Akamai today said it would provide adaptive bit-rate streaming to deliver video content from web sites to the Apple iPhone 3G and devices running the iPhone OS 3.0 operating system. Basically, using adaptive bit-rate streaming means folks can watch streaming video on their iPhones or iPod Touches with fewer stops and starts. Adaptive streaming adjusts the video content to a lower or higher bit rate, depending on how robust the web connection is. Akamai offers a similar service for Microsoft’s Silverlight for video on PCs. Adobe Flash and Move Networks also offer adaptive bit-rate streaming, although Adobe uses a proprietary method that requires special servers.

Apple and Akamai are bringing the service to the mobile world, which will be great for dealing with the many variances in mobile data connections, and will provide for smoother video delivery over dodgy networks. Videos can run in the Safari browser, so they don’t even require a special app that AT&T, the carrier that provides service for the iPhone in the U.S., might try to block. For more details on this, check out the awesome story Liz did about HTTP video on the iPhone or her in-depth look at adaptive bit-rate streaming over at our subscription site, GigaOM Pro. For pretty video streaming, check out Apple and Akamai’s  show-and-tell site.

In the market for a new TV? These days, there are bargains galore, especially when it comes to those with plasma screens. The Wall Street Journal reports that the growing popularity of their LCD cousins has TV makers such as Pioneer and Vizio phasing out their entire plasma TV line-ups. Others may soon follow suit. (Read an alternative take on the future of Plasma TVs.)

One can hardly blame them — there were 30 million LCD TVs sold in the U.S. in 2008 vs. 4 million plasma TVs, according to Display Search, a market research company. That’s quite a comedown for a technology that once represented the cutting edge of the display market.

Plasma is made of cells. Each cell is essentially two plates of glass filled with neon-xenon gas that is electrically charged, which then strikes phosphors on the screen and that in turns displays the image. LCD panels in comparison are made of two layers of transparent material where one of the layers is coated with a special polymer that holds liquid crystals. Electric current is passed through these crystals which either pass the light or stop it, there by creating an image. (From About.com)

I remember when plasmas trumped LCDs by a mile, both in terms of picture quality and viewing angle. There were some problems with them, of course — they generated too much heat and static images burned into the screen, limiting their lifespan. They’ve since improved a lot, but so have LCDs, which by comparison have better contrast, sharper images and higher refresh rates. NewTeeVee back in February saw the demise of Pioneer’s Kuro TV line-up as a sign that plasma TVs would go the way of the buggy whip.

I paid an ungodly amount of money for a 42-inch plasma screen TV in 2002, only to sell it on Craigslist for a third of that price when I moved to San Francisco in March 2003. It taught me a valuable lesson: Televisions (and most consumer electronics) lose value really quickly, so there’s no point in overpaying by buying the latest and greatest. (I leave that for cell phones, computers and headphones.) Today, I have a 50-inch Panasonic LCD TV — not exactly the best on the market, but it does a fine job as a display for my DVD player and my Apple TV.

Now I’m getting ready to move to a bigger apartment. This would give me a chance to buy another television, this time for the bedroom. I’m thinking about buying a cheap plasma TV — just for old times sake. After all, it will be obsolete by the time I’m ready to move again so I won’t feel that bad about losing my investment.

P.S.: In case you’re still wrestling with which TV — LCD or plasma — to buy, CNet has a handy comparison guide.

NBC Universal General Counsel Rick Cotton, speaking at the Digital Media Conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, brushed off concerns that the deal between Comcast and Time Warner to test the feasibility of TV Everywhere was a first step toward bringing TV on the Internet under the control of Big Media.

“I know there’s been some static in the system that says this will somehow limit access to content online, but this is about increasing access,” Cotton said. “These are subscription networks now so it’s not really a big surprise that they would be subscription networks online as well.” He also shrugged off fears that the collaboration between programmers like Time Warner and ISPs like Comcast represented some sort of unholy cabal worthy of antitrust scrutiny from the government.

