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Sony and NCTA announce plans to retire the set-top box
2008-05-29 06:56:00
Sony and the six largest cable operators announced an agreement Tuesday to move in the direction of eliminating the set-top box from the consumers already cluttered landscape. The agreement is between Sony and Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications Inc., Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems Corp. and Bright House Networks which comprises over 80 percent of U.S. cable subs. The Java-based platform will utilize the tru2way specification. According to CableLabs, existing applications include interactive guides, "start over" applications, and games; future applications might include, for example, interactive ads, chat, web browsing, and t-commerce Specific to IPTV and interactive applications that reside on the multitude of set-top boxes from companies like Ensequence, which basically alluded to an integration of components within the TV form factor. According to Aslam Khader, chief product officer at Ensequence, "the merging of technology will basically...
More About: Sony , Plans , Retire

Interview with Rob E. Angelino, Founder & CEO Beauty TV
2008-05-28 03:45:00
Interview with Rob Angelino about Beauty TV. Beauty TV produces a daily hybrid syndicated show for traditional broadcast television. Content is focused on beauty tips, hair, skin, nails, cosmetic surgery, spas, health, fitness, insider interviews, beauty news, product reviews and trends. Current advisory board members include John Paul DeJoria, founder of Paul Mitchell Systems and Patron Tequila and former executives from EXTRA TV, 'E!" Entertainment, Sony Television and AOL. Audio Interview with Rob E. Angelino, Founder & CEO Beauty TV
More About: Interview

Digital Hollywood 2008
2008-05-21 20:51:00
Levi Shapiro spoke with noted Advertising, Film and Internet personalities at this year's Digital Hollywood . Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners Convergence of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, packaging your story when pitching to a VC or Content House, M&A topics Richard Kerris, CTO, LucasFilm How to achieve a mult-discipline output with your content if structured properly. Working with Artists and giving them more options by way of technology tools. Think about the pipeline and not the product. Matti Leshem, CEO, Protagonist Thinking about big ideas for brands, the brand experience and how best to give the brand energy on the right platform. Paul Levine, SVP Corporate Strategy, Development & Extended Platforms, National Geographic Global Media Producing content that inspires people to care about the planet and how to make it work across all platforms. Ziv Navoth, VP Marketing, Bebo The next step for Social Networks amidst their current fragmentation, Holl...
More About: 2008

Floor Talk: Streaming Media East, Charles Finkelstein of Microsoft
2008-05-21 19:54:00
Charles spoke about the new Expression Encoder 2, the workflow process using hooks, making a case for creating a native Mac version of the application and the community for content creators. If you are on the Mac, send us an email and we will forward to Charles along with the beta testing of the encoder we have underway. Get the Flash Player to see this player. var s2 = new SWFObject("/_playlists/mp3player.swf", "playlist", "320", "50", "7"); s2.addVariable("file","/_playlists/charle s_microsoft.xml"); s2.addVariable("backcolor","0x00000"); s2.addVariable("frontcolor","0xFFFFE0"); s2.addVariable("lightcolor","0xFFA500"); s2.addVariable("displayheight","0"); s2.addVariable("width","320"); s2.addVariable("height","50"); s2.write("player2");
More About: Media , Microsoft , East , Talk , Streaming

Floor Talk: Streaming Media East, Dan Rayburn
2008-05-21 18:52:00
Dan spoke about this years SME conference, some of the challenges facing CDN's, how to monetize content issues facing Creatives Get the Flash Player to see this player. var s2 = new SWFObject("/_playlists/mp3player.swf", "playlist", "320", "50", "7"); s2.addVariable("file","/_playlists/dan_ra yburn_1.xml"); s2.addVariable("backcolor","0x00000"); s2.addVariable("frontcolor","0xFFFFE0"); s2.addVariable("lightcolor","0xFFA500"); s2.addVariable("displayheight","0"); s2.addVariable("width","320"); s2.addVariable("height","50"); s2.write("player2");
More About: Media , East , Talk , Streaming , Floor

