vod

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.

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:

In an interview with Bloomberg News that was published Wednesday, Anthony Wood, CEO of over-the-top company, Roku, revealed that the company hopes to raise $30 million in private funding this quarter from Menlo Ventures and other sources, and that it may go public next year--though he added that it is not currently working with an investment bank and has yet to set a date for an IPO.

Cable industry-owned VOD content aggregator, iN Demand, announced Wednesday that on February 1st it will launch a new movies-on-demand category, designed to celebrate Black History Month. Dubbed Black Cinema On Demand, the category will offer films featuring African-American directors, actors and themes.

Multiplatform music video programmer, Music Choice, said Wednesday that its VOD service, Music Choice On Demand, generated over a billion orders in 2009, making it the number-one VOD network for the year. The company cited data from media measurement and analytics company, Rentrak, which it says confirmed that its service secured the most orders of any free or premium VOD service and surpassed all free VOD services for total unique set-top boxes accessing its content. The company also said that the data showed that the service accumulated more than double the orders of most other VOD music services combined, with nearly three out of every four music-related orders in 2009 being for Music Choice content.

Canadian cable MSO, Rogers Communications, said Tuesday that it has expanded the content line-up of Rogers On Demand Online, its implementation of the "TV Everywhere" distribution model, via new deals with MGM studios, Corus Entertainment and E1 Entertainment (note: the "TV Everywhere" distribution model 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 thus aims to head off the threat posed to pay-TV services by the increasing availability of over-the-top programming--for some background on TV Everywhere, see the articles publishe

SeeSaw--the broadband VOD service that broadcast transmission company, Arqiva, is developing following its acquisition of the platform assets of Project Kangaroo, the VOD platform developed by UKVOD, a joint venture between the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, and terrestrial broadcasters, ITV and Channel 4, for a price believed to be in the £8 million range (note: Project Kangaroo was believed to be close to launch, when it was nixed in February by the Competition Commission, an independent public body that investigates mergers, markets and regulated industries at the UK government's behest)--will today (Tuesday) be

Immersive Media, a company that has developed a patented technology, dubbed imLIVE, that enables viewer-controlled, 360-degree, live, full-motion, interactive video experiences (note: the experience of watching video powered by the technology is akin to watching a video version of Google Street View), announced last week that it is making available 360-degree, interactive, online video footage of the earthquake devastation in Haiti free of charge to relief agencies, government departments and news-gathering organizations involved in the ongoing recover efforts.

Broadband video platform provider, Brightcove, today (Monday) launched the Brightcove TV Everywhere Solution Pack (TVE-SP), which it claims provides TV programmers with everything they need in order to operate rich, branded and authenticated TV Everywhere-compatible catch-up TV services.

Avail-TVN--the company formed last July from the merger of VOD distribution services provider, TVN Entertainment, and Avail Media, a provider of managed content-aggregation services for smaller IPTV operators (see the article published on itvt.com, July 15th)--announced last week that it has signed an industry-wide, long-term digital media services deal with existing customer, Epix, a multiplatform (linear, VOD, online) premium programming service which is a joint venture between Viacom, its Paramount Pictures arm, MGM and Lionsgate and which has to date announced carriage deals with Verizon FiOS TV, Cox and Mediacom.

In a posting on its official blog, Tuesday evening, the White House announced the availability of a new, free White House App for the Apple iPhone/iPod touch. "One feature that stands out is live video streaming," the blog post stated. "Now anyone with this app can watch the president's public events at the White House, frequent Web chats with administration officials, and other events like key speeches and press briefings, in real time. In fact," the blog post continued, "the president's State of the Union speech next week is a great example.

VOD and advanced advertising technology provider, SeaChange International, announced Tuesday that satellite TV provider, DISH Network, is upgrading its entire platform of SeaChange Spot advertising insertion systems to meet what it claims is a growing demand for HD ad placements across its North American footprint. SeaChange is DISH Network's exclusive ad insertion technology provider, having delivered ads for the satellite TV provider since it launched its DBS service back in 1996.

Bresnan Communications, the US's 13th-largest MSO (it has approximately 300,000 subscribers), announced last week that it has begun a trial of technologies that enable the dynamic insertion of advertising into VOD programming.

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.)

Just a few days after announcing a similar deal with the US's third-largest cable operator, Cox Communications (see the article published on itvt.com, January 11th), Epix--a multiplatform premium programming service which is a joint venture between Viacom, its Paramount Pictures arm, MGM and Lionsgate and which has exclusive access to Paramount, Paramount Vantage MTV and Nickelodeon movies released theatrically on or after January 1st, 2008, and to MGM, United Artists and Lionsgate titles released theatrically on or after January 1st, 2009--has a