If the Slingbox wasn't already a hot commodity for last year's Christmas gifts, it's soon to get better. The company, Sling Media Inc., has just scored $46.6 million in financing from Goldman Sachs, media giant Liberty Media Corp., and satellite TV operator EchoStar Communications Corp.

Espial and Amino today announced that they have partnered to provide innovative IPTV set-top box technology for Allin Interactive. This combined IPTV solution includes Espial EvoT running on top of the underlying Amino's IntAct IPTV software platform to provide a seamless operating system and middleware environment enabling a rich and highly responsive user experience.

Allin will utilize the set top box technology from Amino and Espial in its second generation digital ITV platform. Allin will introduce this technology to the market at a March industry tradeshow, SeaTrade.

Tut Systems, Inc. announced that Iowa Network Services (INS) is deploying its next-generation IPTV services utilizing Tut Systems' Astria content processor (CP) with its market- leading MPEG-4 AVC encoding and transcoding solutions. The INS expansion, which will be one of world's largest MPEG-4 AVC deployments, is the latest in a series of wins for Tut Systems' MPEG-4 AVC solution.

Cavalier Telephone announced today that it had completed the acquisition of Elantic Telecom. Elantic Telecom (formerly known as Dominion Telecom) operates an 8,200 route mile fiber network connecting all major cities on the Eastern portion of the United States. Elantic provides fiber optic, voice and data services to wireless, long distance, government and large enterprise customers throughout its 24 state footprint.

Eagle Broadband announced that it has signed a new contract with The Sportsman Channel to add the twenty-four hour hunting and fishing channel to its IPTVComplete service offering.

Looking to help IPTV operators protect their on-demand content from unwanted service theft and piracy, Entone Technologies, a leading provider of personal video content delivery solutions, and Verimatrix, Inc., a leading developer of content protection and security solutions, today announced that Entone's widely-deployed StreamLiner network video recorder (NVR) is integrated with the Verimatrix Content Authority System (VCAS). This collaborative effort will enable IP television (IPTV) service providers a more efficient and enhanced content security solution that can be quickly and easily deployed.

Tektronix, Inc., a worldwide provider of communications network management and diagnostics, announced the availability of the Spectra2|VQM (Video Quality Measurement) monitoring solution for the diagnosis and analysis of streaming video transmitted over Internet Protocol (IP). Spectra2|VQM helps users identify the causes of poor digital image quality, such as packet loss, delay or data corruption in the IP transport network. Spectra2|VQM is the first portable monitoring solution with support for multiple-level Quality of Service (QoS) scores and video industry standard, non-proprietary Forward Error Correction (FEC) analysis that carriers and cable networks can use in the emerging video over IP opportunity.

2006 is shaping up to be an exciting year for IPTV. For a glimpse at what initiatives will be taking focus in 2006, check out Light Reading's great summary of the TVoDSL conference that took place in Paris this week.

Meanwhile, Denmark's TDC announced a deal to use Alcatel and Microsoft for its IPTV rollout.

Verizon continues to roll out FiOS TV with new service announcements in Massachusetts and New York.

Lastly, be sure to check out Alexander Cameron's white paper, "IPTV: The Great Content Adventure."

Here are the headlines...

Come meet Optibase at the NTCA Expo February 7th. Don't miss a hands-on demo of the MGW 5100, a telco grade IPTV encoding solution, which enables a migration path from today's MPEG-2 to tomorrow’s MPEG-4 (H.264) and beyond.

Additionally, Optibase's Regional Vice President Ed Coughlin will be presenting IPTV Economics 101. If you would like to join Optibase at their exhibit booth or meet their president, schedule an appointment by contacting Duyen Lam at duyenl@optibase.com or 1-800-451-5101 ext. 567.

iQ Digital, a full-service, rich- media solutions company specializing in Internet television has partnered with nationally recognized nutrition and fitness expert High Voltage (a.k.a. Kathie Dolgin) to deliver nutritional and fitness content targeted to teenage girls via a web-based TV channel. The course uses video streaming, animated graphics and interactive quizzes to engage the students.

TANDBERG Television announced that it has received an order from a leading digital television service provider in the United States, valued at US$10m. The contract will see TANDBERG Television deliver MPEG-4 AVC SD compression systems during the first half of 2006, in support of that customer's deployment of IPTV super-headend platforms.

Verizon and the county of Hillsborough, Florida reached a tentative agreement Wednesday night to allow the company to offer its IPTV service, FiOS TV. The new agreement would allow Verizon to offer service to approximately 700,000 residents.

Verizon will be directly competing with the incumbent cable TV company, Bright House Networks.

The new deal has been speculated to create a price war between the two companies. Verizon's digital TV service contains an expanded basic package that will include 180 channels of television and music for $39.95 per month. Bright House Network's digital cable package of 175 television and music channels is $58.45 per month.

Thanks for the tip Rob.

In a new white paper analyzing IPTV and its attendant network management requirements, IT management software consultancy Omey Communications cites ILC's MaxView 5.0 as the premier system for video network management. The report states that MaxView is the only product that combines powerful new management capabilities for IPTV networks and the video services that run over those networks in a single console. MaxView's video performance management feature set is "unavailable from traditional telecom and IP management vendors who have historically served the telecom market."

BitBand, a leading provider of video delivery over IP solutions, announced today that it is expanding the company's offering in the IPTV market space with the presentation of a new high capacity video streaming server at TVoDSL 2006 in Paris this week.

Based on years of commercial deployments experience, customer interactions and resulting customer needs comprehension, BitBand has accelerated the development of a high throughput streaming and ingest engine that fits into the company's hybrid cluster architecture. With the new technology, BitBand provides solutions to a larger curve of storage/streaming requirements, all with a reduced footprint, and resulting in an even more cost effective solution for Telcos and Next Generation Service Providers (NGSPs).

Once again, Alexander Cameron, the Managing Director of Digital TX Limited, has given us a rare opportunity of publishing a white paper that would normally run for thousands of dollars. The latest white paper, entitled "IPTV: The Great Content Adventure," is about acquiring content for IPTV and video-on-demand services, and explores how ISPs and content owners can work together to build compelling new interactive entertainment services.

Our take: The white paper is an eye-opening first hand look into content acquisition and the issues surrounding it.

But don't just take our word for it, click through to read the entire white paper or download the PDF version.