A continuing series of acquisitions in the IP video market will ultimately result in a smaller number of vendors providing all-encompassing IP network solutions including video infrastructure. These companies will not only focus on the network aspect of video solutions, but will also move into the home with CPE and even home networking technologies. The business model assumption for this small group of vendors will be that operators would prefer to work with a single company that can provide all of their needs rather than picking and choosing equipment from multiple smaller vendors.

NEC America, Inc. (NEC), a leading provider of carrier-class communications products for optical networks, announced today that NEC researchers and industry experts were selected to present 14 in-depth technical papers at the collocated Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference and Exposition, and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC). The OFC/NFOEC exhibition will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, on March 5-10, 2006.

Next week, SeaChange International joins operators, content providers and other IP video experts from around the globe for IPTV World Forum in London. In the conference session "Who Cares about Middleware," SeaChange's Anne Coulombe will address the impact of middleware on IP video deployment costs, time-to-market and true service differentiation amid fierce competition for subscribers. Additionally, SeaChange's exhibition stand will feature strategic applications that provide incremental value for IP video services, including games-on-demand, DVD-on-demand and other software innovations available exclusively from SeaChange.

COLLEGE SPORTS DIRECT, the college sports programming guide developed by XOS Technologies, is teaming up with the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) to stream live video and audio on the internet of the CAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments. The COLLEGE SPORTS DIRECT website will make up to 19 tournament games available to college basketball fans across the country and around the world.

As manufacturers race to incorporate the latest digital technologies for pay-TV, worldwide shipments of digital set-top boxes will grow substantially through the end of the decade. In a recently published update to its online Television Database, IMS Research forecasts that worldwide shipments of digital cable and DTH set-top boxes will increase by 15% over the next five years, approaching 74.8 million units by the end of 2010.

ANT plc, the market leading provider of software and solutions for IPTV, hybrid TV and digital home products, announces that Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices GmbH & Co KG (Siemens SHC) has licensed the ANT GalioT Client to enable existing and new TV services across a range of Siemens SHC devices in worldwide DVB/IPTV hybrid and pure IPTV markets.

ANT plc, the market leading provider of software and solutions for IPTV, hybrid TV and digital home products, announced today that UK-based set-top box developer Complete Media Systems Ltd (CMS) has licensed ANT GalioT and ANT Fresco for use in IPTV set-top systems targeted to operators from Europe to the Far East.

Sentivision announced the availability of the SV-300 IP Set-Top Box, a single-chip low cost device which features IP-TV and Video On Demand (VOD) functionality in a small form factor design. The SV-300 supports the H.264 AVC compression standard for broadcast IP television delivery. Shipments to customers will commence in 2Q 2006.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of Streaming Media Market Growth: 2005 - 2010 to their offering.

This report provides a detailed data and audience analysis of the year in streaming media 2005, with usage metrics and share metrics across key content categories such as music, news, sports, entertainment, Internet TV, movies and Internet music radio.

Amino, leading IPTV set-top box supplier, has partnered with Trimedia Broadcast Ltd to provide an end-to-end system for corporate IPTV. This enables an internal communications system to be installed rapidly and without the risk of incompatibilities. Using a range of models from the AmiNET family of IPTV set-top boxes, Trimedia has already secured a number of prestigious deployments, including a bespoke in-house IPTV service for Discovery Networks Europe.

Kasenna announced that reseller and technology integrator Thunderworx is deploying the company's solution to support the IPTV platform it is building for Primetel, a leading Cypriot telecommunications company. One of the key components of the IPTV platform is Kasenna's reliable, high-performance video delivery software MediaBase, which will provide streaming VOD (Video on Demand) content as well as network-based Personal Video Recording (NPVR) function for live TV recording, pause and playback.

mPhase Technologies, a pioneer provider of technology for the delivery of television over telecommunications networks, and Best Data Broadbanda, a leading developer and manufacturer of broadband communications devices, announced an agreement to collaborate in the marketing ad sales of their respective products to providers of Internet-based television (IPTV) services.