“They shouldn’t have called it TV Everywhere because what we’re really talking about is cable TV everywhere,” Cotton told me after his panel. “The idea is you would go to Fancast, or to Hulu, and there would be free content, just as there is now, and there would be subscription content, which you could access if you’re a subscriber.” It’s just like cable TV, he said. “There’s free, over-the-air content, but there’s also subscription content you can get by subscribing to cable.” The deals between subscription network owners and web video portals, he suggested, would be no different from the perfectly legal deals that currently exist between the networks and cable MSOs.

Maybe, but that’s only the simplest use case being discussed. What happens when we get to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes’ nirvana where any multichannel video subscriber — whether to cable, satellite or telco TV — can access any of the content they subscribe to from anywhere on the web, whether directly through an ISP, through a web portal like Hulu or on mobile platforms? Apart from the sheer complexity of such a system, making it work will require a degree of information-sharing among nominal competitors that practically begs for antitrust scrutiny.

Let’s say I want to catch up with a missed episode of “In Treatment” by watching it online. I go to a web portal — we’ll call it YooHoo — and find the episode. Since I pay for HBO through my Comcast cable subscription I ought to be able to access the episode, presumably by typing in a password or some other authentication method. For that to work, however, YooHoo has to know something about my relationship with Comcast. Maybe Comcast owns YooHoo, in which case, no problem. But what if some other media company owns it? It now has access to information about my Comcast subscription.

Now let’s say I leave the house and want to access the same episode on my handheld device using Verizon Wireless’ V-Cast service. Now Verizon has to know something about my relationship, either with Comcast or with YooHoo — or both. Apart from whether that’s something Comcast would want to do — Verizon has recently begun soliciting me with offers for FiOS, after all — what we’re really talking about is multiple competing service providers sharing information with each other (or with the same third party) about prices, payments, customer service and behavior and all sorts of other data.

Such a system would just be ripe for abuse, even if intentions were pure going in. And it would only get worse as the number of ways to access the content increased. Of course, you could always break up the vertical monopolies among programmers, distributors and service providers and the problem would be solved, but somehow I don’t think that’s what Bewkes and Cotton are talking about.

Paul Sweeting is the author of The Media Wonk blog. He’s covered digital media and policy issues for over a decade.

YouTube is much closer to breaking even than widely thought, says a firm with intimate knowledge of global infrastructure costs. A widely publicized Credit Suisse report that said Google would lose $470 million on the site this year neglected to account for factors such as peering traffic, wholesale bandwidth deals and cheap data center locations. Where the bank said YouTube’s costs will amount to $711 million in 2009, RampRate, a San Francisco-based company that advises large companies on IT infrastructure, says the actual cost is $415 million.

Given Credit Suisse’s revenue estimate for YouTube, that would give the site an operating loss of $174 million this year. If you use other people’s revenue numbers — for instance, Jefferies said $500 million — the site would actually turn a profit.

Sling Media is developing a version of its SlingPlayer application, which allows users to access TV content from their mobile phones, for the Palm Pre that would work on both on Wi-Fi and 3G. But Sling’s hopes for 3G support could be dashed by the Pre’s mobile carrier, Sprint, which is currently locked in an agreement with privately held MobiTV to deliver mobile television content. That’s a shame, because allowing SlingPlayer on Sprint’s 3G network would help Palm gain more traction in the smartphone landscape — and give the Pre an edge over the iPhone.

AT&T, of course, opted against supporting the SlingPlayer app on its 3G network, which resulted in an outcry from iPhone users. Depending on what Sprint decides, it’s a decision that could end up working heavily in Palm’s favor.

The timing of the application’s launch on the Pre hasn’t yet been determined, according to Sling Media. In an email, Sprint said it is “not in a position to offer a comment since [SlingPlayer] is not an application that we currently offer.” Palm also declined to comment about whether Sprint would support the application on 3G. According to a statement via email:

The app catalog is currently in beta, with a small number of preview applications available. We aren’t speculating on the future availability of any particular apps in the catalog and haven’t published policies about the exact requirements for entry into the catalog. We do expect that with the capabilities of the webOS platform and the Mojo SDK that a wide variety of applications across all categories will be included in the catalog.

