The New York Post reckons that legal action is being brought against Time Warner Cable and its new iPad app, which lets people view up to 32 channels of its pay TV content. The Post says that some of the channel owners insist they have never given Internet streaming rights to TWC and want to chase it for more money including Viacom and Discovery. These are going to become very familiar outcries, ‘our agreement doesn’t cover tablet distribution,’ we reckon. TWC says that as long as a tablet is in the home, then this is okay, which suggests that viewing TV on the go, on portable tablets will not be widespread any time soon.
Home gateway firm Comtrend has selected the Access NetFront Living Connect 2.0 DLNA software for integration into its home networking systems so that it can in turn sell the capabilities to operators for sharing media around the home. Access claims that its system is the only DLNA solution which anticipates next-generation DLNA guidelines including Smart Media Manager, Remote User Interface and Content Synchronization.
The US House of Representatives has voted to end federal funding of National Public Radio and the bill now moves to the Senate where it may or may not get through. The change would prohibit local public stations from using federal funds to acquire NPR programming. In an era of 500-channel cable TV and live streaming video over the Internet, there is no need for taxpayer subsidized media, said Doug Lamborn , the bill’s sponsor.
Yahoo is said to be in talks to sell off its Delicious social bookmarking service, as it rids itself of all non-core businesses, and it may get as little as $2 million for it says Business Insider.
US IPTV DRM specialist Verimatrix said at IP&TV World Forum this week it has partnered with Turkish TV maker Vestel to embed its VCAS Viewright client in an IP enabled range of connected TVs, with screens from 26 inches up to 46 inches. Why would it do that unless it has a mega contract in the wings?
UK broadcaster initiative YouView has announced 29 organizations which are working with on its IP set top platform due out in early 2012. These include
Blinkbox, Blinkx, BSkyB, Film4oD, Golant Media Ventures, Guardian News & Media, IndieMoviesOnline, LoveFiLM, Pushbutton, Radioplayer, Stream UK, STV, Travel Channel, Tvinci, UTV and woomi.
Netflix will shift its movie viewing online platform to mobile devices as soon as possible said Bill Holmes, VP business development at Netflix speaking at the IP&TV World Forum this week. Mobile is a big opportunity he said, but the service would need a lot of changes to address it properly. We know that Netflix is planning an international launch shortly and Holmes said it would select one with high broadband penetration and strong local content. Our bet would be part of Western Europe ‘ perhaps France, Germany or The UK? There is Korea of course, but we’re not sure what it would learn from Korea, because it’s so different from everywhere else?
Opera was showing off its TV credentials at London’s IP&TV World Forum this week, and points to one key part of the YouView specification which is that it requires html 5.0, and boasts that Opera has this but that rival browsers, such as that belonging to ANT Software, which for so long has claimed leadership in the world of TV, do not. Well that’s a bit harsh, ANT has partial support for html 5.0 and is on the technical working group which is specifying it. So the implication that Opera would, by default win all the browsers for YouView is perhaps a little wide of the mark. It has however just won the right to be browser of choice on Sony Bravia TV sets and Blu-ray players along with its historical wins at Philips, Toshiba, Sharp Europe, Loewe and a handful of other connected TV sets. Ant meanwhile has made a lot of the running in the HbbTV standard.
Gemalto this week announced a new partnership to develop security services for NFC apps with STMicroelectronics building on the two companies’ expertise and existing portfolio of NFC technologies. There are already secure SIM apps, but the two want to leverage on the highly secure ST33 EAL5+ chipset from ST and Gemalto’s Trusted Service Management and secure personalization services. They will target SIMs and phone Micro-SD flash cards. NFC or near field communication is a way of identifying a device or credit card, so that low end financial or ticketing transactions can happen with a single touch.
TV Genius launched what it calls a backwards EPG on its content discovery platform so that operators using it can not only view future TV listings but also look back and watch programs from the past 24 hours.
Netherlands based conditional access specialist Irdeto, said this week it had won the Stofa account using its Irdeto Cloaked Conditional Access solution on Stofa’s Zaptor pay TV offering. Stofa is a Danish cable operator with around 350,000 subscribers which last year changed hands from Telia to Swedish private equity group Ratos. Irdeto was already the incumbent there, but this is a new service to support a new HD VoD service.
Turkish video WiFi specialist Airties has announced a strategic partnership with UI and browser designer Ekioh. AirTies will now be able to use the Ekioh designs in forthcoming set tops. The Ekioh browser and UI is based on the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) standard which can render graphics in HD. It can also scale up or down between SD and HD resolutions seamlessly.
French conditional access firm Viaccess, said that its will supply Vivendi subsidiary SFR with content protection and rights management on its new HD satellite offering. SFR has already uses Nagravision on its IPTV Neufbox and on the Vivendi CanalSat service, so this is something of a breakthrough for Viaccess which is a subsidiary of France Telecom.
ZTE said at IP&TV World Forum that it has constructed the world’s largest single-node IPTV system in Jiangsu Province in China, with over 4 million subscribers in 13 cities across the province. The company said it had also installed the first three-screen (IPTV, Internet TV, and mobile TV) IPTV network, for Indonesia Telecom, and an IPTV system for Beltelecom in Belarus.
US cable equipment supplier Arris this week said it will offer WiFi connectivity by reselling indoor and outdoor WiFi products from Ruckus Wireless. We have seen Ruckus wanting to focus on WiFi for cellular offload for a while now and it looks like it needed a partner like Arris to keep its video capable WiFi access business going.
US encoder business Harmonic said that it has landed a deal at that Post and Telecommunications of Kosovo (PTK) for a digital video headend using ProView and Electra 8000 dual-channel encoders as well as its Ion AVC encoders and NMX Digital Service Manager.
Telefonia Bonairiano, a telco in Caribbean Island Bonaire, has selected Amino’s A140 HD next generation IPTV set-top boxes for the deployment of high definition TV services which will run across its mixed xDSL and Fiber network.
Verimatrix also announced that middle East operator Etisalat will use its VCAS DRM system on its IPTV service in the United Arab Emirates. It plans to upgrade its infrastructure to FTTH and reach millions of homes in UAE by 2011.