UK chip radio pioneer Mirics has landed a $13 million funding round with its existing investors, Acacia Capital Partners, Intel Capital and Pond Ventures. The additional funding will be spent growing market share for its FlexiTV, which is a $3 radio chip plus software which runs on a PC processor, which manages the demodulation of any kind of TV signal.
Stupidly Dish Network in the US has tried to register the TV Everywhere trademark, after almost a year of Time Warner using the term in connection with its On Demand Everywhere service. It might have made some sense if the services were comparable, but of course one is placeshifting and the other is OTT video. The USPTO has told Dish that it is suspending the Trademark because Time Warner filed its application 3 months earlier. However now Dish seems to be preparing a genuine content over the internet service, according to Multi-Channel News, where existing subscribers can log in from anywhere and watch video.
US DRM and video optimization specialist Widevine, this week announced support for Dolby Digital Plus on its platforms so that online services using its technology can produce a theater-like experience. Dolby Digital Plus is a scalable digital audio coding technology which delivers 7.1 channels of surround sound, which will now be available with the Widevine adaptive streaming platform.
The Apple share price is suffering from the fact that Consumer Reports, an influential US product reviewer, says it cannot recommend iPhone 4.0 because of its antenna problems. Critics are saying the problem is worth a recall, supporters say its all been blown out of all proportions. Apple has an excellent history of product delivery execution but it was bound to screw up at some point. This problem however has temporarily halted its monumental share price gains, all because the phone signal disappears when you hold it in the left hand corner ‘ not something that we’ve ever heard of happening among the established handset majors before.
Echostar has a brand spanking new satellite, EchoStar XV and it will begin signaling in earnest later this summer at Dish Networks, with what it calls the largest HD offering in the US. Finally we’ve heard it all ‘ black is white, the worst HD coverage is now officially the best, because someone put it in a press release. Once the new satellite is up and running it will have 200 national HD channels plus locals HD in 156 markets. I think DirecTV had more than that two years ago.
EMI Music Publishing has cut a deal with Venevision International Publishing, part of the Cisneros Group in Venezuela and will represent the 35 year old Spanish language catalog of TV programming in the registration of copyrights and tracking and collecting fees. It represents about 3,000 hours of new programming each year.
The UK Open Championship of Golf has chosen Akamai to streaming HD video versions of the event throughout the world for its 150th Anniversary Championship at St Andrews in Scotland. It is the first time the event has been viewable in HD over the internet and will be loaded at www.opengolf.com. The deal has been done by Akamai and its HD network partner and reseller Endava, and started yesterday and will run until the 18th.
US search optimization company SearchIgnite says that paid search grew by 14% in Q2 2010 from a year earlier. It had been up 11% in Q1. The first two quarters of the year have marked the strongest period of growth for paid search since Q4 2008, when the recession was well under way, and declined through 2009. It says that the market is less reliant on retail growth which only spent 7% more and instead was more closely attached to overall industry growth. Google remains dominant but Bing still had had gains over last year, up 26% but it has declined 9.6% from Q1.
Intel cheered up the US stock market by recording its best ever quarter, a complete bounce back in the second-quarter with revenue of $10.8 billion, up 34% or $2.7 billion and huge operating income at $4.0 billion and net income at $2.9 billion, versus a loss last time. Demand was up in PC (2%) and server segments (13%) and the Atom piled on $413 million of revenue, up 16% from the immediate last quarter never mind last year. Intel promised the third quarter would be revenues of $11.6 billion, plus or minus $400 million, with the same kinds of margins.
According to IPTV News Taiwanese telco Chunghwa Telecom has just completed an open tender for 200,000 IPTV set-top boxes. It says that the contract has gone to local firms DinYen Technology and HwaCom Systems in combined deals worth $18 million. Chunghwa wants to reach 1 million subscribers for its IPTV service by the end of 2010.
Mobile advertising metrics from Californian company Smaato show that global mobile advertising remains dominated by Symbian phones, but that Android in June has overtaken the iPhone in click through rates. In the US market, Symbian clicks are still higher than the other two operating systems, but Android has closed the gap with a CTR (click through rate) Index of 192 compared to 118 in May, while the Apple iOS fell to fifth place in its home market with a CTR Index of 73. In Europe Android was at 52, with Windows Mobile in front at 205.
The DVB Project has outlined the commercial requirements for 3D TV in a 12 page document with 20 imperatives which include that it must fit inside an existing DVB HD channel, and that viewers can use an existing or suitably adapted receiver to receive the 3D-TV content. The main implication for the requirement is that the left and right images must be arranged in a ‘spatial multiplex’ so the resulting signal can be processed by the set top more or less as a conventional HDTV signal, which can be carried on an HDMI cable. 3D events must be identified to the viewers automatically, for instance on the EPG, and signaling should make provision for expansion to future 3D encoding formats.