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Ericsson is angling for Microsoft’s Mediaroom IPTV package, report claims

David Meyer — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:50:31 +0000

Microsoft may sell its Mediaroom IPTV package to Ericsson, according to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday.

The report quotes unnamed “people with knowledge of the matter” as saying the two companies are in talks over the potential sale. Neither company would comment on the report when I asked them today, but the idea of the sale is perfectly plausible.

Mediaroom is a customizable platform that is mostly bundled by telcos, who want to take on more traditional TV service providers with their broadband services — customers include AT&T, Deutsche Telekom and Telus. As it also comes with DVR capabilities, Mediaroom is in some ways a competitor to TiVo .

According to Bloomberg’s source, Microsoft wants to focus more on delivering IPTV through its Xbox consoles. Swedish networking equipment vendor Ericsson, meanwhile, is all about servicing its telco customers, so the addition of Mediaroom to its lineup would make a lot of sense. The company could integrate the software with its existing IPTV managed services and systems integration portfolio – in February, Ericsson said it had signed 240 IPTV contracts with various service providers.

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The state of cross-platform media measurement

lydialoizides — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:30:17 +0000

Today brand advertisers must go to great lengths to find their audiences. Thus, brand advertising’s focus on cross-platform media measurement has grown dramatically in the past five years. But the ecosystem, which this report examines from a broad perspective, struggles to solve the correlation between the two media-viewing behemoths, TV and online. Within the next 36 months, the measurement of cross-platform digital video advertising will standardize, driven by the shift in media dollars from TV to online viewing, the adoption of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, and another political and Olympic cycle. In the meantime, new types of measurement of online behavior and ad performance will come to market.

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What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:17:53 +0000

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Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:55:44 +0000

Tablets featured prominently in the connected consumer space during the second quarter of 2012, both as a product category in their own right and as a component of broader platform strategies by the major OS providers. Meanwhile Apple added AirPlay streaming to Mac OS, and Microsoft made an aggressive bid to dominate the second screen by introducing SmartGlass apps. The period also saw important moves by Facebook to broaden its monetization strategy and an investigation by federal antitrust authorities into pay-TV licensing practices and their impact on the emerging online-video business. This quarterly wrap-up discusses these developments as well as offers trends and topics to watch in the second half of 2012 and beyond.

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TiVo shifts focus to analytics, pays $20M for TRA

Daniel Frankel — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:23:31 +0000

TiVo has made a bold step away from its roots as a pioneering manufacturer of DVR set-top boxes and toward a possible future as a leading TV audience research company.

On Tuesday, Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo announced its $20 million purchase of TRA Inc., a technology company lauded by TV networks and their advertising clients for its work in developing so-called “single source” audience research.

In a nutshell, TRA matches the actual purchasing behavior of 1.5 million U.S. homes to the advertising they’re exposed to on TV. (TiVo’s advanced set-top boxes are already used to collect data in many of those domiciles.)

Madison Avenue has sought this kind of research capability since the advent of the internet, and TRA has been among the closest to making it a reality.

The company touts more than 45 brand clients, including Procter & Gamble and Oscar Meyer; it also has 27 TV network clients, including CBS, A&E and ION Media. Starcom MediaVest Group is among the big ad agencies that use its data.

Also read: New TiVo box takes on Slingbox, streams to tablets

With TiVo’s cash resources, not to mention its installed base of advanced set-tops, TRA can now compete with top-level audience research companies like Nielsen and Rentrak.

“TiVo has been a valued investor and data partner of TRA for several years, making this combination a natural next step for TRA,” said Mark Lieberman, chairman and CEO of TRA, in a statement. “TiVo understands that the existing measurement tools, which haven’t kept up with advances in technology, just don’t get the job done.”

TRA has raised $31.7 million in funding from sources including Kodiak Venture Partners, WPP, Intel Capital and Arbitron.

Added TiVo president and CEO Tom Rogers in the same prepared statement: “With this new level of unique audience insights and analytics, TiVo will be able to provide insights nobody else has in an industry increasingly seeking alternative ways to measure audience behavior accurately while increasing efficiencies in media spending.”

TiVo expects the transaction to close later this month.

