Related news roundup - 2 August

Posted by andrew pascoe on August 2, 2009 · View Comments 

Once more into the breach of VOD/IPTV/regulation/general video news from the last fortnight:

  • Arqiva, the broadcast & radio infrastructure provider, was confirmed to have purchased the assets of the Project Kangaroo VOD project. The Guardian (article - 24 July) has the purchase price at about £8million and covering the hardware, software technology, related IP, and the intended to be consumer-facing “See Saw” brand name.  PaidContentUK (article - 24 July) has more info from Arqiva’s strategy director, saying the purchase is a “natural progression” for them, that the offering will be one to consumers, and that they are currently busy actually doing content deals. NMA (article - 31 July) says that Arqiva has it rumoured to have appointed Pierre-Jean Sebert as CEO of the new Kangaroo. The article says that Sebert for the last 3 years has been director of the rights negotiation and multimedia channel development at Reel Enterprises.
  • Microsoft UK got a lot of coverage of its announcement that it will launch a free-to-view VOD service, showing archive content from BBC Worldwide. It’s launching with (just) 350 hours of programming - shows include Peep Show, Hustle & Hotel Babylon. (Independent article  here  - 30 July). Pre-roll ads will be used to monetise (with launch ads all being bought by GroupM agencies including MEC & Mediacom - TheRegister article).
  • ITV has closed its future technology department. The department, headed by Simon Fell, was involved in ITV’s launch of HD & mobile & online services (including those ads to be inserted into VOD clips layed over white/blank spaces)   (article from BrandRepublic).
  • BT Vision continues to struggle to acquire new customers in any sizeable numbers. From Broadband TV News (article here) after accounting for inactive customers[(I'm not sure what BT are defining as an "inactive"] they have added just 10,000  new customers for the quarter ending June 30.
  • Sky will launch a true pull VOD offering to its HD customers next year, according to Paid Content UK - article here. (HD customers because the HD set top boxes have the ethernet connection needed.) Still with Sky, its like-for-like profit rose by 4% year on year (the total profit rise was much larger for the year to July, due to much less of the ITV stake writedown occuring in the last financial year than the previous one). Sky added 124,000 new customers in the last quarter.  Telegraph article is here.
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Project Canvas news roundup - 05 July

Posted by andrew pascoe on July 5, 2009 · View Comments 

A collection of all things directly related to Project Canvas from the last two weeks:

  • TechRadar: BSkyB’s (Sky’s) director of strategic product development, Gerry O’Sullivan, confirmed that they are definitely still interested in what opportunities Canvas could present them. Not too surprising, especially given the Canvas spec is understood to also include some way of having paid content in addition to the bulk free content. O’Sullivan speaking at the Intellect Consumer Electronics conference after seeing a demo of the service: ‘ “I mean to be quite honest I’ve learned more from listening to Erik [Huggers] about Canvas today than I’ve ever heard before.” ‘.
  • At the Intellect Consumer Electronics conference this week, the BBC’s Canvas point man apparently showed a demo of the service. If anyone was there, get in touch - we’d love to hear a description of what was shown.
  • At TechRadar: One thing that is available from the conference is a transcript of a short video promo explaining Canvas, also shown by Huggers. It’s not clear whether the promo was made internally, or by one of the ad agencies thought to be have been pitching for the account (it’s also not publicly known if a winner for the pitch was ever decided, and whether there’s an agency currently working on  how to communicate Canvas to the public).
  • TechRadar: Still at the same Intellect conference, Sony UK head Steve Dowdle has said the UK focus of the Canvas standards worries him, citing the figure of 4% global market share that the UK makes up.
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