Given how contentious the SlingPlayer issue has been for AT&T and iPhone users, Sprint and Palm may be playing it safe by not commenting on the upcoming application. However, SlingPlayer already uses the 3G network on other platforms such as RIM’s BlackBerry, and the application has been available on Palm’s Treo and Centro models for years. In the Pre’s uphill battle against the iPhone, SlingPlayer could be a bright spot for the new Palm smartphone.

After a fourth-month delay, the DTV transition, which will enable several services to run on the 700 MHz spectrum that had long been used for analog TV, will kick off tomorrow. For the string of companies affected by the delay, it will be a sweet way to end the week. Verizon can finally begin its LTE deployment, Qualcomm can expand its MediaFLO service to new markets including San Francisco and Miami, and Cox Wireless can move ahead with its launch of 3G and 4G trials on the spectrum. Still, it’s estimated that 3 million Americans will be left in the dark because of the transition.

Cisco said today that the web will continue its breakneck rate of growth to hit 56 exabytes of data per month by 2013. In 2008, IP traffic accounted for 9 exabytes per month, according to the company’s second annual visual networking index.

Cisco, which stands to profit by selling its communications gear to ISPs and businesses trying to handle the growth in bandwidth, notes that most of the increase in traffic will be related to video — in fact, by 2013, 90 percent of web traffic will be video, it forecast, from services like Hulu to video-on-demand via the local cable provider.

Video comprises a large amount of the total traffic because video files are many times larger than text files and web pages, and because video is slowly moving from being delivered via RF (cable TV) and over the air (broadcast) to being delivered as an IPTV service. People are also carrying around more video-capable devices, such as mobile phones that can capture video and personal camcorders such as the Flip, whose parent company was recently purchased by Cisco. Once that video is captured, people are inclined to share it via the web.

For the most part, the big trends that Cisco first explored in its survey last year are the same, notably video, the continued growth of Internet use in developing countries and the rise of mobile data. However, Cisco also explored how the web is becoming the primary pipeline for information that moves back and forth between business and homes.

Cisco has divided the IP world into active networking, which includes surfing web sites, having VoIP conversations and streaming video, and passive networking, which can include DVR recording while watching other programming, backing up online while web surfing and recording ambient video such as that from online security cameras. Cisco looked at all of this activity and concluded that, thanks to multitasking, by 2013 active networking will add six “network hours” to a day, and passive networking will add another six network hours to each day. (Currently there are 36 hours in a “network day,” according to Cisco; by 2013 there will be 48 hours.)

I’ll forgive Cisco’s awkward creation of a “network day,” and focus on the fact that under its scenario, broadband has become a resource rather than a product. As we use more broadband, consumers and businesses will be less willing to accept arbitrary divisions between broadband product offerings, such as buying a VoIP package and an IM package. Considering Cisco’s examples, we’re likely to see further blurring of the product lines for delivery of professional video content and personal video, such as a day care feed.

If ISPs succeed in implementing tiered pricing schemes, some of that passive networking, especially of the ambient video, will be far more expensive. And if upload speeds don’t improve, video feeds from a home camera and even online backups will be laughably slow. I’m not sure if Cisco is ignoring the potential chilling affect of tiered pricing or sluggish upload speeds, or if it assumes that unlimited broadband is here to stay and that symmetrical connections will proliferate around the world. I’m hoping for the latter.

Here are some other quick bullet points from the latest survey. By 2013:

• Annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte (or 667 exabytes). (A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.)
• IP traffic in North America will reach 13 exabytes a month, slightly ahead of Western Europe, which will reach 12.5 exabytes per month, and behind Asia Pacific (AsiaPac), where IP traffic will reach 21 exabytes per month.
• Middle East and Africa will grow the fastest, with a compound annual growth rate of 51 percent, reaching 1 exabyte a month.
• Mobile data traffic will roughly double each year from 2008 levels, to increase a total of 66 times.
• Almost 64 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video.

