Dutch conditional access specialist Irdeto, said this week that Netflix, has taken a license to its Cloakware Embedded Security, as part of its suite of content protection tools for delivering TV episodes as online streams. Cloakware obscures how PC code works while it is executing, so that PC applications can’t have their cryptographic keys easily stolen.
Multi codec specialist Broadcast International has teamed up with French IP specialist Anevia to provide very low bit rate video streaming services to the web video market. Anevia will provide the advanced streaming technologies to take video to TVs, PCs and mobile phones in conjunction with BI’s CodecSys codec system which takes the lowest bit rate frames from multiple codecs, which encode simultaneously. BI will market the merged system in the US while Anevia attacks Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The world’s biggest disk drive manufacturer Seagate will put 20 films from Paramount onto its 500GB FreeAgent Go ultra-portable hard drives. Customers will then be able to buy a key to unlock any of the films. The latest Star Trek movie will be given away as a loss leader to show disk drive buyers how the system works. In total there will be 38 hours of movies pre-loaded. The disk drive can unload the films to a desktop computer, a laptop computer, or a widescreen TV, using the FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player.
Texas Instruments says that it has chosen the Fraunhofer Institute to provide a software layer above its software defined radio to demodulate DAB DAB+ and T-DMB signals (audio and video) for the automotive industry. The TI system is built around its Jacinto processor, which is based on an ARM core plus a DSP.
Anyone who underestimated the Apple iPad will be seeing announcements daily that make them change their mind, including 1,000s of special new Apps, but we had to highlight one which puts an iPad in the dashboard of a US car, courtesy of Sound Man Car Audio, who modified the dashboard of a Toyota Tacoma and will now write Apps to help it become the brains of the car. It’s removable and you would really need the Apple iPad 3G or you wouldn’t have the GPS you need for navigation. The company plans to send the signal from the iPad directly into digital audio converter to give the driver control of the volume and audio settings.
Best Buy has announced that it will sell the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader and accessories, and also ship free eReader software. Nook is expected to arrive at Best Buy on April 18, it says just in time for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and graduation gift season. This adds 1,070 stores nationwide as well as putting it at www.bestbuy.com. The stores will offer a try and buy experience and then sell it for $259.99.
According to Broadband TV News French commercial broadcaster TF1 is showing its Over The Top solution on a Samsung TV set at the MIP Digital Showcase this week. In France, it says all the major broadcasters are working with CE manufacturers to put their own widgets on their own channels. TF1 is working with Samsung, M6 with Sony, while Canal+ has chosen LG and all agreements are exclusive. The TF1 proprietary widgets show a TV Guide, weather widget, news and a Eurosport branded sports widget, plus one for a local game show and the widgets show up as soon as a viewer tunes to TF1. Soon it will add HbbTV in its set tops so that more content can be pulled from the TF1 TV channel over the internet.
EchoStar Satellite Services announced today that Fidelity Solutions, an IPTV systems integrator from Sullivan, Missouri has joined the ViP-TV reseller program. Fidelity will look for IPTV customers who want to take the ViP-TV satellite feed of up to 300 TV channels in standard and high definition H.264 IP format. Minnesota-based Pace International, will also join the ViP-TV reseller program.
Australian OTT service FetchTV is set to launch a country wide pay TV service next month. Fetch is unrelated to the UK service of the same name, and is backed by Malaysia’s Astro All Asia Networks. It will offer free-to-air channels, international pay TV including Discovery, National Geographic, MTV, Fox, E! Entertainment, BBC World News, CNBC, ABC, and Lionsgate and pay per view movies in HD, and an advanced PVR and will wholesale the service through ISPs. iiNet has already signed up to sell the service at A$30 a month.
Canadian telco SaskTel says it now has 77,831 homes paying for its IPTV service called Max Entertainment as at the end of 2009. It’s not much of an increase since it had 70,000 a year earlier. SaskTel has 225,125 broadband customers
NDS says that it has delivered a DVR to Bharti Airtel using its XTV technology, which it says can record up to 100 hours of TV on a 160 GB hard disk. It supports personal playlists and has an NDS multilingual EPG which can be controlled by a mobile phone, a first in India. The DVR can also be connected to an internet router using Ethernet and an HDMI port for high-end HD LCD TVs. The DVR is for the new Bharti Airtel DTH satellite TV service which also uses NDS VideoGuard conditional access and its MediaHighway middleware.
BT and Ascent Media Group have entered a strategic alliance to build what they are calling a global broadcast switching platform. It is designed to offer 24/7 connectivity between the world’s two largest video switch communities and will enable networks on both sides of the Atlantic in New York and London, to instantly import video content between the two locations. It will work immediately with SD media, with HD planned for later in the year.
US Cableco Cox Communications expects to launch its own TV Everywhere service for use on home based PCs in June. The service doesn’t yet have a brand name and as yet there are no details of how users are going to be authenticated. Cox has just said that the movie channel Epix and Vutopia would be available online for free to Cox customers who subscriber to its digital ‘Movie Pak’ tier. Epix has Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate movies.
US conditional access company Verimatrix says that it has has certified the Intel Atom CE4100 processor for use with its ViewRight video security technologies. The certification is based on the built in security features of the CE4100 system on chip, and is capable of supporting pay-TV delivery to hybrid and IPTV set-top boxes, consumer electronics equipment and mobile devices. Perhaps this CA development is for the huge Telecom Italia contract that Amino won for hybrid set tops in Italy.
Intel reported its results and was in rude health compared to the disaster that its year ago quarter showed. Its Q1 revenues of $10.3 billion was down 3% from the fourth quarter, but way up on this time last year, by some 44%. Intel sold less Atom chips and more PC chips, a morte expensive mix, and it came home with an operating profit of $3.4 billion up 38% from last quarter, and a massive 433% on the year ago quarter. Net profit was up to $2.4 billion. Intel reckons its next quarter will be roughly the same revenue.