YouTube to Offer Live Video Feeds in 2008?
YouTube to begin live streaming video? Thats what YouTube co-founder, Steve Chen hinted during a YouTube party in NYC. Steve Chen claims, "2008. We’ll do it this year. Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually launch something this year."

MySpace is Playing "Keeping up with the Joneses"
After Dailymotion began offering it's HD video to the web last week. Myspace is now launching their own HD video player for the social networking community. The HD trailer for Marvel Comic's new movie Iron Man can be found at Myspace's Trailer Park.

Belgacom TV Reaches Over 300,000 Subscribers
Belgian IPTV service Belgacom TV reached over 300,000 customers at the end of 2007. Belgacom TV added 165,654 new homes at a monthly service price of €16.10 in 2007. Belgacom's growth helped make it the second largest digital TV player in the country just behind Telenet's 400,000 customers. With the indtroduction of the 'comfort view' offer that provides pause live TV and one-touch recording on the PVR Belgacom hopes to continue its expansion.

AT&T is looking to speed up its U-verse deployment in hopes of adding 40,000 new customers per week by the end of 2008. Currently U-verse has been adding 12,000 subscribers per week.

As U-verse continues to grow, AT&T will begin pair bonding its last-mile copper lines in the fourth quarter of 2008. For some customers, president of telecom operations John Stankey said that, "should the need arise, we could go up to four HD streams and 40 Mbit/s with pair bonding."

Stankey also stated, "AT&T will add a second HD stream to U-verse by the middle of 2008 and will add its whole-home DVR feature with seven full streams of content available to a single household sometime in the second half of 2008."

Yankee Group claims that IPTV will redefine pay TV in the United States. IPTV will change the competitive landscape for subscription services by morphing the service from one-size-fits-all traditional broadcast TV into an open, flexible, customizable offering, tailored to the needs of local communities. By 2011, more than 9 million households in the US will subscribe to telco-provided video service.

IPTV’s influence in the communications field and on consumer communications services in the US is driven by the impact of the global connectivity revolution on business and market dynamics. As a result, we are witnessing massive transformations taking place in media and entertainment and communications industries. With the digitization of content and the internet as a platform, both industries are morphing from structured, linear ecosystems to open and fluid sectors influenced by greater consumer control.

MySpace in cooperation with the Department of Defense’s Armed Forces Entertainment and America Supports You program, announced the launch of Operation MySpace, a landmark concert event designed to bring troops serving in Kuwait a taste of home and enable the MySpace community to show their support for troops serving overseas.

On March 10, MySpace Co-Founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, along with some of today’s most popular musical acts, will participate in a 3-hour plus MySpaceLive! concert in Kuwait that will be streamed in high definition flash video using Kulabyte’s XStream Live Solutions exclusively on the official Operation MySpace profile. The MySpace community can watch the entire concert webcast starting at 11a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET

Magnify.net secured an additional $1 million in financing to continue to grow the popular Video Broadcasting and Discovery Platform.

The new round included all existing investors including Next Stage Capital, New York Angels, Rose Tech Ventures, Active Angel Investors, and a number of individual investors including Chris Anderson. Joining in this round were new investors Ogden Capital and Gideon Gartner, founder of The Gartner Group.

Having just celebrated its first birthday, Magnify.net has seen remarkable growth in the past six months with total publishers passing the 30,000 mark and monthly visits soaring past three million. More than a thousand publishers a week are adding Magnify.net services to their Web sites.

DS2 presents fully interoperable 100Mbps, 200Mbps and 400Mbps Powerline Communications technology at CeBIT 2008, Hall 13, Stand C83. The standards-based company created and patented the baseline technology for the Universal Powerline Association Digital Home Standard for multi-media home networking and service provider applications. UPA´s Digital Home Standard is the best selling powerline communications technology for IPTV services selected by leading service providers including Belgacom, British Telecom, Neuf Cegetel, Portugal Telecom, Telefónica, Telecom Italia and Telia Sonera. Over four million 200Mbps UPA ICs have been sold. DS2 holds the largest market share of this expanding market for 200Mbps powerline communication products in the retail, service provider and smart grid markets. At CeBIT, DS2 will be demonstrating cross generation, fully interoperable solutions for networking in the Digital Home and will be introducing new powerline products and solutions for Smart Grid and embedded applications.

Panther Express announced the completion of a $15.75 million Series B round of venture financing led by Index Ventures. Gold Hill Capital and existing investor Greylock Partners also participated. Panther will use the funds for international expansion and further infrastructure investment to support its growing list of customers.