As cable companies transition to super-fast broadband speeds provided by DOCSIS 3.0, they’re also considering how they can move from providing analog and digital channels via radio frequency the way they do today, and instead transition to an on-demand IPTV model that could offer them more flexibility with their programming options. For consumers, this could mean more channels and even personalized content delivered to their PCs and television, on demand.

Part of DOCSIS 3.0 involves faster downstream Internet speeds, which is what most cable companies are focusing on, says Mike Cookish, a product manager with Motorola. However, DOCSIS 3.0 will play a significant role in the transition to IPTV. Cookish says IPTV is being considered at U.S. cable providers; some multiple services operators (MSOs) in Korea and Japan, meanwhile, have already deployed the technology. “The initial target [for IPTV] is the PC and personalized content, and over time, as IPTV set-top boxes become more available, we’ll see a migration where MSOs simulcast some of the channels,” Cookish says. “But they need to free up the downstream channels first.”

Freeing up the channels means doing things like switching from analog channels to digital channels, because a cable operator can pack more digital channels than analog ones into a single slice of spectrum. This allows a cable operator to provide the same number of channels while freeing up spectrum for IPTV trials. Such programs are underway in the U.S. but the IPTV transition is a little further off. In the meantime, the rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 has helped boost revenue at Motorola and Arris, another cable equipment vendor. Motorola estimates it now has 70 percent of the DOCSIS 3.0 market.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen a lot of new content offerings announced by companies like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube as they look to directly target the living room via entertainment devices. Indeed, the adoption rate of hardware devices like the Xbox 360, PS3, TiVo, Roku, VUDU, Apple TV and broadband-enabled Blu-ray players and TV sets will be crucial in determining if content owners can make money delivering video to the TV.

But despite all these new offerings, that content still only reaches a few million customers, a number largely unchanged from this time last year. Such low adoption rates in the face of so much effort leads me to think that while the market of delivering content to the TV will grow, it is unlikely to do so at the rate that many in this industry would like to believe. In fact I don’t think we’ll see these devices having a combined impact in any measurable way for at least another 3-4 years.

Here is a breakdown on the number of devices on the market and some data on the volume of content being consumed on them:

Xbox 360: Microsoft has so far sold 15.1 million Xbox 360 consoles in North America, according to NPD. Since the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace launched in November 2006, there have been more than 42 million downloads of entertainment content, which includes movies, TV shows, music videos and featured trailers, Redmond told me, while Xbox 360 owners have downloaded nearly 12.3 million hours of video content from the Xbox LIVE Video Store.

Xbox/Netflix: As of February, 1 million Xbox LIVE Gold members had downloaded and activated the application for streaming Netflix movies to the Xbox 360 console. Meanwhile, users had watched more than 1.5 billion minutes of movies and TV episodes from the Netflix Watch Instantly library.

TiVo: While TiVo doesn’t break out how many Series 1, 2 or 3 units have been sold individually, it has 1.6 million standalone TiVo subscribers. I estimate that 65 percent of those are Series 2, which means that there are roughly 525,000 Series 3 TiVos today. The company has said that 85 percent of its HD TiVos are connected via broadband, which puts the number of units capable of getting content via Amazon or Netflix at around 445,000. For DVRs that can get YouTube content the number is likely higher, since YouTube only requires a Series 2 DVR.

Roku: Roku won’t say how many units it’s sold to date, but if we estimate that 3 percent of Netflix’s 10.3 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter bought the $99 unit, a total of about 300,000 Roku units have been sold.

VUDU: VUDU told me it’s sold “five figures” worth of devices, which I believe is less than 50,000 units.

Apple TV: Published reports put the number of Apple TVs sold at less than 500,000. Notably, of course, Apple has, on multiple occasions, acknowledged that the device hasn’t been nearly as successful as the company had hoped it would be.

