US encoder maker Envivio said this week that FetchTV in Australia has selected its encoders for its subscription TV offering. The FetchTV service uses Envivio 4Caster C42 video encoders. Fetch TV is delivered by Australian ISPs over existing broadband connections. The systems have been deployed at two head-ends located in Melbourne and Sydney. FetchTV is about to launch country wide at around A$30 a month.
GigaOM reckons that 6 out of every 10 TVs shipped worldwide by 2015, will have a network connection, and that 70% of these will ship with an embedded app platform. This will kick off with 3.7 million apps downloaded this year and grow to 965 million by 2015. It also says that consumers will pay for one in four of the apps, including those that enable paid services such as Netflix Watch Instantly. We can’t say we disagree, but our instincts tell us it may not quite happen that fast.
Canoe Ventures, the joint venture among US cable companies to provide interactive advertising, said this week that Comcast Networks, Discovery Communications, NBC Universal and Rainbow Media will be its initial partners to launch its national interactive television (ITV) solutions. Comcast is of course one if its shareholders. Adverts will contain a ‘Request-for-Information’ (RFI) application on normal thirty-second ads, and will deploy later this quarter.
YouTube announced this week that, after five years in operation, it is now serving over 2 billion video views daily, representing nearly double the prime-time audience of the three major US broadcast networks combined. “What started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3D, broadcasts entire sports seasons live to 200+ countries,” the company said in a blog post. We’re not sure those figures about the US broadcast networks are quite right. It may have the same kind of audience numbers, but for how long?
The US Supreme Court has refused to consider a case from Cablevision which challenges the need for cablecos to carry local TV stations. This came about when Cablevision sued the FCC, but lost, and the Appeal Court upheld. We reckon that being carried on cable systems continues to be vital to keep broadcast stations financially viable.
Google this week has bought Norwegian IP video and VoIP specialist Global IP Solutions for roughly $66 million, a premium of some 142% over its closing price on the Oslo stock exchange. The deal has to be blessed by 90% of shareholders.
Google watchers are saying that Android 2.2 will be shown to the public at the Google I/O conference which starts today and should include USB data tethering, a mobile WiFi hotspot feature, run faster than Android 2.1 and Adobe Flash 10.1.
Israeli and UK conditional access specialist NDS says that it will triple its investment in local people and infrastructure in 2010 and has already upped its Chinese headcount by 73% and rising including local hires, as well as the relocation of NDS R&D staff from India and Israel. Rival Irdeto moved its CEO and effectively its center of decision making to China in 2007, splitting its Netherlands HQ with China. NDS says it has already partnered with Changhong, a leading set-top box maker there, to develop a range of interactive apps for the Chinese market.
US satellite TV operator Dish Network said this week it had overhauled DirecTV in the number one pay TV operator in the US in customer satisfaction, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Dish jumped to a score of 71 for customer satisfaction, a seven-point increase over last year which takes it three points higher than DirecTV and four points above cable company Cox.
US cable equipment supplier Arris showed off its full-featured IP home gateway at the Cable Show for the first time last week and says it expects to begin shipments later this year. It comes with six tuners, for six simultaneous channels, and distributes its signal over a MoCA network to less expensive STBs in other rooms. The device comes with a DOCSIS 3.0 modem and a 500-Gigabyte hard drive and uses the Moxi UI from its recent acquisition, Digeo.
Broadband TV News says that Spain has taken a decision not to introduce broadcast mobile TV using DVB-H. The decision was released by Bernardo Lorenzo, DG of Telecoms there, who told local press that if there is no demand for the service it will re-allocate frequencies which were found for DVB-H. There is probably consumer demand, but no Cellcos want to introduce such services. Spain’s DVB-H network was being pushed right up until the last Spanish elections in early 2009, when the government set it aside, and since then no-one has picked up the reins. At the time Telefonica, Vodafone and France Telecom’s Amena were all planning to merge their DVB-H mobile TV efforts there.
Canadian browser specialist Espial said this week that set top chip maker Sigma Designs has pre-integrated the Espial TV Browser version 6.0, as well as Adobe Flash and HTML5 Video, onto Sigma Design’s chipset reference platform.