It’s on the box!

Lights, camera, action! Get set for the Taipei International TV, Film & Digital Contents Exhibition, with television & film celebrities and a host of producers and manufacturers showcasing A/V business products and opportunities.

The 2006 Taipei Internationsl TV, Film & Digital Contents Exhibition (TFCOM) is reeling out a star studded line-up of film-related activities this Nov. 23 to 25, 2006 at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall.

Taiwan’s audiovisual industry had been listed by government as one of the projects included in its “Challenge 2008: the 6-Year National Development Plan”, and with it Taiwan’s GIO (Government Information Office) initiated the “Taiwan International Audiovisual Exposition” last year (2005). Continue reading →

Verizon announced today that it is offering its FiOS TV service to more New York consumers, providing a true choice for subscription television and on-demand programming via the company’s all-digital, fiber-optic network.

Verizon is the first company to offer such a communications network, connecting homes and businesses directly to fiber optics on a widespread scale.

Verizon is now taking orders for its fiber-optic TV service in the Long Island villages of Farmingdale and Valley Stream, as well as the Town of Huntington hamlets of Centerport, Cold Spring Harbor, Greenlawn, Huntington Station, Huntington and Melville, and the Town of Smithtown hamlets of Hauppauge, Lake Grove, Lake Ronkonkoma, Nesconset, Smithtown and St. James. Continue reading →

Digital TX is a London-based consultancy specialising in interactive digital television and broadband media, and providing commercial and technical expertise to ISPs, content owners and technology companies.

Digital TX offer a range of day-long workshops on specialist subjects related to many areas of IPTV and video on-demand. The rapid growth of the IPTV industry often means that information, technical terms, and concepts are either freshly-minted or otherwise unfamiliar.

To help their workshop attendees keep track of it all, Digital TX have prepared briefing sheet that covers all the main points essential for executives and technicians to understand. Following is an extract… Continue reading →

Microsoft Corp. and leading set-top box manufacturers Cisco Systems Inc., Motorola Inc., Philips and Tatung Co. recently announced at that advanced system-on-a-chip (SoC) set-tops, which will greatly enhance the Internet Protocol television (IPTV) user experience, are now available to support Microsoft IPTV Edition software platform deployments with leading telecommunications carriers worldwide.

An integral part of the IPTV ecosystem, SoC set-tops will enable service providers to begin delivering high-definition TV (HDTV), digital video recording (DVR) and picture-in-picture functionalities as well as other advanced features in the future, enhancing consumers’ television-viewing experience.

This new generation of SoC-based, HD-capable, IPTV-ready receivers makes it easier for service providers to deploy IPTV Edition more broadly, quickly and cost-efficiently while supporting exciting new TV services. The availability of these devices illustrates the continued innovation of Microsoft and its IPTV Edition ecosystem partners in the telecommunications and digital television industries. Continue reading →

Targeted advertising has never been so easy nor looked so good! Specially designed for the advanced digital advertisement market, Macpower’s D8-WDMA wireless digital signage media adapter offers an array of new and unique features.

The Macpower D8-WDMA has a very small footprint and 802.11b/g wireless connection, while the customisable firmware makes this the ideal solution for networked advertising displays and other streaming advertising broadcasts over IP networks.

The Macpower D8-WDMA wireless digital media adapter is connected to your local network using a standard Ethernet or wireless connection, enabling you to access and broadcast advertising and other content from any computer on your network. Continue reading →

Research and Markets has announced the addition of “2006 Global Broadband Powerlines - Moving into Home Management 3rd Edition” to their offering.

This report provides information on the latest developments and trends in the BPL market, with a detailed analysis of the sector. It includes a SWOT analysis, business models, forecasts, an update on the regulatory environment and information on key projects and pilots taking place around the world.

IPTV over BPL is on the way, and significant investments are being made by the vendors to develop technologies that will become commercially available in 2007. Continue reading →

Optibase Ltd, a leader in advanced digital video solutions today announced that it is providing its IPTV solution to Hungarian Internet service provider, TVnet.

