on-demand

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.)

In a posting on the company's blog last week, Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu--the free, ad-supported broadband video venture co-owned by The Walt Disney Company (ABC), NBC Universal and News Corp. (Fox)--provided some data on Hulu's growth over the past year. According to Kilar:

Cable MSO, Charter Communications, has launched an "on-demand reminder service" that sends customers text or email reminders, alerting them to new movie releases, events and premieres available on its VOD platform. Customers can register to receive the reminders, which are based on both title and category searches, at http://www.charter.net/reminders.

As expected, the BBC governing body, the BBC Trust, has provisionally approved the BBC's further participation in Project Canvas, an initiative on which the corporation is partnering with UK public service broadcasters, ITV, Channel 4 and Five, and UK ISP's, BT and Talk Talk, in order to attempt to develop a common standard and interface for the delivery of online catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer, the ITV player and 4oD, as well as other Internet-based services (including VOD and interactive TV widgets), to broadband-connected Freeview and Freesat set-top boxes (note: the partn

Shalom TV, a non-profit VOD service devoted to Jewish culture and public affairs (note: pay-TV platforms distributing the service include Comcast, Cox, Verizon FiOS TV, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Bright House, MetroCast, RCN, Service Electric, Buckeye CableSystem, Armstrong Cable and Blue Ridge Communications), contacted [itvt] Monday to let us know that it has secured a carriage deal with Rogers Communications, that sees it offered on the Canadian cable MSO's free Rogers Multicultural On Demand service (channel 800). Rogers' service area includes Toronto, home to Canada's largest Jewish community. According to Shalom TV, the Rogers carriage deal means that it now reaches 37 million North American households.

IP Vision--a company, backed by French set-top box vendor, Netgem, which currently offers a hybrid set-top box, called the FetchTV SmartBox, that combines reception of linear channels from the UK's free-to-air digital terrestrial platform, Freeview, with OTT access to pay-per-view and subscription-based online VOD services, as well as to free, online programming catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer (note: the company says that the box--which can be connected to any broadband access service--will support BSkyB's Sky Player service early next year)--last week announced plans to offer its FetchTV platform on third-party set-tops

Cable industry-owned VOD content-aggregator, iN Demand, contacted [itvt] Tuesday to let us know that it is offering several free VOD programs on cable systems around the US, as well as two exclusive online documentaries, in order to drive interest in this Saturday's pay-per-view championship boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto.

Immersive Media, a Portland, Oregon-based company that has developed a patented technology, dubbed IM LIVE, 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), will today announce a deployment of the technology with Canada's MuchMusic, which plans to use it to stream live video from its MuchOnDemand studio to visitors to its Web site, muchmusic.com, in order to complement its on-air programming.

1Cast, a company that has developed a personalized broadband video news service which it says has built--while still in beta--an audience that consumes over 3.2 million video clips each month, launched the service commercially on Wednesday. It also unveiled a new version of its Web platform and announced that the service is now available on the Boxee over-the-top-TV platform.

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

Sonic Solutions, the digital media company that last year acquired the pioneering broadband VOD service, CinemaNow (it subsequently added "Roxio" to the service's name in order to make its branding consistent with its other products), announced last week that it has secured a deal with Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer, Funai Electric, to provide the Roxio CinemaNow service on multiple soon-to-be-released connected HDTV's and Blu-ray Disc players.

The [itvt] editorial team is currently traveling in the UK, and, because of time constraints, we are covering a number of this issue's news stories in round-up/summary form. We anticipate some additional interruption of our regular news publishing schedule in the coming days, so we apologize in advance for any inconvenience to our readers. Here is the round-up:

KidZui, a company that offers a "safe" Web browser for children, has launched a YouTube-powered broadband video site, called ZuiTube.com. According to the company, the site--which is free and appears to carry no advertising (Kidzui generates revenue by, among other things, selling memberships that add various features to its flagship browser)--offers an intuitive user interface specially designed for children, and a library of nearly 60,000 "parent and teacher approved" YouTube-sourced videos, which it claims is the largest catalog of child-appropriate videos available online.

Multiscreen video software solutions provider, ExtendMedia, on Monday launched a product called OpenCASE Publisher, which it bills as designed to help cable, telco, satellite, mobile and other video service distributors take advantage of the growing momentum of the "TV Everywhere" distribution model, by providing a platform for them to quickly build and deploy multiscreen video offerings (note: the "TV Everywhere" model, which has long been championed by Time Warner and its chairman and CEO, Jeff Bewkes, seeks to make programming that pay-TV customers have already paid for through their cable, satellite or IPTV subscriptions available to those

UK commercial terrestrial broadcaster, ITV (note: the name originally stood for "Independent Television Network"), is planning to introduce so-called "micropayments" for its on-demand programming across a range of platforms (including Project Canvas, its joint venture with the BBC and incumbent telco, BT) this fall, according to a report in the UK broadcasting-industry trade publication, Broadcast.