Daily DigVid Review: Sony signs on to tru2way

Welcome back from the long Memorial Day weekend that was in no way long enough.

In an agreement that should make it easier for consumers to receive advanced TV services, Sony has signed an agreement with six major cable operators – Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House – to create devices that run on the Java-based tru2way solution, the NCTA said Monday. If all goes well, other consumer electronics manufacturers should be right behind.  

Google-owned YouTube "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works,” Google’s lawyers wrote in a filing Friday at the U.S. District Court in New York. Google still is fighting Viacom’s $1billion lawsuit against it, filed last year, which claims that YouTube encourages rampant copyright infringement.

Starz Entertainment on Monday agreed to provide its new video broadband service, Starz Play, to Verizon’s 8.5 million-plus broadband subscribers. It also will continue to provide Starz network line-up – which includes all 16 Starz, Encore and MoviePlex premium commercial-free movie channels — to Verizon’s FiOS TV customers and to its FiOS Internet and High Speed Internet customers. Verizon Broadband customers can sign up for the new service at www.verizon.net/starzplay to subscribe to the new service, after which they can access the service anywhere in the U.S. to watch live programs and to download and view movies and videos an unlimited number of times at no additional charge. 

For the first time ever, Scripps-owned HGTV will launch a TV show off one of its popular Web  sites. “Rate My Space,” in which people post photos of rooms they have decorated and ask others to rate them, will premiere on the cable network on Sunday, June 15 at 10 p.m. ET. It then moves to its weekly time slot on Thursday, June 19 at 9 p.m. ET.