Floor Talk: Streaming Media East
2008-05-20 17:28:00
Streaming Media East has just started, here are some photos as companies start setting up. My question is what is the theme for the show, will it be mainly how P2P is ramping and will it be more focused solely on the hardware and software, or will the business of ITV/IPTV be given serious consideration? Click on slide for show
More About: Talk , Streaming , Floor

KyLinTV Launches Matching Relief Fund for China Earthquake Victims
2008-05-20 06:09:00
The following is a press release. KyLinTV announces its relief campaign to help China earthquake victims. In response to the disaster that rocked Wenchuan County on May 12th, KyLinTV has established the KyLinTV China Earthquake Relief Fund . Each donation to this fund will be matched by the same amount from KyLinTV and dispersed to those victims in China. In an effort to make an impact and generate the most aid, 100% of all donations will go directly to these victims, with no overhead costs or handling fees. KyLinTV is matching dollar for dollar every single donation to help in this time of crisis. There are three ways to make a donation: via KyLinTV's website www.kylintv.com; calling the KyLinTV China Earthquake Relief Fund Hotline at 1-877-888-8598 extension 6; or KyLinTV subscribers can donate from their set-top-boxes. "My deepest thoughts are with the victims and their families. I encourage everyone to reach out and support those who need our help. As a company...
More About: Victims

Interview with Ken Lowe, VP of Strategic Marketing for Sigma Designs
2008-05-07 08:06:00
A recent interview with Ken Lowe , VP of Strategic Marketing for Sigma Designs. Ken addressed a variety of topics concerning Blu-ray, the IPTV marketplace over the next couple of years as well as competition from Broadcom, IP and the companies recent financial performance. Audio Interview with Ken Lowe

Interview with Gary Croke, Director of Marketing for Symmetricom's QoE Assu
2008-04-26 08:00:00
Interview with Gary Croke, Director of marketing, for Symmetricom's QoE Assurance Division. Gary spoke to the test measurement market specific to IPTV content delivery and quality issues facing Telco's and Cable operator's. Interview with Gary IPTV Video Quality Study (click on image below for slideshow)
More About: Marketing , Interview

Nokia and Spike Lee Target UGC, What about Indie Producers?
2008-04-24 12:46:00
With the announcement that Nokia has teamed with Spike Lee to create a series of shorts for the UGC community is certainly a positive step for the handset maker seeking to extend into more diverse markets. Certainly, UGC is huge and the goal of converting millions of eyeballs into dollars has been Holy Grail for YouTube and a slew of smaller companies. That Nokia is using their platforms; I gather the N95 along with a name director is certainly a good marketing strategy. Certainly, this is not the first company to seek to work from the top down. © The New York Times According to Mr. Lee who has admitted to being technologically challenged said, "I'm interested because it's a great collaborative effort," Mr. Lee said. "Within five years, new movies will be made with devices like these." I agree, but made by whom? A couple of years back Nokia had what I thought a killer platform for production, namely the N93 that unfortunately did not gain traction as was discontinued. Wh...
More About: Indie , Target

Juan Mateu CEO of Solaiemes Demos their Platform
2008-04-22 07:39:00
Solaiemes is a mobile start-up focused on delivering live handset to web experiences, this via their web page widget pushed through custom configured servers. Currently, only operating in Europe, they are positioning themselves for the U.S when upstream speeds improve beyond 64 kbps. They see market opportunities in law enforcement and real estate however, other ideas would certainly develop. I spoke with Juan Mateu, CEO from their offices in Madrid where he provided a real time demo of their platform mobile section. Overview of the company (click on image below for slideshow)
More About: Demos , Platform

Interview with Anthony C. Naughtin, President and CEO GridNetworks
2008-04-16 06:58:00
I spoke with Anthony C. Naughtin, President and CEO of GridNetworks about his company which is a hybrid between a traditional peer-to-peer and CDN provider. Aside from the mystery surrounding that shrouded Cisco as an investor, what is notable but not available today is the integration of their GridCast Connector software sitting as an application layer or plug-in on top of cable boxes and other Internet appliances. If the company is going to scale to "Nielsen-sized audiences," as Tony has alluded to, the company will need to move swiftly to embed in devices while pushing the limits of HD, i.e. beyond 720p to the home. With a Series B round of financing planned for late 2008, the company will ad to it's coffers of 9.5 billion from their first round, their burn rate however, could be significant especially as they have to move on several fronts at once. Interview with Anthony C. Naughtin

