Tech Talk
By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/11/2007
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LodgeNet Gets Hi-Def Content From NBCU
LodgeNet Entertainment has signed a multi-year licensing deal with NBC Universal that will make high-definition movies from the Universal film studio available on the hotel television provider’s video-on-demand platform.
The deal includes NBCU’s approval of LodgeNet’s in-room high-definition (HD) technology, which uses the Pro:Idiom content-security system developed by TV-set manufacturer LG Electronics, to protect NBCU’s premium content throughout the hotel video-distribution chain.
High-definition movies from Universal that will be served to HD-capable LodgeNet client hotels include Hot Fuzz and Georgia Rule. All Universal titles will feature LodgeNet’s PowerPlay media-playback controls, providing pause, skip and save (bookmarking) flexibility.
LIN Taps VMIX for User-Generated Video
Station group LIN TV Corp. will use technology from video-hosting and social-network concern VMIX to incorporate user-generated videos, photos, audio, blogs, ratings, polls, and other community-driven content and features on the Websites of the 29 stations it owns and/or operates, as well as future portals and micro-sites.
LIN TV will be the first TV broadcast group to launch user-generated content on all of its stations’ Websites in partnership with San Diego-based VMIX, which also counts NBC, Media General and A&E as customers.
Grass Valley To Compress Video for Sirius
Sirius Satellite Radio will use Thomson Grass Valley MPEG-4 compression technology for Sirius Backseat TV, a mobile-video service it plans to launch later this year.
Sirius is purchasing Grass Valley Argos MPEG-4 AVC (advanced video coding) mobile-TV encoders, which are designed to handle very low bit rates—from 50 to 500 kilobits per second—while enabling flexible-frame-rate encoding of video and audio delivered over broadcast, broadband and wireless networks.
