US DRM specialist Widevine says that it has won deals for its DRM inclusion in a number of US over the top services including Best Buy, Blockbuster, Netflix and Roxio’s CinemaNow. It has also launched version 4.4.4 of its platform adding features like live HTTP adaptive streaming, progressive downloads, P2P distribution, trick play and chaptering for a virtual DVD experience. This version includes support for Apple devices, LG, Toshiba, Philips and Samsung TVs and Blu-ray players the Nintendo Wii, Windows PC platforms and 50 set top makes.
UK RF specialist chip designer Mirics says that its FlexiTV software-based global digital TV receiver will come out on Nvidia GeForce powered products from Ask Technology Group. The initial products being launched this quarter will target regions widely served by the DVB-T and ISDB-T digital TV standards, which the chip can emulate in software, with a tiny additional (roughly $3) RF chip from Mirics. Using the GPU means that the PC’s CPU is free to do other jobs while the graphics unit does the broadcast demodulating.
Research in Motion’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has been widely cited as saying that he’s not so sure that video really is the next ‘killer app’ for smartphones. He told an investment audience that RIM is looking at more efficient ways of delivering video, to prevent log jams on wireless networks ‘ so what about getting behind ATSC M/H broadcast mobile TV? No it plans to offer data acceleration, compression and network optimization on its devices. Well that’s thinking outside the box. Oh no, that’s inside, literally.
Epix, the pay-TV and Web video portal joint venture between Viacom’s Paramount Pictures unit, MGM and Lionsgate on Monday announced its first nationwide distribution deal with Dish Network. The deal brings Epix, which has 15,000 films, to Dish, and it already has agreements with Verizon FiOS, Cox, Charter, Mediacom and NCTC.
The KPMG Media and Entertainment Barometer says that UK consumers are spending less on media than six months ago, but somehow consuming more. Does that mean the prices are going down? No people are using more and more free media. The average spend on traditional media fell from £9.19 per person in September to £7.46 in March and on digital media from £1.99 to £0.98. The average monthly consumption of traditional media rose from 11 hrs 40 minutes to 12 hours 13 minutes, while hours spent on digital media increased from 6 hours 14 minutes to 7 hours 28 minutes. The content consumed includes music, games, film and newspapers and it seems to defy the logic of those planning to take newspapers and other content onto a paid footing.
YouTube CEO Chad Hurley says that it wants viewers to stay on the site for much longer, pushing them to five hours per visit, rather than the current average of 15 minutes a day. He didn’t elucidate on just how he was going to get there, but thinks that over time, as there is more access directly from the internet to a TV at home, it will eventually be a single ‘world of video’. Good luck with that Chad.
Skype’s quarterly figure show that it has 560 million registered users as at year end, and it seems to find the fact that this is more than social networking site Facebook significant, although we’re not sure why, since Facebook is growing way faster than Skype is now. Still it handled 36 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls in the quarter, up from 27.7 billion in 3Q09. Perhaps it’s planning adverts on each call.
IPTV News reports that Lithuanian telco TEO has got its hybrid IPTV service up to 108,500 subscribers at the end of the first quarter of this year, which is pretty good when you think that the company only has 319,300 broadband customers. Can’t think of many IPTVers which have converted over 33% of a standing broadband base. It also says that Ecuador’s Corporaci’n Nacional de Telecomunicaciones will launch DTH services in the second half of this year and IPTV in 2011.
Patently Apple, a website dedicated to the innovation of Apple, and its patents, says that Apple has now filed a counter suit against Eastman Kodak after the photographic specialist sued Apple back in February. This is Apple’s standard ploy to stave off patent infringement, it doesn’t mean that Apple really has had some IP infringed, but it claims Kodak uses two patents relating to memory use in a digital camera, and digital image processing. We thought Kodak and Sony wrote the book on digital image processing, but perhaps it was Apple after all. If you believed that tone of the Patently Apple web site, it also designed the camera.
The FCC has extended the deadline on its decision over the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal, in order to give the public more time to comment on some parts of the requested information that has yet to be made available. We are waiting for responses from Comcast and NBC on the potential benefits of the transaction and the potential impacts on online video distribution (i.e. Hulu). And no it’s not because the FCC is sore at losing the network neutrality legal action to Comcast last month. The FCC is bigger than that and once the reports are in, it triggers a new 45 day completion period automatically.
Deutsche Telekom will delist its American depositary shares from the New York Stock Exchange in order to terminate its reporting obligations with the SEC. The given reason is to simplify complexity in financial reporting, but we’re sure the FCC will still want plenty of information on T-Mobile USA ‘ unless of course it is planning to sell that off, although it’s said many times that this is no longer an option.
Yahoo! said its revenues were $1,597 million for the first quarter of 2010, up just 1% over 2009, but net income was up to $310 million, from $118 million last year. CEO Carol Bartz said it was a good quarter, better than forecast and that its search advertising market share stabilized and display advertising grew by 20% year over year. Yahoo! is in the process of changing over to Microsoft search and its results included some reimbursement of these costs.