Blockbuster Mediapoint Player: The company has never offered up numbers as to how many of these have been sold, nor has anyone really bothered to hazard a guess. Bottom line: Blockbuster has no online video strategy of any kind and while the Mediapoint player was first unveiled some five months ago, when you visit the Blockbuster.com web site, it’s nowhere to be found.

Broadband-enabled TVs: There are more than 50 broadband-enabled TV models due out in 2009, but analysts estimate that only about 3 million total sets will be sold in the next two years combined.

Broadband-enabled Blu-ray Players: To date, 9.6 million Blu-ray players have been sold, but less than 2 million of them don’t include the PS3, according to DEG. While new broadband-enabled players continue to be released into the market, the total number of sales to date has to be less than 50,000.

Even with all these numbers, they don’t truly give us an idea of the growth, as there are a lot of unanswered questions. For starters, Microsoft won’t say how many of the 15.1 million Xbox 360 consoles are connected to a broadband connection. And while Netflix says that a million Xbox LIVE members have downloaded and installed the Netflix app for their Xbox 360, since Netflix offers free 48-hour streaming trials to Xbox 360 owners, we don’t know how many paying Netflix subscribers are using the service today. With Netflix spending about 5 cents to stream every movie to the Xbox 360, clearly content offerings such as this are not yet making any money due to the small number of devices in the market.

While some may suggest that the Wii gaming console is missing from this list, so far the Wii doesn’t really offer up any content. Whether or not set-top boxes should be included in these numbers is debatable. It’s my belief that the cable companies are the ones that should be winning in the market when it comes to delivering Internet-based content to the TV or premium content with all-you-can-eat models. But so far, I don’t see the cable companies doing a very good job at this.

On the surface, some of these numbers look really big. But once you break down how many of these devices are being used via a broadband connection and how many consumers have more than one of these devices in their living room, the actual number of individual consumers content owners are reaching via these devices is still very, very small.

Dan Rayburn is EVP of StreamingMedia.com, has his own blog at BusinessofVideo.com and is a principal analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

Social music site Blip.fm added YouTube videos to its music feed today, allowing users to turn its “Twitter for music” service into a social video playlisting site. The free service, which allows users to listen to songs and share them in playlists that resemble Twitter’s interface, now includes a window for watching videos as the songs play. It’s a sort of on-demand, social MTV — at least one that’s reminiscent of the era when MTV actually played music videos.

The move also beefs up Blip.fm’s audio content offering for U.S. users, although recent changes to its content library have left some international users with fewer songs from which to choose. Blip.fm recently began sourcing songs via Imeem but eliminated content from MP3 search engine Skreemr, which scraped the web for songs wherever they were lying around. While that’s generally a boon to U.S. users, many international listeners have reported that their full songs have been replaced by frustrating 30-second clips.

CEO Jeff Yasuda discussed the first round of changes, but not the YouTube additions, in this blog post last Thursday. The post doesn’t say why Blip.fm effected the changes, but it does mention lawyers. The streaming of songs lying around on the web falls into a legal gray area, but Imeem and YouTube content is fully licensed.

While providing a visual component to go alongside Blip.fm’s audio stream, the YouTube deal also provides some insurance against the potential eventual loss of Imeem content, although Imeem appears to be staying afloat with a new round of funding. YouTube, meanwhile, still suffers from its loss of Warner Music Group songs last year, but features music from the other three major labels as well as countless indies.

Originally a service from Fuzz.com, a now-defunct social network for musicians, Blip.fm reorganized last fall with new funding from insider investors. Stats from Compete.com show steady growth in recent months, pegging its April 2009 U.S. audience at about 500,000 users, while Quantcast data suggests that more than half of its 1.2 million global users are in the U.S. Blip.fm takes in modest revenue from referrals to online music stores and ticket agencies, as well as advertising.

