compare two points along the air chain, like the main out and off-air, satellite or cable returns, and generates alarms whenever there’s a lip-sync error, Miranda said.
The Wall Street Journal, like everybody else, has remembered that Steve Jobs said he’d be back at Apple at the end of June and it has checked with Jobs’ contacts who say he will return as scheduled. All Apple lovers will breathe a sigh of relief that the charismatic CEO is able to return to duty.
The US will finally go through its digital TV transition in a few days, and the President has urged Americans to make sure they are ready. It was the Obama administration which pushed back the date from February, citing millions of US homes who’s TV sets would have gone dark. TV watchers Nielsen says there are still 3 million home that will get a shock.
Set top middleware supplier OpenTV and Sigma Systems, a fulfillment specialist said this week they will launch an integrated interactive advertising solution which will allow TV service providers to use subscriber data for addressable ad placement in a cable on-demand environment. The two say the technology can also be applied to linear cable TV.
US researcher In-Stat reminds us that only 11% of cellular subs are 3G, and says this will rise to 28% by 2013. In the same breath it says that LTE is now moving beyond talk and into real contract awards. HSPA took the main contract awards in 2009, but In-Stat says that there have been LTE contracts awarded in Japan, Singapore, United States, Norway, and Sweden with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Huawei the early beneficiaries.
Pyramid Research says that global users paying for mobile video services will grow five-fold from 2008 to 2014, surpassing 534 million. That’s a staggering number given that today mobile broadcast services such as in Japan and Korea only amount to around 65 million users and these don’t count because most of these people don’t pay anything. The report takes in broadcasting, downloading, streaming, side-loading. It looks to us like it is way over on its numbers. It reckons that Asia/Pacific will have the top spot, attracting 281 million subscriptions by 2014. I seem to remember it predicted a similar number for 2012, two years ago.
Leichtman Research says that US pay TV operators will win a huge number of new customers, ready as they are with same-day installs, as the US switches off analog TV. It forecasts up 200,000 to 400,000 net subscribers in the current quarter, due to the June 12 switchover, even though they have already added 900,000 since February. Without the transition, Q2 would have been the first ever negative-growth quarter for the multichannel-video industry, the researcher said.
Broadband TV News reports that AllesSehen GmbH will launch a new DTH satellite TV platform later this month, using the Eutelsat Eurobird 9A satellite and encrypted using Conax. One package of 11 German channels and another with more US content, will be launched in June and AllesSehen will also add a sports channel option. The two bouquets will be €9.90 ($14) each with the sports channel at €4.90 ($7) on top of a starter package at €29.90 ($42) which will include the cost of a smart card.
Irish sports broadcasters Setanta Sport is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, and is in emergency talks with banks to try to avoid it, reports Reuters. The company, which was formed when two Irish businessmen wanted to watch their team during a World Cup, and acquired the rights, lost key UK soccer auctions and has been teetering ever since, missing key payment dates for existing sports rights, as customers exit.
Virgin Media and Gemstar, now part of Macrovision in the US, are scheduled to be in court this week in the UK, in a legal action filed last year over EPG technology patents. Gemstar does these law suits as part of its day to day business, and has managed to win them all over the world. We would anticipate a Virgin defeat and license deal as the basic EPG was designed and patented globally by Gemstar.
Korean set top maker Humax has selected the ANT Galio Platform, a software stack including a browser, for a new range of satellite, IPTV and hybrid set-top boxes. It’s not a surprise, as Humax has long used ANT software. The new Humax range is due to launch by the end of the year.
US mobile TV encoder specialist Envivio has announced iLiveTV, an end to end solution for publishing video to iPhones, including the on deck application, which uses the new iPhone OS 3.0 mobile video format. iLiveTV includes Envivio 4Caster encoders, content delivery software, a web-based Cover Flow iPhone navigation portal, as well as integration and support. It is available immediately.
Sonic Solutions always said that its new Roxio CinemaNow service would work with multiple DRMs, and talked about Microsoft, Widevine and OMA systems, and has duly announced an OEM deal with Widevine, which the DRM company also says is for its adaptive streaming, interactive DVD/Blu-ray features, as well as DRM. The new Roxio CinemaNow system is a combination of the content Sonic acquired with CinemanNow, as well as the Blockbuster owned Movielink, run through new software, with new business models, in a deal cut in January. An SDK is now being offered, we think this is in order to white label the service, and the Widevine software is being included OEM.