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Social-TV apps and consumer behavior

Nicole — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:55:18 +0000

A new category of digital media has emerged in the living room: social TV. This relatively new concept can be defined as any application, website or software that allows viewers to interact with television programming and share that interaction with others. Currently social TV occurs in three ways: organically, as pure play or through TV- or set-top-enabled communication. This report will focus on the pure-play aspect of social TV as it relates to content providers, television networks and advertisers. It answers key questions relating to the segment’s growth potential, important companies, their competitors and likely business models for the future.

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Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room

Thu, 31 May 2012 06:55:44 +0000

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Greek debt crisis: there’s an iPad app for that, plus 4 other Apple stories to read today

Erica Ogg — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:49:00 +0000

With so many people writing about Apple, finding the best stories and reports isn’t easy. Here’s our daily pick of stories about the company from around the Web that you shouldn’t miss:

Fortune recounts how the iPad played a role in the Greek debt crisis: the company working on reordering the country’s finances bought 100 of Apple’s tablets, loaded debt-restructuring and real-time analytics software on them, and handed them out to its team scattered all over the globe.
Security guru Eugene Kaspersky wants to create antivirus software for iOS, but he says Apple won’t let him, for a variety of reasons, reports The Register.
Apple’s Monday stock bump added $29 billion to its market cap, or as Daily Finance put it, “about double the size of Research in Motion and Nokia combined.”
Another example of what a company can do with billions in the bank: Apple will spend $27 billion on chips this year, according to analysts at IHS iSuppli, which puts it far ahead of any of its competitors, including Samsung. CNET has the report from IHS iSuppli’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Summit in Paris.
Later this summer TiVo will start selling the TiVo Stream, which will send streaming video from the set-top box to an iPad or an iPhone. ZDNet has details and a photo of the Apple TV-like device.

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New TiVo box takes on Slingbox, streams to tablets

Daniel Frankel — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:42:33 +0000

Set-top box maker TiVo has introduced a new Slingbox-like product that lets users stream live or DVR-recorded TV to tablets, notebooks and smartphones.

Showcased Monday at the Cable Show in Boston, TiVo Stream enables users of TiVo Premiere or Premiere Q digital video recorders to view video from their multichannel subscription on devices including the iPad on iPhone.

The transcoding product is similar to EchoStar’s Slingbox, but differs in that it streams or downloads programs to multiple mobile devices without disrupting living-room viewing.

In addition, TiVo also unveiled a new IP set-top box that allows Premiere Q users to view live or recorded TV from any room in the house.

TiVo will debut both products at retail, or through partnerships with multichannel TV service providers including DirecTV, Charter Communications, Suddenlink and the UK’s Virgin Media, later this year.

The offerings come as TiVo has finally re-captured some of its long-lost momentum. Infused by its Virgin deal, the company posted a net gain of 387,000 subscribers using its boxes and DVR interface in 2011, its first usage uptick in several years.

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Boxee may launch a DVR subscription service

Janko Roettgers — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:16:01 +0000

Boxee is considering the launch of a DVR subscription service for users of its new Live TV tuner, according to a user survey the startup sent out over the weekend. A Boxee-powered DVR subscription service could cost anywhere from $5 to $15 per month if the company follows through with the offering.

Boxee recently released its Live TV tuner, which allows owners of the Boxee Box to receive over-the-air TV programming through the device. The tuner currently doesn’t support any DVR functionality, but there have been numerous requests to add this to the Boxee Box, and the startup has said that it is looking into such a possibility.

The survey asked owners of the newly released TV tuner about their experience with the device, only to finish with a very specific question about a DVR service offering: “How much would you be willing to pay for the ability to record 300hrs of TV,” it asked, with possible answers being $5, $10 or $15 per month.

A DVR subscription would pit Boxee against another startup, Simple.tv, which announced its own DVR geared toward the cord-cutting crowd at CES last month. The company is selling its hardware for $150 and will charge users an additional $5 per month for access to its programming guide.

Boxee also hinted at the launch of further broadcast TV-related products in a recent, heavily redacted FCC filing. A company spokesperson told me last week that Boxee is not yet ready to comment on its future product roadmap.

Check out our Boxee Live TV tuner review below:

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

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