The National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative announces a strategic investment in Avail Media for the deployment of IPTV. As part of the same transaction, Avail Media has completed a merger with TVN Entertainment, the VOD company. The NRTC investment enables access to all the best programming available from Hollywood, network providers, and independent producers, as well as ensures members a stake in a robust, next-generation IPTV transport platform.

AT&T announces the expansion of the AT&T U-verse TV HD channel lineup to include six new HD channels from MTV Networks. The HD channel additions follow a recent expansion of the U-verse TV channel lineup to include more international programming channels and 100 or more HD channels in every U-verse TV market in early March.

YouTube continues to rank as the No. 1 video Web brand with 5.5 billion total streams in April. Meanwhile, Hulu continued its explosive growth trajectory, increasing 490 percent in total streams year-over-year, from 63.2 million in April 2008 to 373.3 million in April 2009, making it the fastest growing brand among the top 10.

Sling Media announces the availability of a Wi-Fi-only version of its SlingPlayer Mobile application for iPhone and iPod touch at the iPhone App Store. Now iPhone and iPod touch users have access to their entire home TV experience in the palm of their hand.

The IMS Research study Market Opportunities for Internet Video to the TV reveals that an estimated 65 million households worldwide had the capability of viewing Internet video on their television set at the end of 2008. This represents growth of 134% over year end 2007. Households displaying Internet video on the TV set via a game console or proprietary device comprised the vast majority of total Internet TV households in 2007 and 2008. However, it is expected that households using a PC to deliver Internet video to the TV set via a media center PC and a media extender (or digital media adapter), will see an 85% CAGR through 2013 reaching nearly 60 million households by that time.

datmedia launches a $500 monthly billing package for the online version of its acclaimed datpresenter v2 internet TV programming service at this year’s Streaming Media East show. The company chose the show to make the announcement because of its focus on new business models in the industry.

Motorola deliveres 150,000 IPTV set tops to Portugal Telecom for its triple play service meo. At 31st of December of 2008, the operator had 312,000 customers for its meo service, and with the latest shipments of set tops, Motorola becomes the preferred supplier of this service.

SecureMedia and TVBLOB announce that TVBLOB's TV-centric development platform and hybrid internet set-top boxes ("BLOBbox"), that bring the power of the Web directly to TV is protected by SecureMedia's Encryptonite ONET System CA/DRM. Leveraging TVBLOB's free SDK from the BLOBforge, content owners anywhere can now realize new, 'over-the-top' television services and business models on the BLOBbox using standard Web technologies, while ensuring the highest levels of digital protection for content distributed in both linear and non-linear means including VOD, podcasts and HTTP streaming.

Akamai announces support for Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5 on the Akamai streaming network, adding dynamic streaming and other key enhancements to its Flash streaming capabilities. These features are designed to allow publishers and content owners to deliver significantly higher quality video experiences and embrace long-form content distribution, as more consumers are watching online video offered in higher quality when given a choice.

VUDU and Brightcove partner to enable Brightcove customers to distribute their content directly to the living room television via VUDU. The first feature available in the VUDU Labs area of the VUDU service will be the MyPlay application, which offers current Sony Music videos through Sony Music's MyPlay Video Network affiliate program.

Mobile Web 2.0 Summit will be held in London on 3rd & 4th June, is delighted to formally announce sponsorship agreements with 5 key stakeholders in the mobile telecommunications sector. The five organisations in question are Vodafone, O2 Litmus, GetJar, Nokia and Orange.

These key industry stakeholders have all committed to actively supporting the forthcoming conference, which is focusing on the development of the Mobile Web ecosystem and vitally, the monetisation of the sector. The 2 day, 4 streamed, 60+ speaker event, dubbed “the industry’s best supported event” due to huge support from over 40 key organisations and media, is yet again set to be a major gathering of the entire mobile web spectrum.

KnowledgeView will participate in the 11th annual Arab International Telecom Development Summit, one of the largest telecommunication summits in the Arab World, 28-29 May, Lebanon, showing its one-click publishing system for mobiles.

Held under the title 'Broadband and Beyond - Strategic Partnership for Growth in the Region,' Arabcom 2009 is chartered to witness a review of the latest developments in the industry.

UTStarcom announces its participation in the upcoming 4th international conference, IPTV India 2009, to be held at Hotel Le Meridien in the capital on May 15. The event is being organized by Bharat Exhibitions in association with IPTV India Forum, and is supported by several leading industry bodies including AUSPI, GSA, ICA, ISPAI and TUG.

Anticipating an unprecedented interest in this year's eighth annual TelcoTV conference and exhibition, show management is making an early call for papers and speakers. As the challenges faced by traditional print and broadcast media put increasing pressure on broadband television to point the way forward to an exploding population of wired homes, schools, workplaces, and public buildings, TelcoTV has established itself as the No. 1 meeting place for the many stakeholders embracing this revolution -- most notably service providers. TelcoTV 2009 provides a holistic view of entertainment convergence, encompassing MobileTV, NetVideo, IPTV, and hybrid solutions. Anyone offering meaningful insight and analysis into this evolving world of entertainment convergence is now invited to submit their proposal to address this year's conference, which takes place November 10-12, 2009, in Orlando, Fla.

On2 Technologies will show its latest video compression and transcoding products at the Streaming Media East 2009 conference and exhibition, to be held on May 12 and 13 at the New York Hilton in New York City. On2 will demonstrate its On2 VP8 video codec as well as its new On2 Flix Cloud on-demand video transcoding service--developed in partnership with Zencoder in Booth #113.