YouTube has confirmed plans to launch an advertising-free version of YouTube that users will be able access by paying a monthly fee. In a letter sent to YouTube content creators, the Google-owned video site said that the new paid offering will “generate a new source of revenue” that will supplement ad revenues. Details of the pricing and rollout of the subscription offering were not announced, but tech site The Verge reported it will charge users roughly $10 a month and launch in a few months.
Video imaging expert Faroudja Enterprises said at NAB that it will introduce image quality improvement technologies which focus on cleaning encoded digital images and minimizing artifacts. The company will showcase bandwidth restoration for edges and details and 1080p to 4K upscaling, which it says is significantly superior to UHDTV upscalers. Not sure why we need UHD if upscalers can be made to work that well.
Nokia’s HERE said this week it will take a new approach to personal navigation in the new Jaguar XF in-car navigation system, based on a continuous connection to the HERE location cloud. The system actively syncs information from the driver’s smartphone companion app or computer to the car. The connection to HERE’s location cloud means that as drivers near the end of their journey, the screen switches to approach mode, showing a street level view of their destination and one-touch options to find an available parking space. The system also learns driving routines over time, and offers a connection to live traffic information so that the InControl Touch Pro will automatically suggest alternative routes to avoid delays.
Spanish infrastructure company Abertis said this week it will sell up to 61% of Cellnex Telecom, its recently rebranded telecoms subsidiary, to institutional investors. In a statement to Spain’s market regulator CNMV, Abertis said it expected to sell an initial 55% percent with an option to increase that to 61%. The company added that the spin-out of its mobile unit was one of the key features of its 2015-2017 strategic plan and that the IPO would allow it to accelerate future growth plans
The HBO Now streaming service is now available in the US with subscriptions available through Apple and cable operator Cablevision. HBO Now offers 2,000 titles online, but without the need to subscribe to the HBO channel. HBO said it’s in talks with other potential distributors for the service. The launch comes ahead of the 12 April debut of its hit series ‘Game of Thrones’.
French video monetization firm Wildmoka said that D8 and NRJ12, two popular French TV networks, have selected its revenue generating system Moments Share. Wildmoka will showcase these deployments at NAB in Las Vegas and MIPTV in Cannes.
US mobile video firm Streambox has launched a miniature encoder it calls the Streambox Drone EncoderPro, designed to capture and stream video from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for agriculture, news gathering, film production, live events, public safety, government and enterprise users. The small form factor, low power encoder is designed to reliably stream HD videos over all available IP networks to the Streambox Cloud to be routed to desired play outs. The Drone EncoderPro weighs only 220 grams and has more than six hours of operation on its tiny battery.
IP transport player Path 1, says it will launch the PiXiE Player, at NAB this week, a software-based MPEG-DASH decoder, to work with its popular PiXiE-E1 encoder
Cable & Wireless is awaiting final approval from the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority for its acquisition of Columbus Networks which operates across the Caribbean Islands, but apart from that has closed the purchase for $1,850 billion plus debt assumption of another $1.170 billion. The new company, called NewCo at present, will invest $400 million and add 500 jobs by 2019. C&W will acquire 700,000 residential customers with about 400,000 of them on pay TV
French CDN player Broadpeak has announced that its nanoCDN technology will be integrated with the ATV1800 Quad Core Android TV box from Geniatech, to provide cable and telecom operators with a way to deliver live OTT video to Android set-tops
Thomson Video Networks has introduced what it calls a breakthrough version of its ViBE 4K encoder range, fitting full UHD encoding within a single 1-RU Chassis. It is built around its ViBE EM4000 premium encoder chassis, and can compress UHD sources at up to 60 frames per second and in 10-bit color.
The European Commission this week, confirming Faultline’s view, has decided to open an in-depth investigation into the merger between Telenor and TeliaSonera in Denmark. The Commission is worried it could have a negative impact on competition. Yes that’s true, in Denmark this will kill competition, but why then did the Commission allow the merger between Liberty Global and Ziggo in the Netherlands, setting a precedent of allowing communications merger towards dominance. The deal will reduce the market to 3 players, this one, plus an incumbent, who should be fine, and Hi3G (three), which won’t be. The Commission has 90 days to carry out the probe and is due to make a decision by 19 August.
Ooyala, the end to end OTT player owned by Telstra, has come out with a full suite of OTT analytics called Ooyala IQ. It claims it is the first analytics platform to provide a 360-degree view of video performance (bit of a cliché) including filtering by device, OS, browser, country, state, DMA (Designated Market Areas for the US), player or traffic source, all provided in a single view. It’s a bit like Google Analytics for OTT video. Ooyala will also offer a viewability metric to gauge the overall health of video streams, and this will be added to Ooyala IQ over the course of the year. The beta program for Ooyala IQ includes Sky Sports, Media Prima, Fairfax Media, Telegraph Media Group, Telstra, Vox Media, Complex Media, Dell and Southern Cross Austereo.
Back in September Ericsson acquired what we described as an Israeli nPVR specialist called Fabrix Systems, paying $95 million, and this week at NAB Ericsson has launched a system based on Fabrix’ software. In fact more appropriately Fabrix was a cloud storage system, which specialized in cloud storage for video, which has now emerged as run an nPVR, at NAB, and says it is applicable to all QAM and IP-based TV platforms.
US online video platform Brightcove said this week that Australia’s Network Ten has selected the Brightcove Once cloud-based ad insertion and stream stitching system to power Apple TV and Sony Bravia apps for its catch up service, tenplay. Network Ten says tenplay is the first Australian network to deliver a broadcast-like ad-funded experience across Apple TV and Sony Bravia.
Broadcast specialist Ittiam Systems says that Onlinelib, a leading provider of service for TV streaming and encoding, has licensed H.265 Encoders from Ittiam’s i265 family of products and will be integrating its i265-PQ and i265-HS software Encoders for Intel x86 processors to enable the Okeanos HEVC x86 Encoder to produce up to 7 encoding representations with 2 pass high quality and up to 4K video in H.265.
Israeli recommendation system Jinni, has launched a targeted audience buying platform, and it wants to addressing entertainment advertisers looking to target online and mobile users. Jinni is aiming to provide an alternative to the targeting tools currently available to push entertainment, which it says have largely led to inflated and inefficient spending for entertainment marketers.