Blog articles from 08/2008

Eric Kim from Intel's Digital Home Group today unveiled an application framework called the Widget Channel. It will bring structured Internet applications and content to the television, using widgets. The solution uses Yahoo's Widget Engine and core libraries, and brings many services to the TV, including content from Blockbuster, Disney-ABC, CBS Interactive, Cinequest, Joost, and Showtime. Kim also unveiled the Intel Media Processor CE 3100 (formerly codenamed "Canmore"),...

Digital health technologies designed to monitor and care for the elderly population will bring in U.S. revenues in excess of $1.8 billion by 2013. Technological advances will drive this growth in service and hardware revenues, according to Parks Associates’ Taking Care of the Elderly through Digital Technologies. Connected medical, activity, and environmental sensors and fitness measurement devices will bring in more than twice the dollar amount of the low-tech personal emergency...

Yesterday's announcement from Widevine that CinemaNow has chosen its content protection solution in a multi-platform distribution strategy is the first of many expected announcements through the rest of the year that show the migration of Internet video and other applications from just a pure PC/portable multimedia player market. As we wrote last week, the development trends indicate that Internet video services are going to be common on all kinds of platforms and via all kinds of...

Just as we put the finishing touches on our Internet Video: Direct-to-Consumer Services (Second Edition) report this week, word came that a couple more Internet video pioneers were closing their doors, or at least seriously revamping their game plan. Vongo (the subscription movies-on-demand service from Starz) will end its service on September 20, 2008. As you'll recall, Starz recently announced a collaboration with Verizon, which provided some clues as to why the company pulled the...

TV-based Internet video receivers and connected consumer electronics platforms will drive transactional revenues for premium Internet video services past $6 billion -- U.S. consumers will spend over $6 billion for Internet video services by 2013, with direct-to-TV videos accounting for 75% of that revenue, according to Parks Associates’ Internet Video: Direct-to-Consumer Services (Second Edition). This new report finds that greater ownership of connected game consoles, networked...

Rapid growth in home networking, approaching 168 million households worldwide in 2008, is laying the foundation for expansion of multimedia services internationally and especially in the European markets, according to Parks Associates . The market research firm will host CONNECTIONS™ Europe Summit on August 29, 2008, at the Kempinski Hotel Bristol Berlin, to discuss the implications of this market growth and share the latest findings of its Global Digital Living™ (GDL) project....

Monday's ruling from the 2nd Court of Appeals found that Cablevision's Remote Storage DVR (RS-DVR) service was not in violation of copyright law, overturning a March 2007 ruling. The RS-DVR feature allows subscribers to have DVR-like functionality without a set-top box, as Cablevision itself hosted the storage. I had commented on the original ruling in this blog post last year. While Cablevision may be free to now restart the RS-DVR services, I wonder how much they'll actually do...

Parks Associates recommends operators should offer free content to entice new subscribers... While nearly one-third of U.S. households have a video-capable mobile phone, operators are struggling to find an audience for their mobile video services, according to Mobile TV: Analysis & Forecast (Second Edition). This new report by market research firm Parks Associates found a majority of consumers with a video-capable mobile phone have never used the video features. For...