Advanced Television

Catch Up

VOD:TV set for SA launch

A video-on-demand service is set to make its debut in South Africa. VOD:TV, formed by the SouthTel Group, is promising to offer the latest movies and TV series before Multichoice-owned DStv, The service won’t offer live TV itself, but will allow subscribers to download and store content to the PVR for later viewing. Roughly half […]

May 9, 2011By Colin Mann

4oD launches on iPad

Channel 4 has released an iPad app for its 4oD TV catch-up service, joining the BBC and its iPlayer application. The app, which unlike the website will only feature catch-up TV and not archived programming, is free to download from the Apple App Store. TV episodes are available to watch for up to 30 days […]

May 3, 2011

New record for iPlayer live streaming

March saw a new record for live streaming on BBC’s iPlayer for both TV and radio with 15 per cent of all requests for TV programmes being streamed live. In its monthly report, the BBC said the total number of iPlayer requests in March was 160 million, lightly down on the 162 million January record. […]

April 18, 2011

iPlayer on BT Vision

All BT Vision subscribers will be able to access the BBC iPlayer service via their TVs by June says iPlayer product manager Gideon Summerfield. Recently the BBC has released a version of the player for Freeview HD boxes that conform to the D-Book 6.2.1 specification powered by MHEG-5 middleware. The BBC has also certified the […]

April 6, 2011

BBC digital chief: Catch-up will not pass 10% by 2015

Ralph Rivera, the BBC’s newly appointed head of digital media, has predicted that catch-up viewing would not surpass the 10 per cent mark by 2015. Speaking at the Guardian Media Festival the former AOL exec agreed with other contributors that the importance of mainstream linear TV would remain. On future media at the BBC he […]

March 24, 2011

Kabel Deutschland finally launches VOD

Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator has launched its VOD offering ‘Select Video’ in the cities of Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. With this initial launch, approximately 2.3 million households can receive the VOD offer which currently includes 2,500 hours of Hollywood movies, Pay TV and Free TV content. More than 60 per cent of the […]

March 23, 2011

SeeSaw CEO leaves as costs cut

The CEO of SeeSaw, the catch-up TV service run by transmission infrastructure company Arqiva, is leaving. Pierre-Jean Sebert’s exit comes as Arqiva recently merged its three divisions into two. SeeSaw was created when Arqiva bought Kangaroo, the commercial VOD project of BBC, ITV and C4, which was forced to shut down by the UK’s Competition […]

March 8, 2011

Sony help RAI set up first Italian “Catch-up TV”

Italian public broadcaster RAI has signed an agreement with Sony, the first of its type in Italy, for the deployment of Web content within the Bravia Internet Video platform. This will open the doors for the creation of the first Italian “Catch-up TV”, allowing viewers to view a selection of programmes available on RAI’s website […]

February 18, 2011From Branislav Pekic in Rome

iPlayer links with VOD partners

Users of the BBC’s iPlayer service are now able to search for shows from a range of other broadcasters and other on-demand content providers. Through metadata-sharing partnerships, users can now find programmes from ITV, Channel 4, S4C, Five, SeeSaw.com and new partner MSN Video Player, directly from the BBC iPlayer website. The initiative comes some […]

February 18, 2011By Colin Mann

Netflix gains and engages viewers

Online video viewing data for January showed a 45 per cent increase in time spent on video in the US, and underscored that Netflix’s streaming video service continues to build momentum. Netflix has become the only paid video service to be a top 10 video site on the Internet when looking at total number of […]

February 16, 2011