ContentGuard, which invented the idea of a Digital Rights language, has announced a patent licensing agreement with Toshiba this week on its mobile phone products. Most of us don’t think of Toshiba as a handset company because most of this activity is in Japan. ContentGuard says it has IP ownership of technology which enables content distribution models such as rental, subscription, variable pricing, and secure peer-to-peer distribution.
PeerTV, which offers technology which delivers video reliably over the public internet, said that it will float an IPO on AIM, a lower market operated by the London Stock Exchange. The offer for shares is supposed to raise it £6 million in new equity capital so that it can capitalize on the new Internet TV market. It had revenues of $5 million for the six months ended 30 June 2010, way up on the previous year.
US chip designer Sigma Designs, has announced that its HomePlug AV CG2110 chipset has been certified compliant by the HomePlug Powerline Alliance through the Laboratoire des Applications Numeriques certification process. It passed on its first attempt, although we’re not sure how typical that is, probably very typical. The HomePlug AV v1.1 specification is designed for home AV networking – video, audio, data, and voice – over existing AC power lines and offers guaranteed QoS.
Casa Systems, a cable TV equipment provider said that its 3rd generation Cable Modem Termination system called the C10G is available. It is a 12RU, chassis-based system offering full DOCSIS 3.0 and PacketCable 1.5 Qualification.
Nagravision says that Hsin Yeong An, an independent Taiwanese cable operator reaching 200,000 homes, will use Nagravision conditional access, as it digitizes its network. Nagravision will also act as lead integrator and be responsible for the delivery of the secure end-to-end DTV infrastructure. The new network will offer HD, interactivity and DVRs. Nagravision already offers security solutions to three other major cable operators in Taiwan including China Network Systems, kbro, and TBC.
C2 Microsystems, which designs media processor chips and AwoX, which offers a DLNA software stack, said this week that they had integrated the DLNA software onto the C2 Microsystems’ CC1200 family of devices.
US researcher In-Stat reckons that today there are 30 million US broadband households viewing some form of online video on the TV and that by 2014 it expects the majority of CE devices purchased, including digital TVs, Blu-ray players and gaming consoles, to be web-enabled, with 137 million of these devices shipping in the US alone. As a result by 2014 there will be 57 million US broadband households viewing full-length online video on the TV and that web-to-TV video content revenue will reach $17 billion. Great, so why would anybody still be paying for cable? But somehow we think they will.
US IPTV conditional access firm Verimatrix has deployed its VCAS system for DVB Hybrid on Malta’s Melita’s cable-IPTV hybrid network. Melita has 180,000 subscribers and says it will be the first Maltese operator to offer HD using a hybrid fiber coaxial network. Melita offers 150 SD channels and 10 HD channels, which included the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches. It uses set tops from French provider Netgem.
We wondered what set tops Vodafone Spain was using for its Spanish hybrid IPTV service which we reported on a few weeks back, and which were widely misreported as being from Huawei, which only supplies the wireless home gateways for the project. Now Advanced TV News has found they come from French firm Wyplay and offer a hybrid DTT plus IP service called Vodafone Internet TV.
Swedish IPTV middleware company Dreampark, said this week that Serverado, a Swedish provider of broadband TV directly to ISPs, has selected Dreampark Dreamgallery Middleware, replacing its previous middleware from a rival. We couldn’t find out who supplied it before and they won’t tell us either. Serverado provides an open platform where OEM customers can choose from its aggregated content.
Sony Pictures Television has signed up deals for its new Movie Channel to be distributed on AT&T U-Verse, the DISH Network and DirecTV. The channel offers constant, advertising free, movie releases in HD, from the Sony library.
US Researcher In-Stat says that residential gateway unit shipments were up 18.1% from the previous quarter and 37% from the same quarter last year, mostly down to shipments in Europe being up 30% in units and shipping 39% of the total. Technicolor led in both unit shipment and revenue market shares.