iptv

Espial, the Canadian digital TV software company that in 2008 bought US IPTV and video-on-demand technology provider, Kasenna (note: the deal valued Kasenna, which had raised $90 million in funding since its launch in 2000, at around $6.5 million), said Wednesday that Chinese cable operator, Jilin Cable Network, has selected its Espial MediaBase VOD platform to power a range of on-demand services. Espial acquired the MediaBase product line through the Kasenna purchase. According to Espial, Jilin, which serves 3 million subscribers in northeast China, is using MediaBase to offer VOD, TV on-demand, network DVR and timeshift-TV services to hundreds of thousands of subscribers, using more than 60 time-shift TV channel captures.

Canadian telco, Telus, has launched a new version of its Telus TV service in Western Canada that is based on the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform. The company says that the service is initially available in and around Edmonton and in 40 or so communities in British Columbia and Alberta, and will be expanded over time. Customers of Telus's earlier implementation of Telus TV, which is powered by Minerva Networks' IPTV platform, will have the opportunity to upgrade over the coming months, the company says. "We're excited that Telus has chosen Microsoft Mediaroom as the platform for their next-generation Telus TV service," Andreas Mueller-Schubert, general manager of Microsoft's TV and Video Platforms Business, said in a prepared statement.

[itvt] has just published the latest edition of Rick Howe's regular column, "The iTV Doctor Is In!" This week, GW Shaw, executive director of AT&T U-verse marketing, discusses AT&T U-verse TV's interactive TV apps strategy, and how that strategy has been shaped by what it has learned from its customers since launching its first ITV apps back in 2006.

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 are covering a number of stories in this issue in summary form:

Helsinki-based interactive TV company, Icareus, contacted [itvt] Tuesday with an update on its trading activities for 2009. In spite of the ongoing recession, the company claims to have ended the year with "positive feelings": "Despite the world economy being as cold as the winter in Finland, we at Icareus are quite satisfied with the year 2009--both our turnover and results improved and we have been able to build new promising customer relationships," Icareus managing director, Toni Leiponen, said in a statement emailed to [itvt]. "Furthermore, the new year looks better then ever before, so we are eagerly looking forward, into the future."

AT&T has launched an interactive application, called Film Awards Interactive, for the iPhone/iPod touch and for its Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV platform, U-verse TV. According to AT&T, among other things, the free app lets consumers use their remote control or their iPhone/iPod touch screen to:

Because the [itvt] editorial team is busy working on The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd-4th in San Francisco) and on our new, post-TVOT EBIF Intensive event (March 5th in San Francisco), we are covering a number of stories in this issue in summary form:

On Demand Group (ODG), the London-based content-aggregation-and-management subsidiary of SeaChange International, contacted [itvt] Wednesday to let us know that it is providing a fully managed VOD offering for United Arab Emirates-based telco, du, as part of the latter's du TV and du TV+ IPTV services.

Microsoft on Wednesday launched version 2.0 of its Mediaroom IPTV platform, billing it as "enabl[ing] TV service operators to provide their TV services to more subscribers than ever before, delivering more content to more screens than the previous version of Mediaroom--both inside and outside the home."

Paris-based video-sharing site operator, Dailymotion, on Tuesday announced the launch of new interactive advertising formats that are designed for connected TV (OTT) and IPTV implementations of its service. The company says that the new formats--which come on the heels of its launch of an ad-supported iPhone/iPod touch application (see the article published on itvt.com, December 22nd)--expand its "ad-supported content strategy to all three screens."

Accedo Broadband--a Stockholm-based provider of interactive TV applications and content for IPTV and broadband-connected consumer electronics devices (note: the company, which was founded by telecom and media entrepreneurs, Michael Lantz and Fredrik Andersson, offers a range of applications, but is best known for its games)--said last week that it has launched an interactive TV games service on Colombian telco UNE's IPTV platform.

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.

Paris-based interactive TV games specialist, Visiware, announced Tuesday that its Playin'TV games are now available on Infostrada TV, a Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV platform operated by Italian telco, Wind Telecommunications.

According to the company, six games from its Playin'TV catalog that have been adapted for the Mediaroom platform--"Solitaire," "Reversi," "Tactic 2 Vitamin," "Twin Match Ocean," "Tweezle Lab" and "Buzzbee"--are now available free of charge in Infostrada TV's "Extra" section.

The Open IPTV Forum (OIPF)--an industry group that is attempting to bring together telcos, consumer electronics manufacturers, and network infrastructure providers, in order to develop specifications for an open, end-to-end solution that will facilitate development and deployment of interactive, personalized IPTV services (note: the organization, whose founding members include Ericsson, FT Group, Nokia Siemens, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony and Telecom Italia, recently published the Architecture Specification for IPTV infrastructure elements and services to be included in Release 2 of its OIPF Specifications--see the article published on itvt.com, September 8th--and also recently published the Profi