IpTVe Launches Production Services Division
2008-04-08 07:29:00
New York, NY - (April 9th 2008) IpTV Evangelist today launched its production services division geared towards companies in the ITV and IPTV space. With ITV and IPTV companies, seeking to enhance market share the addition of on-line video demos will break through the static giving potential customers compelling video examples as soon as they enter the company's site. IpTVe will offer a wide range of production services in both SD and HD delivery, such as Product Demos Tradeshow Panels Video News Releases Executive Briefings Sales Presentations Video Case Studies Media Training Principals Gilbert B. Hammer, Producer/Director of Photography and Adrian Smith, Director of Client Services are both Television veterans each with twenty years in the Broadcast and Corporate video space and has studio space with Fiber connectivity, located in Downtown Manhattan. In addition, IpTVe is has production personnel located in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, ...
More About: Production , Division

Sandisk Sansa Take TV Lotto
2008-04-02 03:45:00
We are giving away a 4GB Sandisk Sansa Take TV system. Simply send an email telling us how you or your company are using ITV or IPTV for content delivery, what tools work well and what don't..also what topics you'd like us to cover. We will take a random email and give away a 4GB unit we recently reviewed, good luck. (deadline for entry is prior to Tuesday April 9th, 2008)
More About: Lotto

What's in a Name? Alternatively, This is not Your Father's April Fools Jok
2008-04-02 02:10:00
IPTV Evangelist's charter has been to bring our writers diverse slant about the IPTV and ITV markets to our reader's and our name reflected this public familiarity. As some had been fierce in their opposition to this sandbox approach, or (it takes a village) or (People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?) Anyway, we decided to update our logo to reflect both delivery methods. After all, all video content traverses over Ip in some form, we are most interested in how people create it and use it when it gets where it's going and that's no joke...
More About: April

Hulu, The Experience, Part 2
2008-03-14 01:37:00
Having tested the technical quality and transport of Hulu content, both in SD and HD, I was satisfied with SD delivery and quality but unsatisfied with HD, this due to too much shuttering of the 1280x720 video, quality was good. On too UI. The experience was as I have read elsewhere, clean and easy to navigate. Logical with lists by; Popular movies, popular movie clips, Alphabetical, Genre and Studio, see on slides below.
More About: Experience , Part

Hulu, The Experience, Part 1
2008-03-13 12:46:00
Hulu, the joint venture site of NBC Universal and News Corporation's online video launched today. As listed on their blog, "Today we are excited to leave our private beta and open Hulu.com to everyone in the U.S." So what is the Hulu experience? That depends on your expectations and starting point. I'm going to start with the technical experience since that is how I approached deconstructing the site.
More About: Experience , Part , Hulu

Steve Ballmer with Guy Kawasaki at Mix 2008
2008-03-10 06:45:00
Guy Kawasaki sat down with Steve Ballmer at Mix 2008 conference and asked the soft ball, why Microsoft wanted to purchase Yahoo!. Ballmer said it was a zero sum game and that on-line advertising is key and search is part of that equation, hence the need to accelerate the process of their underdog status in that space. In addition, Ballmer spoke about Facebook, the pitch for getting people to work at Microsoft and other parts of the company. There was also a Q&A portion. Watch Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki Keynote
More About: Guy Kawasaki

Contents Hot!
2008-03-10 06:30:00
With the news last month that Ensequence signed a ten year deal with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) following the recent win of Blue-ray over the HD DVD format, the company is in a hot position to extend their on-Q Create suite for Blu-ray Java (BD-J) for platform development. While the Java (no pun) portion of BD-J offers increased interactivity options for developers, the learning curve could pose an obstacle for some and slow roll-out of platforms. Ensequence claims to have removed this hurtle with their software authoring tool which affords a drag and drop metaphor and is fully compatible with Photoshop, the industry standard for graphics development.
More About: Contents

