The old Tandberg encoder business at Ericsson is touting for ATSC customers at next Week’s NAB conference and exhibition, having missed out on all the early contracts to early ATSC pioneers. Funnily enough it is OEMing an Envivio encoder for its Mobile broadcast offering of ATSC M/H alongside M/H multiplexing from Axcera. Ericsson says its new ATSC has a new MPEG-2 HD encoder that improves current MPEG-2 bit rate efficiency by up to 30%, freeing capacity for new services such as ATSC mobile DTV.
The UK’s Digital Economy Bill is getting closer and closer to becoming law, despite concerns that it will be a weak law, as the ‘three strikes’ law in France has proved to be, and that it may lead to all sorts of abuse of consumer rights. It has had its second reading in Parliament and may make it through to law just before the country goes to the polls to elect a new government ‘ who will promptly change it.
Yahoo is said to be in talks to acquire location specialist Foursquare, with a price tag of $100 million being discussed according to a Business Insider report. Sources close to Yahoo are saying that the company has held discussions with New York-based Foursquare, whose location-based mobile service was launched last year.
US DRM firm Widevine said this week that Funai Electric Co which makes CE devices using the brands Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania and Emerson, will incorporate Widevine’s adaptive streaming and DRM onto its Internet connected HDTVs and Blu-ray players. This is so that they will be TV Everywhere ready for certain cable companies.
Cryptography Research, said this week it has an agreement with Toshiba to use its patents to protect its products against Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and related attacks. DPA attacks come from watching what happens on chip when a cipher is being decoded, and defends against that by creating false electronic trails on chip so DPA attacks fail.
US researcher In-Stat said this week that it has completed a management buyout from Reed Elsevier with the help of the NPD Group. In-Stat will operate as an independent. The management buyout was led by Mark Kirstein, In-Stat CEO and the terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Apple will offer select journalists a sneak peek of its new iPhone OS 4 tomorrow and Apple watchers are calling for multitasking between downloaded apps and support for Adobe Flash. Apple has made no public concessions to Adobe’s Flash video and is unlikely to deliver on that wish. New features are also being tipped for the Apple SDK.
Vodafone has added a customized version of the Opera Mini browser designed to run on low-cost handsets on 2G networks. Vodafone says the move is to enable as many people as possible internet access of some sort. Opera Mini 5 can compress data by up to 90% which is why it is being pitched at less data intensive networks and has so far been embedded in 20 devices and is downloadable to 250 GPRS supported handsets in Vodafone’s customer base. Vodafone will launch applications such as email, job searching, buying and selling aids, and learning foreign languages. The browser will be introduced in India, South Africa, Turkey, Tanzania and Egypt.
It’s over a decade since we heard about anyone using ICQ (I Seek You) which AOL bought in the early days of internet development, but it must still have millions of customers somewhere because there are reports that three companies are bidding for it and according to Russian newspapers. The Russian companies ProfMedia and Digital Sky Technologies are both on the shortlist with Chinese Tencent. Bids apparently have it valued at $300 million ‘ which is about what AOL bought it for all those years ago. AOL which has now separated from its Time Warner parent is trying to shed non-core properties, including Buy.at, and possibly Bebo, ICQ and video site Truveo.
Specialist display analyst DisplaySearch says that revenues on OLED screens continued to grow throughout 2009 up 35% to $826 million. AMOLED (Amorphous) revenues overtook plain old PMOLED for the first time taking $537 million out of the $826 million. PMOLED suffered from handsets dropping secondary screens (on clamshell designs). DisplaySearch says AMOLED revenue growth will remain strong in 2010. Samsung Mobile Display was the leader in this market with more than $566 million in revenues, up 90% over the year with RiTdisplay in second at just $106 million down 18%. Pioneer was next then TDK
Activist investor Carl Icahn has decided to cut and run from Blockbuster after its recent warning that it might file for Chapter XI bankruptcy protection. Last week he sold 14 million out of his 20 million shares and now owns just 2.5%. Icahn probably wants to keep back his cash for a fight over at Lionsgate Films, where he has recently bid at a $6 a share for the remaining shares he does not hold.
Telecom Paper reports that online video specialist Brightcove has raised $12 million in series D funding led by Accel Partners and General Catalyst. Other existing investors also participated. Proceeds will be used for expansion in Asia and Europe and possible M&A activity. Brightcove has just announced the Brightcove Experience for HTML5, a framework for publishing and delivering web video largely on Apple platforms which don’t have Adobe Flash. It has already announced that it has signed Spin Media to use the new system, as well as Time Inc and The New York Times, which had previously said they would use it.