Minerva added ten more IPTV wins in North America, including Mt. Horeb Telephone in Wisconsin, Tullahoma Utilities in Tennessee, and GTA TeleGuam in Guam. With IPTV platforms delivering a superior user experience, HD/PVR set-top boxes now readily available from multiple vendors, and early adopters enjoying rapid subscriber penetration, more network operators are entering the market and preparing to launch triple-play initiatives. Minerva is taking advantage of this market momentum by providing a proven middleware platform that allows operators to launch television services very quickly and compete effectively against incumbents while minimizing infrastructure and operating costs.

Digisoft.tv announces that Win Multimedia of Thailand has selected Digisoft’s DigiHost Service Delivery Platform and IPTV set top box middleware to deliver premium IPTV services in the Thai and Chinese markets. WM plans to launch their IPTV service across 10,000 retail outlets in Thailand and China over the next year and will include advanced applications including IPG, Video on demand, mobile phone tracking, News and weather services and karaoke in addition to multi language support.

WM, a subsidiary of Win Win Net Corporation in Thailand, is a vertically integrated media company operating in the film and record entertainment, sports events production, licensing, and distribution industries. WM is operating in Thailand and also will expand to The Peoples Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and India.

Parks Associates and CEA announce that Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer of the Personal Systems Group at HP, will present the opening visionary keynote at CONNECTIONS: The Digital Living Conference & Showcase.

McKinney will address conference attendees at 4:30 p.m. on the first day of the event, which will take place June 24-26 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The keynote address is titled "20 Years into the Future" and will discuss the technological innovations that will define the media and entertainment landscape over the next two decades, as well as what issues businesses and consumers can expect as the physical and virtual worlds collide.

Truveo launches a major update to its website that improves the performance and makes the site more useful to consumers. The new site is available at truveo.com; localized versions of the new Truveo experience are available in 16 other countries.

“Consumer interest in online video has exploded, and video is now one of the key drivers of audience and traffic growth on the Web, which increases the importance of a quality video search product,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL. “Truveo offers consumers in the U.S. and abroad the most advanced video search tool to find what they’re looking for, and as a result it’s seen dramatic global growth. The enhancements to Truveo.com only improve what is already the best video search experience.”

TVN Entertainment announces a long-term agreement with IP-PRIME in which TVN will provide its comprehensive suite of VOD content and asset management services as part of IP-PRIME's service solution.

The deal allows IP-PRIME operators full access to TVN's comprehensive on-demand products and services including: ADONISS the Emmy-nominated asset management system; iPRI an advanced interactive tool that allows programmers to dynamically update VOD metadata before, during, and after asset distribution to VOD servers and TVNow the fast turn around service that converts live programming into on-demand content, which is then made available to viewers within hours of the event. TVN offers programs from every content category, including all Studios and Event providers, hundreds of Broadcast and Cable Network VOD packages, and VOD-exclusive channels, like the Karaoke Channel, RipeTV and Research Channel.

TelcoTV’s Call for Speakers is now open! We invite you to become part of our growing TelcoTV ecosystem by submitting a proposal to speak at this year’s conference, November 11-13, 2008 in Anaheim, CA.

TelcoTV 2008 is expanding its scope and will provide a holistic view of entertainment convergence options for telecom carriers including MobileTV, NetVideo, IPTV, hybrid models, and convergence. This year’s conference will consist of over 3,500+ attendees, 175+ exhibitors, and 125+ speakers.

We are expecting an enthusiastic audience of telecom service providers, ranging from the smallest cooperative to Fortune 50 companies like Verizon and AT&T. They will all be looking to our speakers to provide them meaningful insight and analysis into the evolving world of entertainment convergence. Are you up to that challenge? If so, please visit the TelcoTV Call for Papers to submit your proposal, and keep the following guidelines in mind:

After just four weeks on the air, GRITtv with Laura Flanders has brought together scores of journalists, activists, authors, filmmakers and other guests to create a new kind of program.

This Sunday, June 8th, immediately following the National Conference on Media Reform, GRITtv will go live, from the Twin Cities when Flanders hosts "Live from Main Street" the first of a series of five town-hall style productions, produced by the Media Consortium with GRITtv. "Your Streets, Your Stories" Live From Main Street takes a look at the National Election from the local point of view. In Minneapolis, Live From Mainstreet will take as its theme: Getting Heard in Election Year - and look at the free speech challenges facing the city in the run up to the Republican Convention. The Media Consortium is a unique collaboration among 45 leading independent media organizations including The Nation, Mother Jones, Free Speech TV, and Link TV.

