The deal struck between MoCA and Homeplug back at the end of October, whereby they work together to move TV signals around the home, is now in place, the two said this week. The idea is that the coaxial technology and the power cable technology can be made to work together in any given home using next generation MoCA 2.0 and HomePlug AV2 devices when they arrive.
Iberium Communications this week said at CES that it is developing an ATSC M/H demodulation core which will be available in Q2 2010. The company will demonstrate an FPGA version at CES.
NetLogic Microsystems also said it would demonstrate mobile TV on its ultra low-power Alchemy processors at CES and says it is working with LG Electronics on a reference design targeted at the ATSC M/H protocols using an LG chip. The NetLogic chips are really only handling the application processing and video and audio decode functions.
Zon TVCabo, a subsidiary of Zon Multimedia and one of Portugal’s largest triple play operators said it is working with NDS subsidiary Jungo and its residential gateways, and now has them available for the Portuguese market. The new gateways are based on Jungo’s OpenRG and Open SMB middleware. Launch of the products were completed in December 2009, a turnaround of six months.
In a shock move that would really hurt Apple if it was successful, Nokia has asked a US federal court to ban imports of Apple devices including its iPhone, iPod and Mac products. The Nokia’s lawsuit is a civil proceeding in parallel with its complaint to the US International Trade Commission filed last week and lists seven patents that Nokia said Apple is violating in its products. Our take is that if Apple is not paying Nokia money for patents, then how can it make a phone. This will end in a quiet settlement with Apple paying Nokia as little as it can, which it will achieve by rattling its own patents. Nokia began the battle with a lawsuit in the US in October and Apple said in December that Nokia infringes some of its own patents.
Discovery Channel said this week it has partnered with Sony and IMAX on a joint venture to develop a dedicated 3D TV network in the US. Disney-owned ESPN has already said it will launch a 3D TV service for the Soccer World Cup this summer. Discovery will provide sales and technical support and 3D content rights, Sony will provide ad sales support, rights to 3D feature films, and IMAX will license TV rights to future 3D films, and licenses to its own proprietary image enhancement and 3D technologies.
Just before Christmas French telecommunications regulator Arcep awarded Free Mobile a 3G mobile network licence in France. Free Mobile is a subsidiary of broadband group Iliad, and was the only candidate for the licence in 2.1 GHz spectrum and will pay just €240 million for the licence.
Nokia’s new handset chief, Rick Simonson, told an Indian newspaper details of how it would fight off both Samsung and Apple and predicted Nokia would ship over 500 million handsets this year alone, way ahead of the company’s financial prediction. Nokia later reiterated its official financial forecasts. Nokia will stick to a three-platform strategy based on Symbian, the emerging Linux-based Maemo, and Series 40 at the low end.
Nokia scored a not totally unexpected, but vital win, with AT&T this week, when the big US cellular operator agreed to partner Nokia on Ovi’s web services, integrating the billing for them into its own billing system. AT&T customers can get Ovi services on the E71x, the Surge, Nokia Mural, Nokia 6650, Nokia 6555 and Nokia 6350 ‘ basically none of its headline smartphones, mostly low end classics and Blackberry-alikes. Ovi offers almost as much music, video, games and other applications as Apple’s iTunes, but is virtually unknown in the US.
US satellite TV operator Dish Network has introduced its own TV Everywhere style service for watching the same satellite programming online over the internet, that existing customers see, called simply TV Everywhere from Dish. Customers will need a special TV Everywhere Adapter, its Sling Media placeshifting ViP 922 set top, the new DISH Network WiFi HD Monitor and the newly-released DISH Remote Access App, the company says. The content can be placeshifted directly from your TV set, so it looks to us like it’s nothing like the existing deals with cable operators Comcast and Time Warner Cable.