FUNimation Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Navarre Corporation and the market share leader for home video sales of Japanese animation in the United States, announced today that the company has finalized a distribution agreement with Optical Entertainment Network (OEN), the leading provider of IPTV and broadband services optimized for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). The agreement makes the FUNimation Channel part of the FISION service, OEN's line-up of 400 IPTV channels available in the Houston area. The FUNimation Channel is a 24-hour digital channel featuring programming from top anime brands in the United States and will be added to OEN's FISION lineup in the fall of 2006.

Digital Rapids StreamZ media encoding servers have been chosen by Streaming Tank to stream live web broadcasts of concerts by legendary rock band The Who. Live webcasts will be streamed from each stop on the tour, currently winding its way through Europe.

Interactive TV specialist Tamblin today announces the immediate availability of its new IPTV Interactive Portal. Powered by industry leading i-ZoneTV® the product features some of the most advanced and visually rich templates yet available on any IPTV platform. Tamblin's IPTV Interactive Portal allows telecoms operators to quickly and cost-effectively deploy interactive services on their IPTV platform. The product consists of a library of highly engaging, user-friendly templates that operators can use to build games portals, magazine sites, user-generated content portals or interactive sponsorship and advertising sites.

Verizon has introduced FiOS TV to three more communities north of Boston, making a broad range of programming choices and superior picture quality available to 57,500 residents. Burlington, North Reading and Winchester join Lynnfield, Reading and Woburn as the first Bay State markets for the company's new fiber-optic television service, delivered over the only all-digital, fiber network that is being made available, on a mass scale, to millions of individual homes and businesses.

Residents of Leesburg are a major step closer to real choice for their cable television services, thanks to last night's (June 27) unanimous Town Council vote authorizing Verizon to offer its fiber-optic-powered FiOS TV here.

Perris and Temecula residents are a major step closer to having more choice for their cable television services, thanks to separate city council votes last night (June 27) in favor of allowing Verizon to offer its fiber-optic-powered FiOS TV in these communities. The Temecula vote is final, but the Perris City Council is expected to take up the issue again for a final vote at its July 11 meeting.

Several converging trends are turbocharging the growth of broadband video and distributed entertainment in the home. The explosion of long tail content and the willingness of large content owners to distribute their premium catalog over IP networks, together with the ability of mobile, PC, CE, and set-top devices to act as networked media playback devices, are generating a broadband video "perfect storm" that will gather strength over the next three years.

Everstream, a Concurrent company and industry leader of software for data collection, warehousing, advertising, reporting, and business analytics for the cable and broadband industry, announced its deployment with Blue Ridge Communications. The deal marks Everstream's continued expansion of its Hosted Services, enabling smaller operators to rapidly deploy enterprise data collection and warehousing, as well as audience measurement and iTV usage analytics and reporting.

PCCW mobile announced that it will offer a free Mobile TV trial for its 110,000 users starting from June 30. The initial Mobile TV channels to be available throughout the territory are now TV's Business News Channel and the 24-hour ATV News Channel.

BBQTV, the first TV channel dedicated to the art of barbecuing, and DAVE.TV, a global IPTV digital entertainment distribution network, today announce that they will host a "Summer BBQ Cook-off Video Challenge" on its Social Broadcast Network (SBN) at www.dave.tv. Using the power of IPTV, users can showcase and share, produce and post user-generated content on the SBN as well as broadcast to other DAVE.TV members in the network. The contest allows DAVE.TV members to submit their best videos of summer barbecue recipes including July 4th BBQ meals, and other summertime backyard good eats for a chance to have their own personal videos broadcast to a worldwide audience on the BBQTV channel at DAVE.TV. DAVE.TV users will be the judge with the ability to view and vote for their favorite BBQ video submissions. The winner will win their very own featured BBQTV show on DAVE.TV, a BBQ grill and a year's supply of BBQ rubs and sauces from Texas Rib Rangers. The "Summer BBQ Cook-off Video Challenge" kicks off on DAVE.TV in time for the July 4th weekend on June 30th and will continue throughout the month of July. Votes will be tallied and the Winner chosen and announced on Tuesday, August 1st.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of 2006 Australia - Broadband Market - Speeding up DSL to their offering.

This report analyses broadband developments in Australia in 2005 and 2006. The broadband battles have moved on from the lack of availability of broadband services to the lack of true broadband (speeds of 2Mb+), competitive prices for such high speed services and new applications such as IPTV and VoIP over broadband. In the meantime penetration is on the rise and is set to continue to do so throughout 2006 and 2007. The government has made some good commitments towards high speed broadband including in regional areas, but the policies remain nebulous.

Ikanos Communications, Inc., a leading developer and provider of Fiber Fast broadband solutions, announced that Calix has selected Ikanos as the VDSL2 chipset provider to power their E-series IP Service Edge Node (SEN). Ikanos offers very high-density, low-power chipsets for multi-mode applications, which are designed to enable Calix to offer cost-effective, high-bandwidth VDSL2 and ADSL2+ services in Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTN) and Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) applications.

Digital Fountain, Inc., the leading supplier of advanced FEC (forward error correction) technology for reliable communications, announced today the availability of the DF ToughStream Engine for streaming applications including IPTV and Internet TV. ToughStream provides application and equipment vendors with the easiest way to incorporate FEC technology into streaming applications. ToughStream "makes streams tough" protecting video and audio streams from common impairments including packet loss, latency and jitter and lost packets typical of IP networks, allowing reliable and efficient delivery to the end-user without interruptions.

New customers of Verizon's industry-leading FiOS broadband and video services, provided over the company’s fiber-to-the-premises network, will now receive the most advanced in-home broadband networking router available today.

Verizon announced an agreement with IMF: The International Music Feed Network, the 24-hour music television network featuring hit music from the United States and around the world. IMF will supply its innovative music video channel and on-demand programming for Verizon's fiber-optic-powered television service, FiOS TV.