With video entertainment choices expanding rapidly with the broader availability of web video and video-capable devices such as the iPhone, Americans are consuming more video content than ever according to the Multiplatform Video Report released by Solutions Research Group.

NOW 6.1 HOURS DAILY WITH VIDEO-BASED ENTERTAINMENT

The study found that an average American consumer aged 12 and older with Internet access now spends 6.1 hours daily with video-based entertainment, up from 4.6 in 1996. Of this 6.1 hours, 63.9% (nearly 4 hours per day) currently comes from traditional Television, including live, DVR and video-on-demand viewing. Video games, web and PC video, DVDs and video on mobile devices account for the balance.

Delve Networks launches its Internet TV and online video publishing platform. In addition to hosting video content, Delve's platform gives content publishers all the necessary tools to upload, manage and track the performance of their online video. With its semantic video web technology and HeatMap interface, Delve becomes the first video platform to enable users to navigate within a hosted video file to find the exact content they want.

Delve processes video through its proprietary semantic layer, which creates a visual map of each video, allowing users to find the exact content they want within a program. The platform supports the H.264 video codec delivering exceptional video quality at low bandwidth rates.

Widevine expanded capabilities for operators to quickly and affordably secure content between multiple devices within an in-home network using Cypher 4.2. The new release adds hardware acceleration within the Sigma Designs 8364 secure processor on the Cisco line of IP STBs and DVRs to support enhanced services such as multi-room DVR. It also includes support for network address translation for unlimited expansion of the consumer domain to accommodate STBs, DVRs, PCs, handsets and portable media players.

TVover.net and Parks Associates are giving away 2 more free CONNECTIONS 2008 passes to the first 2 readers that email us at media@tvover.net with name, email, company, address and phone number.

CONNECTIONS: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase, hosted by leading research firm Parks Associates in partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), is the premier executive event focused on the market developments and growth factors for advanced digital lifestyle solutions. For twelve years, the following industries have participated at CONNECTIONS: new media, digital entertainment and gaming, home networks, Internet and television services, software and middleware, digital health, mobile applications and services, consumer electronics, and home control systems and security.

For more information about CONNECTIONS 2008, visit http://www.connectionsconference.com.

Widevine and Verimatrix claimed the second and third spots in the company’s new evaluation of worldwide Digital Rights Management vendors. The Vendor Matrix is an analytical tool developed by ABI Research to provide a clear understanding of vendors’ positions in specific markets.

Industry analyst Zippy Aima comments: “There is really very little separating the top three vendors in the Digital Rights Management Vendor Matrix. All offer good individualized technological solutions. NDS took top honors mainly on account of its larger market share. Widevine and Verimatrix are relatively new in the market, and their rapid success in gaining market share is commendable. On the basis of longevity in the market and number of customers, however, NDS has to be considered the market leader.”

The Big 12 Conference and JumpTV will develop and host a completely redesigned video-centric web platform to support the Big 12 Conference's online destination. The Big 12 Conference encompasses seven states, over 45 million people and more than 18 million television households within its geographic footprint.

The Big 12 Conference is yet another BCS partner of JumpTV and joins 15 other conferences including the Big East Conference, the Mid-American Conference and the Western Athletic Conference.

TANDBERG Television is providing a range of MPEG-2 video compression technologies to the European Broadcast Union, for coverage of a strong line-up of high profile sporting events this summer. TANDBERG Television’s digital TV systems have already been and will continue to play a key role in the delivery of footage of both standard definition and HD sports action from the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing and the Tour de France, Roland Garros and Wimbledon, as well as all the most prominent football events of the season to more than 650 million viewers in 56 countries in and around Europe.

blinkx announces a partnership with Next New Networks. Next New Networks boasts a diverse collection of content on over a dozen networks such as Indy Mogul, the network for aspiring filmmakers, and Barely Political, home of the wildly popular Obama Girl. Leveraging its unique AdHoc platform, blinkx will place contextually relevant advertising against the footage, and will share resulting advertising revenue with Next New Networks.

As the pioneer in video search technology, blinkx has built a reputation as the smartest way to search new forms of online content such as video. With more than 350 partners and 26 million hours of indexed video and audio content, including favorite TV moments, news clips, short documentaries, music videos, video blogs and more, blinkx uses advanced speech-recognition technology to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than standard metadata-based keyword searches.