etv

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:

Savannah, Georgia-based Ligos said Wednesday that it has closed a deal with "one of the nation's largest cable operators"--which it did not identify--for a set of its EBIF-based ETV Mosaic systems, and that the operator will deploy the technology later this year (note: for more on Ligos's EBIF version of its flagship Mosaic EPG technology, see the article published on itvt.com, July 7th). According to the company, ETV Mosaic enables the creation and delivery of interactive presentations "for program guides and much more" on EBIF-enabled systems.

itaas, an Atlanta-based company that provides a range of software development, integration and testing services for interactive TV (including ETV, tru2way and IPTV solutions), announced Monday that it is expanding its facilities and staff across its US and Indian offices, in order to respond to what it says has been a "significant increase of IP and cable technology initiatives across multiple platforms," and in anticipation of what it expects will be "significant growth" in the interactive TV market next year.

Canoe Ventures, the company tasked with implementing the US cable industry's plans for interactive and addressable advertising (note: its backers are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House), last week announced the formation of a "Partnership for Innovation in Television Advertising" with the VCU Brandcenter, the graduate advertising and branding program of the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University. According to the company, the partnership is intended to support VCU Brandcenter educational activities that are designed to teach graduate students to apply new technologies that are transforming television into a more compelling and competitive marketing medium.

US cable-industry research, development and standardization body, CableLabs, issued a press release last week trumpeting the various ETV/EBIF and tru2way-related programs it has put in place to support device manufacturers and application developers--two groups which it describes as "important stakeholders" in the ETV and tru2way communities. "These steps that CableLabs is taking provide resources for tru2way and ETV product developers, at little to no cost for them," CableLabs president and CEO, Paul Liao, said in a prepared statement. "We will continue to review this area and discuss other opportunities with our members and developers in order to help move this technology into the market."

[itvt] would like to alert our readers to two videos that were recently posted to YouTube by Will Kreth, senior director of advanced video strategy at Time Warner Cable and founder of OEDN.net (note: the name is an acronym for "OCAP/EBIF Developer Network), an organization which is attempting to drive application development efforts using the US cable industry's OCAP/tru2way and EBIF middleware standards and whose backers include Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Charter and Bright House.

In answer to a question from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst, Jessica Reif-Cohen, during Comcast's second-quarter earnings conference call last week, Comcast COO Steve Burke, stated that the cable MSO's behind Canoe Ventures (i.e. Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House), the company tasked with implementing the US cable industry's plans for interactive and addressable advertising, could have deployed EBIF to as many as 25 million homes by the fourth quarter, and that Canoe Ventures may begin to generate some revenue next year: "We just had a Canoe board meeting a couple of days ago," Burke said. "I think we are making very good progress.

Boston-based interactive TV advertising specialist, Backchannelmedia, said Monday that its flagship Clickable TV technology has been validated by over-the-air testing and is now in what the company calls "a new commercialization stage." The company also announced that its founder and co-CEO, Michael Kokernak, has resigned his co-CEO position and will now become president of a new unit, called BCM Research, that will "seek to develop the next cycle of major innovation for Backchannelmedia" and that will "be closely networked to ongoing innovations in the digital technology space and will have a long-term horizon" (note: Kokernak will continue to sit on the company's board of directors).

US cable-industry research, development and standardization consortium, CableLabs, announced Thursday the alpha version of a new Enhanced TV (ETV) Test Suite, which is intended to support ETV user agent development (note: ETV user agents are the software components that process an ETV application on a set-top box). Based on the CableLabs Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) specification, the test suite is comprised of a set of test EBIF applications, a test plan, and test controller software (complete with source code).

At the NCTA Cable Show in Washington, DC Monday, US cable industry research, development and standardization body, CableLabs, and Canoe Ventures--the company that is implementing Project Canoe, the US cable industry's initiative to create a national unified platform for interactive and addressable advertising (it is backed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House)-- announced a new draft reference architecture specification that is designed to further the development of advanced cable advertising products.

Interactive TV technology provider, BIAP (note: the company's name is an acronym for Broadband Interactive Applications), has secured a five-year license agreement for its ETV User Agent with Time Warner Cable. The software will enable Time Warner Cable's digital set-top boxes to run EBIF applications created by the operator itself or by third parties such as TV networks. In addition to supporting third-party EBIF applications, the BIAP ETV User Agent will support the newest version of Time Warner Cable's MDN navigator.

--Adds Four New Members to its istart ETV Developer Program

SysMedia, a UK-based company that specializes in content-management and production systems for teletext, subtitling and interactive TV, contacted [itvt] last week to let us know that it has expanded its Plasma Gold interactive content production and management system with a new output module that enables delivery to mobiles (note: according to SysMedia, Plasma Gold separates content from the way it's presented, using a templated design, and so offers "a powerful author-once/publish-to-many solution for multiplatform content production"; the company says that the platform is compliant with OCAP, ETV/EBIF and ACAP and also supports IPTV deployments).

[itvt] has learned that Geneva-based ADB Group, which acquired US
tru2way/OCAP specialist, Vidiom Systems, back in February, 2006,
has sold parts of that company's professional services business back to