comcast

During Comcast's conference call with financial analysts following the release of its Q4, 2009 results, Wednesday, CEO, Brian Roberts, and COO, Steve Burke, provided a brief update on the status of its interactive TV deployments and plans.

"We will...continue to invest in our network, extending our technical capabilities even further, more widely deploying EBIF technology, for instance, to support interactive TV and advertising," Roberts stated in his presentation. "And through our newly formed Comcast Labs we will focus on extending and integrating IP technology in order to improve the customer experience, accelerate the pace at which we introduce new products, and expand our cross-platform experiences."

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 the latest VOD news:

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 regulatory/government news for the past few days:

MSO Comcast and premium programmer HBO last week announced a partnership that will see the companies promoting HBO's new World War II-themed miniseries, "The Pacific," to Comcast digital subscribers via a range of supplemental VOD content. (Note: the 10-hour miniseries, which will premiere March 14th and which was executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the team behind the 2001 HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers," follows the intertwined war experiences of three real-life US Marine veterans of the Pacific Theater, Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone.)

Comcast has produced a demo video (embedded above), launched an informational Web site, and published a user guide for the A28 i-Guide, an EPG which was developed by GuideWorks, its joint venture with Rovi (formerly Macrovision), and which it has reportedly been in the process of rolling out on Motorola set-top boxes since September (

Due to the volume of news generated by last week's Consumer Electronics Show, and because the [itvt] editorial team is busy working on The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd-4th in San Francisco), we are covering a number of stories in this issue in summary form:

As was widely anticipated, 3D TV has emerged as one of the major themes of this year's Consumer Electronics Show--and a number of pieces of 3D TV news came across [itvt]'s desk, Tuesday. Here is a brief round-up:

Clearleap, an Atlanta-based company which offers a technology platform for bringing Internet-sourced video content to television sets, announced last week that it has signed a deal with Break Media, the company that operates Break.com, an entertainment Web site which targets a male demographic, to bring the latter's broadband video content to the TV screen. According to the companies, their partnership will enable Break.com to dynamically deliver a portion of its video library to Clearleap's Content Marketplace, where it will instantly be available for cable and IPTV operators to use as VOD programming.

Here is a round-up of some other interactive TV-related stories we didn't have room for in this issue:

Albeit a few days later than promised (note: at the recent NewTeeVee conference, Amy Banse, president of Comcast Interactive Media, stated that it would launch before Channukah, which began last Friday evening), Comcast on Tuesday rolled out its initial implementation of the so-called "TV Everywhere" content distribution model (note: the "TV Everywhere" model, which was originally championed by Time Warner CEO, Jeff Bewkes, ultimately seeks, via authentication technology, to make programming that pay-TV customers have already paid for through their cable, satellite or IPTV subscriptions available to those customers on multiple Web sites and platforms, and

Comcast announced Monday that it will today (Tuesday) launch an HD VOD collection showcasing music videos, biographical footage and live performances from Shakira, thanks to an exclusive partnership with the Colombian singer (note: the MSO also recently launched a similar exclusive HD VOD collection featuring singer, Taylor Swift--see the article published on itvt.com, December 3rd).

[itvt] has just published the latest edition of Rick Howe's regular column, The iTV Doctor Is In! This week, in the second part of a three-part series, Arthur Orduna, CTO of Canoe Ventures; Bill Seely, principal of Practical Marketing Analytics; and Ellen Dudar, chief product officer of FourthWall Media, project themselves into the future and attempt to answer the question: What was the single most significant factor

The US's largest cable MSO, Comcast, and home shopping network, HSN, on Wednesday announced that they have begun the nationwide roll-out of an ETV/EBIF version of HSN's flagship interactive TV application, Shop by Remote, which allows viewers to use their remote controls to shop and make purchases (note: the roll-out has actually been underway for some time now--see the article published on itvt.com, June 3rd).

Comcast, the US's largest cable MSO, announced Thursday that Discovery Channel has joined its On Demand Online trial and is now making a selection of its full-length programming available online to trial participants.