miniweb

Because the [itvt] editorial team is busy working on The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd-4th in San Francisco) and on our new EBIF Intensive event (March 5th in San Francisco), we will be covering most stories in summary/round-up form over the next few weeks. Here is a round-up of interactive TV technology/operator news for the past few days.

London, UK-based interactive TV company, Miniweb (note: last September, the company--which is best known for offering an interactive TV alternative to the red button on the Sky satellite-TV platform--announced that it had raised $32 million in venture funding--see [itvt] Issue 8.06 Part 1), said Monday that it has teamed with Metrological Media Innovations, a provider of middleware and reference designs based on the Intel Media Processor CE 3100 (note: the company is part of the Intel Consumer Electronics Network), to integrate its Miniweb services platform with the latter's Metrological Metroconnect OS.

London, UK-based interactive TV company, Miniweb (note: last September, the company--which is best known for offering an interactive TV alternative to the red button on the Sky satellite-TV platform--announced that it had raised $32 million in venture funding--see [itvt] Issue 8.06 Part 1), has teamed with business directory provider, Central Index, to launch TV118, a business directory service for the TV, which is being made available to consumers and businesses free-of-charge.

London, UK-based interactive TV company, Miniweb (note: last September, the company--which is best known for offering an interactive TV alternative to the red button on the Sky satellite-TV platform--announced that it had raised $32 million in venture funding--see [itvt] Issue 8.06 Part 1), and Bristol, UK-based TV manufacturer, Bristol Interactive Technology, announced Monday that Miniweb's software platform has been integrated into a new range of Bristol HD-ready digital television sets.

London, UK-based interactive TV company, Miniweb (note: last September, the company--which is best known for offering an interactive TV alternative to the red button on the Sky satellite-TV platform--announced that it had raised $32 million in venture funding--see [itvt] Issue 8.06 Part 1), and San Francisco, Calif.-based video search company, blinkx, announced Monday that they have signed a technology integration agreement which they are billing as having the potential to, among other things, make vast amounts of Internet video content easily accessible

UK-based interactive TV company, Miniweb, said Wednesday that it has integrated MPP's iPay Developer payment solution into its platform, in order to enable network operators, TV manufacturers and content owners that use the platform to provide centralized, secure payment services to TV viewers equipped with broadband-connected set-top boxes and television sets. According to Miniweb, the integration of MPP's ecommerce solution into its platform will enable content owners and other companies to set up such payment services quickly and easily: viewers will be able to store their payment details securely before paying for goods and services, purchasing one-off or recurring subscriptions to video or music content, or taking part in pay-per-play competitions, the company says.

(Note: Earlier this week, [itvt] published a news story on UK home shopping programmer JML's launch of an interactive TV service based on Miniweb's TV Keys and Key & See offerings. A Miniweb representative subsequently contacted us to let us know that the press release on which we based our story had, in error, been released too early. We are therefore publishing an updated version of the story, which contains information on how the new service works that was omitted from the earlier version of the release.)

UK-based Miniweb says that its TV Keys service is now powering an interactive TV application for home shopping programmer, JML, on the Sky satellite-TV platform (note: Miniweb, which was founded by former BSkyB interactive TV executive, Ian Valentine, recently raised $32 million in new funding and appointed a new CEO--see [itvt] Issue 8.06 Part 1). The application--which can be accessed from five JML channels (JML, JML Home & DIY, JML Choice, JML Lifestyle and JML Cookshop) by using the remote control to punch in a code--allows viewers to use their remotes to browse inventory and make purchases. Via a functionality that Miniweb calls "Key & See," the app lets viewers continue to watch the channel they launched it from while they use it.