News Round-Up: Broadband Video

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 broadband video news for the past few days:

• San Francisco-based interactive video and video analytics company, Clikthrough (note: for some background on the company, see the article published on itvt.com, July 20th), contacted [itvt] last week to let us know that it has teamed with EuroRSCG to build a custom interactive video experience for Sony's latest PlayStation release, "MAG." "In our partnership, EuroRSCG brought the innovative concept to build an interactive Global News Network showcasing how the epic battle [that is at the center of the "MAG" game] began," Clikthrough CEO, Abe McCallum, explained in an email. "Clikthrough has joined with EuroRSCG to make the futuristic concept a reality, and to empower the user to clik [sic] on any item within the broadcast. This type of experience provides the user an opportunity to learn more about the story in real time without taking away from the viewing experience. EuroRSCG leveraged Clikthrough's core player and customized the user experience to emulate the Clikthrough Theater. As part of this launch, Clikthrough has brought global language support, closed captioning, and full customization." The "MAG" interactive video experience can be viewed at http://www.mag.com
• 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 the technology had been tapped to provide live coverage of the red-carpet entrance at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards show on Sunday. The coverage was presented by People.com, and is now available on-demand online, the company says. According to Immersive Media, imLIVE allows each online viewer to become "their own director, independently controlling his or her viewpoint with just a click of the computer mouse. Viewers can look left or right, up or down, or sideways at any time, independent of other viewers," the company adds.
• Hulu, the free, ad-supported broadband video venture co-owned by The Walt Disney Company (ABC), NBC Universal and News Corp. (Fox), announced last week that the NFL Network has begun offering programs on its service. "Launching with eight shows, including 'America's Game,' 'Hard Knocks,' 'Greatest Games,' 'Game of the Week,' 'Live Wire,' 'Season in Review,' 'Sounds of the Game' and 'Super Bowl Highlights,' as well as highlights from past seasons of every team in the league, the NFL Network on Hulu is poised to be a fan favorite long after next week's big game," the company says in its promotional materials. Hulu has also launched the Hulu AdZone, which it describes as a "one-stop-shop repository of Super Bowl ads. Currently, the Hulu AdZone is populated with 20 Super Bowl ads from last year, but will populate with new ads during the game as they air on television," the company added.
• Broadband video platform provider, Ooyala, says that TVGuide.com used its technology to power online video for its live red-carpet "Fashion Cam" at Sunday's Grammy Awards. The online video experience was integrated with Twitter and Facebook to enable social viewing. "TVGuide.com is bringing the excitement of the Grammy Awards directly to users with our live Fashion Cam, Twitter and Facebook streams," TVGuide.com editor-in-chief and VP of marketing, Christy Tanner, said in a prepared statement. "As stars walk the red carpet, our editors will discuss the looks, trends, hits and misses with fashion's most passionate critics--the fans." Ooyala also announced last week that it has been tapped to provide a customized video experience for the IC Places Network of city Web sites. "Video players across the IC Places network offer on-demand and live-streaming functionality, as well as the ability to virally distribute IC Places Shows to over 50 countries, worldwide, extending show reach beyond the company's Web sites," Ooyala says in its press materials. "Through the live-streaming feature, IC Places can now broadcast several different live events over its network throughout various cities simultaneously." IC Places' Ooyala-powered videos are monetized through partnerships with Tremor Media and ScanScout.
• 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, 2009 by the Competition Commission, an independent public body that investigates mergers, markets and regulated industries at the UK government's behest)--has announced new content deals with broadcasters Channel 4 and Five and with producers, Talkback Thames, Shed Media, Perform, Digital Rights Group and RHI Entertainment. The Daily Telegraph has more. The deals with Channel 4 and Five mean that ITV is the only UK terrestrial broadcaster not to have yet signed a deal with SeeSaw, which launched in private beta last week and which is scheduled to launch commercially in March.
• Live Internet broadcasting service provider, Ustream, last week announced a new desktop application, dubbed Ustream Producer, that it claims enables users of its service to "increase the production value of their broadcasts" and allows them to "stream in high quality and produce compelling programs that are similar to terrestrial television." Features of the new tool, according to Ustream, include "simple drag-and-drop screencasting, support for multiple cameras, picture-in-picture streaming, multiple transition settings, dragging and dropping audio and video files to play for the audience, and integrating social features like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and AIM. The application works on PC and Mac computers," the company says, "and is offered in two product tiers: Ustream Producer (free) and Ustream Producer Pro ($199 one-time fee). The software is optimized for viewing on the iPhone and Android viewing devices in the highest quality, H.264."
• In a posting on its official blog last week, the White House revealed that its live streaming coverage of President Obama's State of the Union address was watched by nearly 1.3 million people. The coverage was available on WhiteHouse.gov, and could be embedded by third parties: other sites that embedded the coverage included YouTube, Huffington Post and Blogher. In addition, the White House says, "thousands of people tuned in live from their mobile devices using the new White House iPhone app. While we aren't able to confirm the total number of unique streams yet, we are able to see that nearly a terabyte of data was served to iPhones with the application during the event," it added.