What I like about Yahoo! Tech Ticker
2008-03-10 06:10:00
With all the turmoil going on with Yahoo ! and if/should they become part of Microsoft, one area should not be overlooked for interesting content, Tech Ticker . Part of their comprehensive Finance section, Tech Ticker is a video channel of interviews and stories relating to the topic. There are a few users tools for voting (their version of Digg) as well as the embed code, IM, bookmark features. For those not familiar Tech Ticker is the re-birth of their innovative FinanceVision platform of 2000 which, was the first ITV live newscast of its day, see image below. FinanceVision 2000 Also see: http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2006/02/do_ you_remember_yahoo_financevision.html
More About: Yahoo!

"We are controlling the transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will
2008-03-07 12:19:00
In a long anticipated move Apple computers made their iPhone platform available for third-party development, with the SDK available for a $99.00 fee for those creating "free" and commercial applications for the public. Enterprise developers will pay $299.00 for the ability to create proprietary, in-house applications. Personally, if I am spending $100.00 to develop an application, I am not going to create something free, but that is just me. Users will be able to obtain applications exclusively through a new service on all iPhones called the Apps Store. Apple will also charge 30% of the sale price, a move that may discourage some developers of smaller or niche apps.
More About: Make , Transmission

Sandisk Sansa Take TV and Fanfare Portal
2008-03-01 23:39:00
Sandisk sent the 4GB version of their Sansa Take TV system for us to look at. With solutions from Netflix and others to integrate hardware into sets, the Take TV system is a current solution for moving video content from your computer to your large screen. With a price of about $100.00 for the 4GB module, the barrier for acceptance is low. http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/ bcpid1438501838http://www.brightcove.com/ channel.jsp?channel=14549041 var config = new Array(); config["videoId"] = null; //the default video loaded into the player config["videoRef"] = null; //the default video loaded into the player by ref id specified in console config["lineupId"] = null; config["playerTag"] = null; config["autoStart"] = false; config["preloadBackColor"] = "#FFFFFF"; config["useOverlayMenu"] = "false"; config["width"] = 480; config["height"] = 400; config["playerId"] = 1438501838; createExperience(config);
More About: Portal , Sandisk

Nielsen Wants You!
2008-02-28 00:48:00
With Television viewing declining in hours watched, Nielsen needs to gather viewing habits beyond their tradition base to include Web and mobile devices. A problem is while people are ok with a downstream device monitoring of their habits it is quite another kettle of fish when it comes to interactive viewing choices. "I'm going to go to a home and say, 'I want your TV, I want your Internet, here's a cell phone you're going to use and, by the way, I want to measure your grocery purchases,' " said James M. O'Hara, president for media product leadership at Nielsen. " That's a lot."

Open TV, Surpasses 100 Million Mark of Enabled Devices Worldwide
2008-02-20 12:28:00
OpenTV, (Ticker OPTV and trades on the NASDAQ) Since 1997, OpenTV's technology has been integrated into digital set-top boxes and televisions with an industry footprint that extends today into 100 countries, through partnerships with more than 50 network operators and 40 set-top box manufacturers. The company has a suite of services and authoring tools to offer operators extensive functionality beyond the UI for Home networking, PVR's, VOD, broadband IP and interactive TV. Participation is key to UI based set-top box deployment and OpenTV allows for competitions, quizzes, auctions, voting, and games with participation via any device including phone, mobile, PC, and TV on one single, scalable platform. One of the challenges has been for tools that work cross platform with the myriad of set-top boxes which OpenTV claims is backwards compatible and works across devices. In addition, they use an API, which is supposed to allow for agnostic development of services across different...
More About: Open , Devices , Worldwide , Mark , Million

