Espial says that its Mediabase VoD system will be used by Otelco, a telco in Alabama US, for premium VOD services for its IPTV subscribers. Otelco operates ten incumbent telephone companies and is a CLEC in six states, so it’s one of the top 25 carriers in the US says Espial. The system will also use premium content from Comcast Media Center and iN DEMAND.
AVG Technologies in Amerstam the Netherlands said this week it has acquired Tel Aviv-based DroidSecurity, a specialist in cloud based mobile security, which writes software to protect smartphones and tablets running Android.
Israeli based Siano Mobile Silicon has come an award from US Consumer Electronics Association for its SMS1530 ATSC-M/H Receiver in the ‘Enabling Technologies’ Award Category with CES Innovations 2011.
US researcher In-Stat says that VoD revenues will reach $10 Billion by 2014 displacing exiting revenues in retail DVD disk sales and rental. Not too hard to predict given the numbers that Netflix is producing right now. $10 billion is a nice round number too. In-Stat highlights three revenue streams, discrete transactions, VoD subscriptions and electronic sell through, independent of subsequent content delivery methods.
DisplaySearch says that shipments of large-area TFT LCDs over 9.1inches fell 4% sequentially in Q3 to 163 million units. This still represents 7% year on year increase. Revenues on these displays were $21.3 billion, down 7% sequentially, but up 7% year on year. This was put down to over-optimistic over-stocking. LCD TV and slate PC sales continued to grow, with TV’s up in the 40 inch and above category, but Notebook PCs fell 14% and monitors 8% from the last quarter.
Swisscom’s IPTV system grew 41,000 homes during the quarter to 358,000 in total. This is a 92.5% increase from a year ago when just 186,000 homes had sold.
BT Vision, the UK hybrid DVB-T/IPTV system has ambitious plans to develop its IPTV platform. It will put the BBC iPlayer catch-up content on the service next month and says that its VoD service continues to gain traction with 10% more content viewed during the quarter. It will shortly introduce full multicasting of linear channels and has sold Sky Sports to 50,000 existing subs during the quarter. But it still only added just 24,000 homes taking it into 520,000 homes as of Q3.
US video chip supplier Zoran says that it has joined MoCA as an Associate level member. Zoran supplies set-top processor platforms and has shipped more than 30 million units to the pay-TV and retail set-top box markets. It will presumably integrate MoCA function directly into its set top chips, especially for multi-room DVR applications.
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig), and the Video Electronics Standards Association said they would share technology, expertise and specifications to develop multi-gigabit wireless DisplayPort capabilities. A certification program for wireless DisplayPort products will be developed in parallel. DisplayPort is used between a PC and its display or to drive home theater systems, so specifically for video delivery to a screen. This is an end run around the competing standards bodies, and an attempt to steal video from rivals like Wireless HD.
Video search engine blinkx and UK set top maker Amino say they will develop an integrated search, recommendation and personalization system powered by blinkx to go on Amino’s hybrid/OTT set-top boxes. We have to agree that blinkxx is the best video search engine out there and it has been for some time. No idea why no-one (except us) has thought of this before. blinkxx came out of Autonomy, a Cambridge, UK specialist in search and association techniques and uses some of its technology.
Philips spin off Civolution, which focuses on digital video fingerprinting and watermarking says it has signed an exclusive agreement with Sony’s Digital Cinema Solutions Group to integrate Civolution’s NexGuard, its cinema watermarking system, into Sony’s 4K SXRD digital cinema systems for 3D viewing and 4K resolution. This must be one of the biggest deals that Civolution has done, though no numbers were given.
Widevine says that it will provide its video optimization and DRM system to Panasonic to provide adaptive streaming and virtual DVD experiences, and to protect commercial content on Viera connected TVs and Blu-ray disc players. This deal adds to those signed by Samsung and LG recently. As a preferred provider, Widevine’s client will be included on millions of Panasonic connected media devices, it says.
US researcher In-Stat says that H.264 decoder chips are proliferating and that right now satellite set top boxes are their largest market. But more and more digital TVs are using them and they will grow at 20% per annum through 2013, and increase 51% during 2010. Broadcom is the largest supplier for satellite set tops; ST Micro leads the MPEG2 decoder chip market, while MediaTek is the top supplier of DVD decoder ICs, while Renesas leads the market in Blu-ray SoCs.