EYE IO announces its first commercial license agreement with Netflix. With more than 20 million streaming members in 47 countries and territories, Netflix has revolutionized entertainment by providing instant and unlimited access to tens of thousands of hours of movies and TV shows. eyeIO technology helps Netflix deliver the high quality streaming experience Netflix members love.

eyeIO video encoding is fully compliant with existing standards, making high quality video available anywhere in the world, on any connected device. The technology can be deployed as either a cloud or local solution and the enhanced video can be viewed without a custom video player or equipment modification.

Opera Software and INTEK Digital announced that the two companies will work together to deliver a better web experience for connected TV viewers. Opera Software will provide licenses for the Opera Devices Software Development Tool Kit on its Android-based Hybrid STB including HbbTV. This new STB will be shipped in the first half of 2012.

The hybrid STB provides viewers with both broadcast television and Internet content on their TVs. With analogue broadcast TV to be switched off by the European Commission’s recommended date of 2012, the demand for hybrid STB is now on the rise. IMS Research recently pointed out that worldwide digital terrestrial STB shipments will reach 20.5 million in 2012. With more and more web applications available for TVs, a good Internet solution plays an important role to elevate the users’ experience.

Amino unveils the world’s first hybrid/OTT media gateway to be powered by Intel’s next generation 32nm Intel Atom SoC for CE at CES 2012 in Las Vegas this week.

The Amino Freedom Live media gateway will combine dual core processing power with a range of new enhanced transcoding and encoding capabilities with multi-screen distribution to deliver content seamlessly to TVs, smartphones and tablets around the home.

Visitors to the Intel booth at CES (#7253) will be able to watch the Amino Freedom handle a range of content sources – including broadcast, OTT, gaming and user generated content – delivered quickly and seamlessly via a newly-created user interface. Uniquely, Amino will also showcase a new feature that delivers high-definition video calling via the TV set.

Simple.TV released today their new DVR ($149) with high-definition TV tuner that converts broadcast television into streaming MPEG-4 for connected devices. Bringing live and recorded TV to connected devices both inside and outside the home, Simple.TV turns the iPad, Roku box, Google TV, Boxee Box, or any web browser into a full-featured DVR that is accessible anywhere. With the addition of a USB 2.0 hard drive or network-attached storage, Simple.TV users can store thousands of hours of TV shows and HDTV videos and watch them on their mobile devices or connected TVs.

At the heart of the Simple.TV DVR is the ViXS XCode 4210. With its ability to create adaptive AVC MPEG-4 video streams from a high definition video input, the XCode 4210 enables the Simple.TV DVR to convert broadcast television into highly compressed and flexible video streams that can be seamlessly accessed by the most popular consumer electronics devices, such as the iPad and Roku media streamer.

In the next two years, televisions will represent a surprisingly large opportunity for the implementation of advanced user interface (UI) technologies, and a variety of major consumer electronics brands will be aggressively bringing TVs with varying implementations of gesture, motion ,and voice control technologies to market over the next several product generations.

Due to the evolving need for consumers to interact more conveniently and effectively with technology, makers of televisions will increasingly utilize differing mixes of advanced UI technologies. Though smartphones are commonly considered a natural target for these enhancements, given the pre-existing presence of relevant hardware such as cameras and motion sensors, television sets represent a significant growth opportunity over the next few years.

Western Digital has added streaming movie service VUDU, as well as several additional new sports and entertainment services to the WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub media players, adding to the media player family's current content offerings from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Facebook and many others. In addition to VUDU, new services include SnagFilms, XOS College Sports, SEC Digital Network, Comedy Time and Watch Mojo.

Apple has emerged as the leading player in the rapidly growing connected TV player market, according to the latest research from the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices service. According to the report, “Connected TV Players: Another Battlefield in the Smart TV War,” global sales of connected TV players—also known as video streaming or internet TV set-top-boxes—will more than double in 2011, compared to 2010. Strategy Analytics projects that the market will reach almost 12 million units globally this year, with Apple alone predicted to sell nearly four million devices.

While connected TV players have not gained mainstream traction, an increasing number of consumers are buying them, as they offer one of the easiest ways to get Internet content onto the big TV screen. The lower price points of the second generation Apple TV and Roku Box have made them more affordable and compelling to consumers. More than 8 percent of US households now own a connected TV player, compared to 7 percent of European households.

Panasonic has launched a new Internet Social Network application, that will be available on VIERA Connect-equipped 2011 VIERA HDTVs and subsequent models. The app allows access social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook while also enjoying television simultaneously on the VIERA HDTV. VIERA Connect does require that the customer has a broadband Internet connection to their TV.

Panasonic also announced the addition of a new gaming application from PlayJam and a movie/video channel, called BigFlix, which will allow users to access Bollywood Video on Demand. The three new applications come with no additional fee.

The Wall Street Journal has added some significant distribution outlets for their new WSJ Live interactive video service for live and on-demand programming from the WSJ Digital Network. The WSJ Live app is now available via Apple TV, Google TV and Roku. On-demand video from WSJ Live is also now available on Daily Motion.

WSJ Live currently offers up to four total hours of live programming each business day -- including the News Hub, Lunch Break, Digits, Opinion Journal and more -- and more than 2,000 on-demand videos from across the company's network of sites.

AOL has released a new dedicated AOL HD app that will deliver high-definition video to users across connected TV platforms including Boxee, Roku and Yahoo! Connected TV. Plans to expand AOL HD to other connected platforms are scheduled in the coming months. AOL HD allows consumers to watch high quality AOL video and audio content for free by streaming online offerings directly to users' television sets.