GooglePlex the Earth?
2008-02-06 23:33:00
Yahoo: Time for Bold Moves? Shocking, Y! Without search where it all began with David and Jerry. Since search is still a significant part of the business mix, it would be interesting to see if search outsourced to Google might raise any anti-trust concerns over Google domination of that part of the Internet? A point raised in the article about other established, (i.e. OTA or Cable) media outlets making a bit for Yahoo! the news that Time Warner is going to jettison AOL is finally, finally their admission it was a shotgun marriage, Yahoo! and Microsoft however, could create some really interesting synergies. Ironic isn't it, how Google is rattling its sword against Microsoft and their domination of the pc software market and now threat of the on-line space, while Google has been on a path (trans-oceanic fiber, wireless spectrum bidding, etc...) to GooglePlex the earth. Film At Eleven
More About: Earth , Googleplex

Participation TV
2008-02-05 23:50:00
U.K. Scandal Raises the Phone Bar in the U.S. By Levi Shapiro Meet rockstar wannabe Betsy Gallagher. The 42-year-old mother of two and school board member has another title: American Idol voter. "I let the kids send in one text... then I vote twice," she said. Participation TV (P-TV), in the form of voting and sweepstakes, has now reached the mainstream. The challenge is to maintain the trust of people like Gallagher in a changing business environment. According to Nielsen, 180 million Americans send SMS text messages, an increase of 41 percent this year. And text voters are more like Gallagher than her 12-year-old son. Although teenagers may be pounding "OMG" and "TTYL" to one another on Instant Messenger, it is females aged 25-44 who are most likely to vote via text. "Idol changed everything," said Jason George, chairman of Telescope, which handles all the back-end text voting for Idol. Added Alecia Bridgewater of AT&T, American Idol was a "turning point for getting people who...

Microsoft-Yahoo?
2008-02-01 14:10:00
With the news that Microsoft (MSFT) has put an unsolicited offer on the table to acquire Yahoo ! (YHOO), the wheels have been put in motion to go head to head with Google. We Love The Yahoo! Brand, was the mantra this morning during a conference call for press and investors to outline the Microsoft mindset for the offer. Microsoft Conference Call today Get the Flash Player to see this player. [NULL] var s2 = new SWFObject("/_playlists/mp3player.swf", "playlist", "240", "75", "7"); s2.addVariable("file","/_playlists/micros oftyahoo.xml"); s2.addVariable("backcolor","0x00000"); s2.addVariable("frontcolor","0xFFFFE0"); s2.addVariable("lightcolor","0xFFA500"); s2.addVariable("displayheight","0"); s2.addVariable("width","240"); s2.addVariable("height","75"); s2.write("player2"); [/NULL] Slides from today's call In a letter to Yahoo's board of directors, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the world's biggest software maker will bid $31 p...

CrossCast v.2.0 - Update
2008-01-31 00:03:00
Over the past two years, I've spoken with Mirco Pasqualini, lead designer for CrossCast, an On-line UI and tools platform for production professionals. With the planned release of their version 2.0 slated sometime during the summer of '08, Mirco sent some new screen shots and content about the platform, enclosed are his comments. Two screen from CrossCast which looks very Joost like which Mirco concedes is the look in the current beta version but will change significantly over 2008.
More About: Update

Verizon FiOS, 1mil Subs At Light Speed
2008-01-30 00:49:00
With news that Verizon has reached 1 million subscribers with their fiber-optic FiOS service, the future looks bright as consumers are opting for faster bandwidth where available. According to the company which offers the service in parts of 13 states, hopefully I will be able to add it soon, hint..
More About: Light , Speed , Subs

I Use to Yahoo!
2008-01-23 12:44:00
No word from sources inside the company as to the numbers and areas that will be cut however, I fear once again the company will back away from their announced plans to revive their Vision platform in the form of TechTicker As Henry Blodget reported a few days ago, his sources said the numbers could be as high as 2,500 jobs however, it is unclear how CEO Jerry Yang will deal with the stock slide and numerous high-level departures from the company especially since he is not known for making the hard calls. Also see Business Week, Yahoo 's Search for a Vision
More About: Yahoo!