There was a tectonic shift in the digital media landscape yesterday with Disney’s announcement that it would become part owner of Hulu and provide the content portal with full-length episodes of hit shows like “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” As with any deal of this size, there are winners and losers. Hulu is obviously a winner, as it now gains a new, two-year lease on life and can boast content from three of the four major broadcast networks. Hulu’s win, though, is a big loss for YouTube, which also has a deal with Disney, but only gets short-form clips.

Hulu’s victory celebration may be short-lived, however. Sure, it gets a ton of new premium content, but it also gets a new owner and as such now has three media companies to answer to. We’ve already seen the first two exert their influence on the service through restrictive release windows, the pulling of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” from the site, and the pressure on Hulu to remove itself from the Boxee media platform. Hulu doesn’t own its content, and without that content, it can’t exist. So in a sense, this deal means a lot, but changes little, as Hulu still isn’t in control of its own destiny.

Comcast today reported a 5.4 percent boost in profits — to $778 million on sales that rose 5.3 percent, to $8.84 billion — and was the latest carrier to report a rise in the number of broadband subscribers over the previous three-month period. The cable provider raised rates earlier this quarter and gained subscribers worried about losing TV service during the DTV transition.

The company’s overall subscription growth rate slowed to stand at 42 percent as of the final day of the first quarter after adding 837,195 revenue-generating units. Comcast added 298,433 digital phone customers, 53 fewer than the comparable quarter a year earlier. It also lost 78,022 basic video subscribers.

New broadband subscribers, meanwhile, slowed by 33 percent from the year-ago period, to 328,613, but grew by 78 percent from the fourth quarter, in line with quarter-over-quarter growth at other ISPs. That growth could be the result of customers adopting super-fast broadband in the form of DOCSIS 3.0 from Comcast and Verizon’s FiOS. It may also be a natural rebound from a pretty bad fourth quarter, when broadband net adds skidded at most ISPs.

Also during the first three months of the year, Time Warner Cable added 225,000 broadband customers, an 81 percent growth in subscribers from the previous quarter. AT&T added 359,000 wired broadband subscriptions in the first quarter, up 52 percent on a sequential basis, while Verizon’s wired broadband connections increased by 252,000 in the same time period, despite losing 46,000 subscribers on its slower DSL service. Verizon saw a 138 percent gain in net adds over the previous quarter.

A report out today from Nielsen shows why Internet Service Providers and telecommunications equipment vendors are increasingly demonizing video. It consumes a lot of bandwidth, and could compete with an ISP’s existing video businesses, but the worst part is that it’s rapidly becoming more popular to the average consumer. From the report:

• The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.
• Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
• In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.
• Despite online video’s persistent positive buzz, actual usage is averaging around six minutes per day in the U.S.

Two things are driving these trends: Better access to content in the form of PC-to-TV hardware and services like Hulu, NetFlix and iTunes HD downloads, and faster connection speeds that make downloading movies in HD possible. However video still has a lot of growth ahead for it, which is why ISPs are building out faster networks as well as why they are talking about caps and metered broadband.

Almost two years after its last update, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) on Tuesday announced specs for version 3.0 of the wireless standard, with a focus on improved data speed and connection reliability, and better battery-life management. The speed boost to 24 Mbps from the current 3.0 Mbps comes via use of the 802.11 Protocol Adaptation Layer, which allows compatible gadgets that come with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios to exchange large files on the higher-speed (802.11) radio, without logging onto a direct Wi-Fi network or connecting through USB.

By combining the ease of use of Bluetooth tech with the established speed of 802.11, the new Bluetooth protocol increases the multitasking value and compatibility of many devices, and is a good step on the way to the long-promised era of the self-supportive electronics ecosystem. That means that when 3.0-enabled devices are released in 2010, we should expect video cameras, TVs, phones, and PCs with faster, one-button rich-media transfer options.

The ideal example of this vision come to life is that of the passive user leaving a video camera in the living room table to automatically transfer the video to its respective places — storage, media center, PC, and portable. No, 3.0 won’t take it that far, but it’ll bring it closer. Expect fast transfer features to also lead to better productivity from business users (sharing documents during a meeting or on the fly), and as Apple Insider notes, increased savings from electronics makers, which won’t have to build in support for Wi-Fi networking.