Upgrading its current internet and telephony services, TvNet has added IPTV to its basket of services, to commence in Budapest in December.

Optibase provided its high-quality, high-reliability carrier class IPTV head end for streaming MPEG-4 H.264 channels to local system integrator, Ring Net Telecommunications for the installation of TVnet’s end to end IPTV solution. Continue reading →

ZIM Corporation, a mobile entertainment and Internet TV service provider, today announced it has launched ZIMTV and ZIMTV.mobi, an English based peer-to-peer (”P2P”) Internet TV (or “IPTV”) platform for personal computers and mobile phones.

ZIMTV is an expansion of ZIM’s overall Internet TV strategy which also includes a partnership with PPLive.com, the world’s largest P2P Internet TV provider with over fifty million users.

Unlike other Internet streaming platforms which charge large set up fees, monthly hosting fees and additional fees per gigabyte of bandwidth, ZIMTV offers unlimited bandwidth for a flat rate. ZIMTV was designed to provide end users with a smooth TV viewing experience with no interruptions. Continue reading →

C-SPAN has chosen Streamload, a leading provider of online storage and digital media services, to provide the technology for C-SPAN’s new video uploading venture, dubbed “Viewfinder”.

Viewers will be encouraged to submit personal perspectives on political issues and events for c-span’s on-air programming.

Streamload’s submission system will enable C-SPAN viewers to upload videos that are relevant to program topics or that offer their personal perspectives on political issues and events. Continue reading →

Verizon has introduced FiOS TV to consumers in Wellesley, Massachusetts, making a broad range of programming choices and superior picture quality available to some 7,000 households.

Wellesley is one of 23 Massachusetts communities where the company’s new fiber-optic television service is being offered, delivered over the only all-digital, fiber network that is being made available, on a mass scale, to millions of individual homes and businesses.

Massachusetts communities currently connected to FiOS TV network are: Acton, Andover, Belmont, Boxborough, Boxford, Burlington, Hamilton, Hopkinton, Ipswich, Lincoln, Lexington, Lynnfield, Nahant, North Reading, Reading, Stoneham, Tewksbury, Wakefield, Wenham, West Newbury, Winchester, Woburn. Continue reading →

Leaders of the global information and communications technology (ICT) community will gather at ITU Telecom World 2006, ITU’s flagship world event, in Hong Kong, China from 4-8 December, 2006. This is the first time this key networking event is being held away from its traditional home in Geneva.

Under this year’s theme, “Living the Digital World”, the event will explore of the concept of shared digital resources for access to the vast wealth of the world’s knowledge, culture, education and learning. ITU Telecom WORLD 06 will focus on the technologies, companies and organizations that are driving this concept forward.

Top names from the world’s major ICT companies including Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Ericsson, NEC Corporation, Fujitsu, Intel, Alcatel, HP, Qualcomm, Samsung, Toshiba, Siemens and Motorola, and key policy makers, regulators and industry visionaries will come together to discuss new thinking and ideas for the future growth of ICT. Continue reading →

NeuLion Incorporated, a company driving convergence between the television and the internet, announced today the purchase of global IP access for IPTV service enhancement from NTT America, Inc., the world’s Largest Tier 1 IP backbone provider and wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT Communications Corporation.

This purchase will accelerate and extend NeuLion’s ability to deliver content for its partner companies anywhere in the world without buffering or delay leveraging NTT Communications Global IP Network.

NTT Communications operates the world’s largest tier1 IPv4/IPv6 dual stack backbone, which spans the world in terms of distribution reach. NeuLion continues to find strong demand from customers interested in using its IPTV Services. Scaling to that demand has just become easier through the use of NTT Communications Global IP Network at multi-gigabit per second speeds. Continue reading →

Verimatrix, setting the standard in content security technologies that enhance the value of pay-TV networks, has announced a technology alliance with Motorola and the integration of the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) with its leading series of IP set-top boxes (IPTV STBs).

