After two and a half years without ever saying just how many subscribers it had, Liberty Media is shuttering its Vongo Starz online movie download store in the US, but will keep the framework in place for other companies to white label the service. Existing customers will continue to be serviced for another month, but no new customers can sign up. Instead customers will be directed to a Verizon service costing $5.99 a month from the defunct Vongo web site. Starz jumped the queue back in 2006 to get its movie service out first over the internet, apart from highly restricted Movielink and CinemaNow services which have been around two years longer. Only iTunes seems to be able to make any money selling video online.
US researcher Multimedia Intelligence said this week that ‘Call to Action’ advertising on a mobile will reach $419 Million revenues by 2012. Call to Action advertising was virtually non-existent in 2007 the company said and it gives the example of an advertisement for the latest car, where a call to action button could get extra information from a local dealer. The researcher also said that total Mobile TV and Video advertising revenue, including “Call to Action” advertising, will exceed $1 billion by 2012, and that mobile TV and video subscription revenue will reach $14 billion by 2012.
The DISH Network said last week that it would be showing 800 hours of Olympic coverage in a deal with NBC Universal on two new HD channels dedicated to Olympic coverage, running 24 hours a day. It will also offer free VOD from NBC on the Olympics
WiMAX chip and media business NextWave Wireless may well have a cash crisis looming on the horizon, according to our research partners JRPG, who were shocked to hear that the $150 million of cash from spectrum sales has been use to repay debts, instead of fund the business going forwards. The result will be cutting of costs and 132 employees, and potentially the loss of vital R&D efforts, and potentially missing out on key technology roadmap deadlines. NextWave used $81.2 million in Q1 and $66.3 million in the most recent quarter, on revenues of just $31.8 million and only has $69 million left in cash. The company now says that it must raise additional cash by September and may issue $200 million more dilutive shares if anyone will buy them.
US cable operator Charter Communications said this week it has an agreement with Disney-ABC Domestic Television to launch a subscription
video on demand entertainment service based purely on classic and
contemporary Disney movies and animated shorts, which it will call Disney Family Movies. Titles will be rotated for about a month, with new titles added weekly. It sounds a little lackluster to us, but will cost just $4.99 a month.
While at the Qualcomm global industry analyst conference the company showed off its new Mirasol screen technology, which is based entirely on reflective light powering a screen, instead of backlit or front lit LCD technology. The result is that the screen uses 1 milliWatt instead of the usual 250 milliWatts, and over the coming two years will be transitioned from mostly small black and white read out devices to full color 7 inch screens for portable devices, mostly for countries which don’t have freely available power outlets, such as desert, mountains or rainforest. The screens could cut handset power use by almost 30%.
Canadian IPTV middleware and browser vendor Espial reported a loss of $1.4 million for its second quarter compared to a net loss of $4.8 million for the same period of 2007, saying that after it made “significant progress” in the quarter. In July it acquired Kasenna one of the original US IPTV VoD and middleware players, when previously it had offered just browsers, server software and a multicast carousel. It also signed a global software and distribution agreement with Motorola in the quarter but revenues were only $1.8 million compared to $2 million last year, so maybe this was all achieved with cost cuts.
WiMAX vendor Proxim has scored a win in China, through CTV Infotech, a subsidiary of Chinese Television Company, for building a WiMAX network to replace its satellite news gather network, using Proxim’s Tsunami MP.11 and Tsunami MP.16 point-to-multipoint wi-fi and WiMax products. The deal was set up by Smartway Digital, a Proxim partner in China and streams IPTV over the WiMAX network to various news centers and news gathering locations.
Geneva-based set-top box firm Advanced Digital Broadcast has reported revenues up 40% for the first half of 2008 to $170 million, with net profit of $7.6 million. The improvement was due to improved supply chain management, cost reduction programs, and a favorable sales mix with higher contributions from high-end products. However some $3 million of the profit came from discontinued operations. ADB says its has five new customer wins and that 67% of set tops came from HD sales.
UK set-top box firm Amino Technologies also managed rising profits of $2.1 million for its first half, compared to loss for the same period last year of around $800,000. Revenue was up 7.1% to $27.3 million and unit shipments were also up 7.1% to 256,000 devices. MPEG-2 products made up 85% of shipments, which sounds to us extremely unhealthy, although it says early volume shipments in MPEG-4 HD have just begun. During the half Amino acquired AssetHouse, an IPTV software business, and appointed ex-BT Vision boss, Andrew Burke, as the AssetHouse CEO.
The South African government has laid out an aggressive migration path to digital TV, approving new localized manufacturing of digital set tops and a scheme for getting TV to poor households through a 70% subsidy of these set tops, to 5 million of the poorest homes with funding coming from a Universal Service and Access Fund. The digital signal be switched on in November 1 this year and the analog signal switched off in November 2011. Local regulator the Department of Communications also said that it will issue DVB-H mobile TV licenses during the first quarter 2009. MultiChoice Africa, a pay TV division of Naspers is known to be keen to acquire a license and has an extensive DVB-H trial there.