Since the most current, mature Bluetooth devices (like phones and headphones) are mobile, expect their next-generation versions to facilitate the merging of the web to TVs through heavy video, music, and communications downloads and services. Want to use Skype with your TV, using your trusty wireless ear piece? Yes, you do. Want to exchange entire music libraries between PMPs within seconds, or even play the same game, at the same time, using different devices? It will be easier through a better Bluetooth connection. Already, companies like Atheros have received certification for 3.0 applications that will help facilitate these data transfers.

If you currently own Bluetooth gadgets, hang onto them. Your earpiece should work with a phone stacked with 3.0 — you just won’t be able to get the high-speed transfers. For larger (and more flexible) hardware like PCs, expect new Bluetooth-enabled peripherals.

Bluetooth 3.0 won’t be the only fast-transfer new tech out there. Wireless USB, as well as Sony’s proprietary TransferJet protocol (expected to come in at a blistering 560 Mbps) will give chase.  Specifications for Ultrawideband (UWB) tech, another fast standard, were recently acquired by SIG and it’s expected to be a part of the follow-up to Bluetooth 3.0.

Follow Jose Fermoso on Twitter at twitter.com/fermoso

Qualcomm today trumpeted that its MediaFLO mobile over-the-air television service has launched in three new markets; Atlantic City, N.J.; Greensboro, N.C. and Wilmington, Del., now have access to MediaFLO and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show on certain AT&T or Verizon phones! But the trumpeting falls flat given that by now — a month and half after broadcasters were supposed to transition from analog to digital television signals — Qualcomm still can’t launch in the larger markets of Houston, San Francisco, Miami and Boston. It was hoping to cover an additional 60 million people, but in its release today touts just 10 million.

The chipmaker had the most to lose when the feds decided earlier this year to delay the transition from analog broadcast signals to digital by four months, because it already had its equipment and people in place to launch MediaFLO in several markets. It was most eager to launch MediaFLO in the larger markets of San Francisco, Houston, Miami and Boston; it even tried to work out a deal with the government to make it happen. So Qualcomm’s taking the lemons handed it by the DTV delay and making lemonade. But that’s not going to help MediaFLO cover more of the population before June 13 when the current DTV transition is supposed to occur.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, beat earnings and sales expectations for the fourth quarter, but still managed to disappoint when it came to the number of new subscribers for television and broadband services.

Comcast this morning reported earnings of $412 million on sales of $8.77 billion for the fourth quarter. However, like its rival Time Warner Cable, Comcast managed to lose basic subscribers without making them up on the high end. Comcast lost 233,000 basic cable subscribers, while analysts had expected losses more in the neighborhood of 150,000. Worse, it only added 247,000 of the digital subscribers who pay higher rates — less than half of what Wall Street had hoped for.

Video was disappointing, but broadband really blew it: Comcast added only 184,000 broadband subscribers, while analysts had anticipated 250,000. Despite that disappointment, Comcast still ended the year with 14.9 million broadband subscribers,  making it the largest broadband provider in the country keeping it close behind AT&T’s 15.1 million subscribers. Comcast is still stealing DSL customers from the telcos thanks to faster speeds, with 66 percent of its new customers switching to cable from a DSL line vs. 44 percent who did so a year ago.

Cable providers may not be as immune to the economic downturn as anticipated. While consumers may not be cutting their cable outright, they may be cutting back on the number of homes they own and buy services for.  On the earnings conference call, executives said they’re seeing increasing competition from carriers, as well as more customers calling for rate reductions.

On the wireless front, aside from a $600 million Clearwire write down (also taken by Intel, Time Warner Cable and Google), there’s nothing new to report. For those looking ahead, Canoe Ventures, the cable companies joint advertising service venutre, will roll out the first interactive advertisements that use what you watch to deliver “better ads” this spring, privacy implications and all.