Motorola’s advanced VIP1900 series is the first line of their IP STBs to fully support the VCAS solution. The VIP1900 series is fully functional with High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition in MPEG-2 and H.264 (MPEG-4), and Digital Video Recorder (DVR) support including time shift.

Motorola’s VIP1900 series combines consumer features, such as HDTV, DVR and media center with highly-useful operator features such as low bit rate video formats, reliable operation and flexible application possibilities. Continue reading →

Widevine Technologies, the world’s leading provider of downloadable content protection, forensic watermarking and digital copy protection solutions, today announced that TELUS has signed a six-year agreement to apply its video content protection technology across a number of platforms.

TELUS offers a range of video products including downloadable multimedia content, cellular-based TELUS mobile TV and TELUS TV, an IPTV broadcast and video-on-demand service.

Widevine will secure the delivery and consumption of content via set top boxes and PCs used by TELUS customers accessing these services. TELUS will also assess using the technology in its wireless devices such as cell phones. Continue reading →

Veoh Networks, a leading innovator in Internet television, recently appointed John MacDonald as president where he will oversee Veoh’s content acquisition and programming functions in this newly created position.

As the former general manager of Fine Living Network and former CEO and president of InnovaTV.com, he brings considerable expertise in building strong media and programming categories and will report directly to Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh’s CEO and founder.

Veoh’s Internet TV service delivers broadcast-quality entertainment and informational content via the Internet, using unique distribution technologies to allow for unlimited capacity for both long- and short-form programming. Continue reading →

The integration of Synamedia Metro with the AmiNET130 provides telco operators with a second generation IPTV solution for a fast and economical deployment of next-generation IPTV services.

The combination of Amino’s advanced set-top box plus the functionality, performance and scalability of Synamedia Metro offers telcos the most leading edge IPTV offering available today.

The AmiNET130 IPTV set-top box features support for H.264, a low-bit rate advanced video codec for SD and HD quality video, enabling operators to provide revenue-generating services by maximizing the efficient use of network bandwidth. Continue reading →

Get ready for the imminent and much anticipated opening of a new online video publishing on demand service by the multilingual European Paris/Madrid-based startup, vpod.tv.

Update 14 November 2006: vpod.tv did indeed go live last night, even kicking things off with a little Sweepstake courtesy of vpod.tv partner, Panosonic. Continue reading →

mPhase Technologies has announced that it will work with BitBand to integrate its Video On Demand technology with the mPhase TV+(TM) System video entertainment middleware offer it markets to broadband operators as an integrated system to support interactive IPTV services.

The combined features will provide the network operators that mPhase serves with the ability to scale their Video On Demand offers as consumers discover the convenience of ordering entertainment on demand. Continue reading →

Espial IPTV, a leading provider of IPTV middleware and applications, recently unveiled the Evo Future-Proof Framework (FPF) to provide an unparalleled level of openness to customize, extend and evolve the Evo IPTV Service Platform. The Evo Future-Proof Framework is a set of tools, methodologies, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that ensure truly open, portable, integrated and service-rich offerings.

The Evo Future-Proof Framework’s Portability Environment ensures service providers can offer IPTV services across any set-top box, PC, mobile handset or other media connected device without the need to re-write applications for each device or platform. The Portability Environment ensures a higher return on investment for the IPTV service provider as well as the ability to converge multiple service offerings. Continue reading →

The Macpower D7 iTV/IPTV devices deliver a compelling, more personalized entertainment experience. The Macpower D7-WDMA Wireless Digital Media Adapter is the perfect IPTV gateway for your living room, linking up your PC, TV, stereo, digital camera and much more.

This great design is coupled with playback support for all standard media formats. The simple installation makes it the perfect all-in-one multimedia solution. Continue reading →