FierceIPTV

Live TV is dying, advertisers likely to spend $9B anyway

Jim O'Neill — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:15:08 -0400

With DVR penetration nearing 50 percent of American households, and with the majority of homes already watching video on demand, Americans are slowly moving away from a former mainstay of television viewing: Live TV. Nevertheless, this week's upfronts, that put advertisers and broadcast networks together, are likely to result in $9 billion worth of business. Article

AT&T launches U-verse TV and Internet service in Ottawa, Kan.

Jim O'Neill — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:26:26 -0400

AT&T (NYSE: T) U-verse Internet and U-verse TV are now available in Ottawa, Kan., continuing the telco's expansion in the Sunflower State.

The company said the service now passes more than 540,000 living units in and around the Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita areas since its 2007 roll out in the state.

"Our most recent expansion of AT&T U-verse in Ottawa reflects our commitment to make the investments necessary to bring consumers across Kansas a new era of communications technology," said Steve Hahn, president of AT&T Kansas. "Ottawa residents have asked for more choices in television service and today we're delivering."

AT&T said its U-verse TV service closed the first quarter of 2012 with more than 4 million users, after adding some 200,000 subscribers. It's high-speed Internet service, meanwhile, closed the quarter with 5.9 million users after adding 718,000 new subscribers.

AT&T U-verse TV has added more TV subscribers than any of the major TV providers reported over the last 12 quarters combined.

For more:
- see this release

Ensequence gets $26M in latest funding round

Jim O'Neill — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:54:33 -0400

The concept of smart TVs and their potential to connect with consumers has been fueling venture capital investment in the space of late, especially in the area of app development.

The latest company to share a piece of the VC pie is interactive TV vendor Ensequence, which just announced it landed $26 million that it'll use to enable "programmers, advertisers and service providers to transform television into a more engaging consumer viewing experience on all platforms and devices."

Ohio-based Myrian Capital led the round.

"This round will help Ensequence further lead the industry in enabling programmers, advertisers and service providers to transform television into a more engaging consumer viewing experience on all platforms and devices," said Peter Low, president and CEO of Ensequence.

The Portland, Ore.-based company is no newcomer to the space, having spent the past 10 years working with programmers, advertisers and service providers to make shows and ads more engaging through branded interactive elements.

Ensequence counts among its customers NBCUniversal, MTV Networks, Showtime Networks, Turner Broadcasting, HBO, and also works with a number of service providers, including Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), and Dish Network (Nasdaq: DISH).

With Showtime, for example, Ensequence enabled viewers to watch the network's sports programming and vote during boxing bouts by remote with the results displayed on-screen.

It also allowed viewers to access fighter stats and profiles, as well as live polling, a trivia game, a fight calendar and control over custom viewer settings.

The interactive experience, initially available on Verizon FiOS, appears to be ‘floating' as it hovers above the video telecast.

Ensequence helps service providers cope with widespread fragmentation, allowing them to develop, deploy and manage interactivity across different TV platforms and mobile devices.

The latest funding brings Ensequence's total funding since it launched in 2000 to around $125 million.

For more:
- see this release
- see this article

Elemental lands Columbus Communications for video play in LatAm, Caribbean

Jim O'Neill — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:06:39 -0400

Transcoding vendor Elemental Technologies, which last year added Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Avail-TVN to its customer roster, today said it would power Columbus' multiscreen video roll out in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The service is set to launch in September and will give Columbus subscribers expanded access to 250 live linear broadcast channels and on-demand video on a variety of connected viewing devices, including hybrid set-top boxes, PCs, tablets and smartphones.

The customer win is the second in the region for Elemental, which last year was chosen by Avail-TVN to power a multiscreen deployment with Avail-TVN for Cable & Wireless subsidiary LIME in Jamaica and Barbados.

Elemental, also last year, was chosen to provide transcoding for Comcast's Xfinity, a win that really helped it plant its feet firmly with major service provider clients.

Columbus, based in Barbados, said Elemental was a strategic component of its expanded deployment.

"The key differentiators that influenced our decision to work with Elemental versus competitors include overall video quality, high-performance software, system scalability, significant reduction in power consumption, a smaller hardware footprint, lower maintenance costs," Columbus CTO Darren Richer said.

ElementalLive will be used to create adaptive bit rate (ABR) streams for both Apple Live Streaming (HLS) and Microsoft Smooth Streaming. Customers will initially have access to live broadcast output streams and an on-demand video library on PC, iPhone and iPad platforms. The next step of the deployment will include support for hybrid set-top boxes and larger screen viewing will be available.

Columbus offers subscribes in Trinidad, Jamaica, Grenada and Curacao digital cable television, broadband Internet, digital landline telephony and corporate data services under the brand name FLOW.

For more:
- see this release

SeaChange wraps up spinoff of broadcast server, storage unit

Jim O'Neill — Fri, 11 May 2012 06:42:45 -0400

Video-on-demand software specialist SeaChange International (Nasdaq: SEAC) said it has closed the sale of its broadcast server and storage business to XOR Media, completing its first major step toward becoming a pure-play software company.

The spinoff of XOR Media, formerly SeaChange Broadcast, was bankrolled by a U.S. VC company, and leaves intact a unit that includes ingest and playout codecs MediaClient and MediaServer; and the shared grid, and scalable Universal MediaLibrary storage.

"This sale is an important part of our strategy to transform SeaChange into a pure play software company," said SeaChange CEO Raghu Rau. "Now that the transaction is complete, we can focus on our core software and services operations, including our next generation back office, video streamers, gateway software and advertising solutions."

Rau said he expects minimal impact on customers since XOR Media's management and product line is essentially unchanged.

"XOR Media is a new business entity in name, but the same team and processes are here to ensure business continuity for our customers," XOR Media CEO Zheng Gao said. "The feedback we have been receiving on XOR Media is very encouraging, and we are excited to launch new opportunities for XOR Media's open, cloud-capable, and media-optimized servers and storage."
Moving forward, SeaChange will become a reseller of XOR Media, but it said it plans to work with other server and storage vendors as well.

As part of the deal, XOR Media launches with an installed base of some 300 top-tier customers; 12,000 channels on air; and 11PB of managed data. Headquartered in New Hampshire, it has some 180 employees and sales offices around the world.

The Acton, Mass.-based company has had a tumultuous year.

In December, after failing to find its sweet spot for several quarters, the company's chief executive and founder Bill Styslinger, retired. Rau became interim CEO; he took over permanently last month.

In February, the company announced president and longtime SeaChange exec Yvette Kanouff was leaving the company, saying it had no plans to replace her, part of an ongoing drive to cut $5 million costs that included thinning employee ranks as well.

The company saw first quarter earnings dip, and Rau reiterated that it would continue to morph itself into a pure-play software provider and said it was actively seeking buyers for other non-core segments of the company that don't fit into its long-term strategy.

For more:
- see this release