Founded in 2005 by Kevin P. Ryan and Dwight Merriman, former CEO and CTO of DoubleClick, Panther combines rapid, reliable and scalable performance with flexible and cost competitive terms resulting in the highest value CDN offering in the industry. In just over two years, Panther has established an international client base of over 250 customers across a broad range of markets including video and audio delivery, podcasting, ad serving, web hosting, gaming, traditional publishers and social networking companies.

From Advertising.com alums comes TidalTV who have raised $15 million to launch an online video platform delivering premium television content. TidalTV is expected to be more like Hulu than Joost. TidalTV is especially focused on advertising, and promises targeted and interactive ads. Guess we'll find out more after their website becomes more than just a landing page.

4oD the on demand service from UK broadcaster Channel 4, has passed 100 million streams or downloads since its launch in December 2006. Six million streams have been made in the period of January 1st and February 25th of this year. January also saw a 69% increase in the number of programmes streamed or downloaded. Currently the total number of 4oD users stands at 3.3 million, which represents 1 million PC users and 2.3 million via TV VoD (Virgin, BT Vision, Tiscali). Top shows include Hollyoaks, Skins, Shameless, Big Brother and Peep Show.

Team Lightbulb announce further details of Telecom2008 at the NAB Show. The NAB Show, held in Las Vegas from April 11-17, is the world's largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all media.

Telecom2008 builds on the success of Team Lightbulb's telecom conferences at last year's NAB Show. It features executives from leading carriers and vendors in IPTV and broadband video from the U.S. and abroad speaking in four conferences exploring the IPTV ecosystem:

Dailymotion announces full implementation of INA’s “Signature” technology across all localized and local language Dailymotion sites. Dailymotion’s use of video filtering technology follows several other copyrighted material protection initiatives throughout the site, including a hashing system, blocking videos that have already been removed from the site and use of an audio fingerprinting solution. In addition, Dailymotion is an original signatory to the UGC Copyright Principles. Implementation of INA video fingerprinting technology reinforces Dailymotion’s leadership position in providing the most advanced copyright protection system for content owners.

Break Media will offer daily NBA video highlights on Break.com throughout the remainder of the 2007-08 NBA Season. Break.com is a leading entertainment site with more than 18 million monthly users aged 18-34 years old, a prime demographic for the NBA.

The NBA video highlights will be available at http://www.break.com/nba and includes a “NBA Highlights” channel on the site. The highlights will showcase the most stunning plays of each day and each week: the best assists, dunks and buzzer beaters. Break.com will also feature videos from the 2008 NBA All Star Game, including the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest, Foot Locker Three-Point Shootout, and T-Mobile Rookie Challenge and Youth Jam.

Residents of Abington, Mass. are a major step closer to having another choice for their cable television services, thanks to a newly approved agreement authorizing Verizon to offer its FiOS TV service via the most advanced all-digital, fiber-optic network straight to customers' homes. The Board of Selectmen in Abington granted a cable franchise Monday to Verizon, paving the way for video choice for approximately 5,000 more Massachusetts households.

The board's vote brings to 66 the total number of Massachusetts communities where Verizon's FiOS TV is or will soon be available

Asoka opened its European headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Running the office will be Asoka's Vice President of Europe, Middle East and Africa Sales and Marketing, Eduard Blonk. Blonk, most recently Senior Vice President global sales key accounts for Siemens, brings extensive telecom industry experience and a strong familiarity of the EMEA marketplace.

As the world's largest market for HomePlug powerline products due to rapid adoption of IPTV, the EMEA office is a key part of Asoka's global growth strategy. Asoka will support existing EMEA customers, including Clearwire Belgium, Clearwire Spain, Clearwire Ireland, Irish Broadband, Eircom and Virgin Media from its local office as well as all new customers in the region.

AT&T and Players Network announce a distribution agreement to deliver gaming lifestyle channel "Vegas on Demand" as part of the AT&T U-verse IPTV Video On Demand library.

U-verse TV customers can now enjoy approximately 50 free original "Vegas on Demand" shows each month from the Players Network's library of more than 1,000 quality gaming and Las Vegas lifestyle programs.

Players Network is a leading digital media television network dedicated to Las Vegas entertainment and the gaming lifestyle. Its original programming targets an audience of the consumers who contribute to the $72 billion a year U.S. gaming and casino industry.

Ruckus Wireless unveiled a comprehensive Wi-Fi strategy for service providers and introduced an extensive range of provider-purposed products for applications across their hotspot, commercial and residential businesses.

The new strategy and solutions help telecommunications carriers, multi- service operators, hotspot operators and managed services providers meet growing demand for reliable, ubiquitous Wi-Fi connectivity while minimizing capital expenditure and operating costs. Easily integrated into existing provider infrastructures, the new Ruckus multi-service multimedia Wi- Fi solutions allow operators to scale capacity as needed and monetize their high-performance Wi-Fi networks through new revenue-generating services.