YouTube has released a blog post confirming rumours that it will be offering paid VOD channels with subscription fees starting at US$ 0.99 per month. The new programme was launched with 53 channels on May 9th in ten countries with a number of kids properties aw well as sports. All channels are try before you buy with a 14-day free trial, and will be available on a range of connected devices including computers, phones, tablets and TVs(TV Everywhere out of the box). From the blog. ...

Ofcom has recently released a tome of a report called UK audience attitudes to the broadcast media - which is available as both a summary and in a whopping 111 page slide pack. Some of the more interesting findings include: Over half of viewers who use TV 'on demand' services say they watch them when there is nothing to watch on 'normal TV'. Around three in ten respondents said that they used TV video-on-demand services (from Virgin on Demand, Sky Anytime or BT Vision +). The top three...

A recent report from BI Intelligence, claims that second screen industry will ultimately succeed due to: Usage is growing rapidly: 85% of smartphone users reported second screen-linked behavior at least once a month, over 60% reported doing it on a weekly basis, and 39% did so daily. Over 80% of 18- to 24-year-olds told Pew they used their phone while watching TV, and 60% of Americans with annual incomes above $50,000 use their phones while watching TV. And mass acceptance isn't even...

UK Pay TV company BSkyB has just announced, via an SEC filing, it has made a follow-up $1.9m equity investment in TV-streaming platform Roku, almost a year after it joined a consortium of investors in a €40m round which included News Corporation, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners. Roku, based in Saratoga, California, is an American, privately held, consumer electronics company that sells home digital media products. The company manufactures a...

Talking toTechnology Spectator this week, zeebox co-founder and CTO Anthony Rose said that soon anyone with the know-how and an idea on how to improve a show’s second-screen experience will be soon be able to create their own multimedia for Zeebox. “Over the coming weeks, we’ll be launching out Zeebox developer platform that is going to let initially industry developers create a lot more content themselves around shows and place that inside Zeebox,” Mr Rose said. “We already provide tools...

Civolution and Vetrya have teamed up and cut a deal with La3, the social media channel broadcast on Sky (channel 143) and FTA DTT (channel 134), tablets, smartphones and the internet who have selected both companies to enhance its HyperSync application. The Civolution-Vetrya partnership enables La3 to drive user engagement and loyalty through the delivery of a customized app which presents viewers with synchronized content on a wide array of connected devices. The SyncNow technology enhances...

Magic Ruby, a leading provider for developing monetizable technology and applications for the second screen, today announced the debut of its Quasar Production Platform, a unified, cloud-based toolset that helps television and film studios and other media and entertainment companies create, customize and monetize content through immersive second screen applications. The first tools released in the Production Platform include a content authoring tool, a secure Content Management System (CMS) and...

A leader in delivering cutting-edge new-media viewing experiences, Silicon Valley-based ReinCloud Corporation, recently won first place overall in TV Hackfest, the world's premier international next-generation TV technology competition, for its ARGTV(TM) (Augmented Reality Gamification TV(TM)) platform. In describing ARGTV, ReinCloud CEO Dan Reitan said, "In the near future, you can share a drink with Don Draper of Mad Men, for instance, pick up the bottle of gin being poured, examine it,...

zeebox today announces that its award-winning app is now available for the new BlackBerry® 10 platform. BlackBerry® Z10 customers in the U.K, U.S. and Australia can download zeebox from the BlackBerry® World™ storefront today to get the world’s only truly social, interactive and synchronised TV guide. The zeebox app, which is already available for BlackBerry® 7 smartphones, has been streamlined and updated with full 7-day TV guide search, more ways to discover unique TV and access to great...

Opera Software is gearing up its Opera TV Store offering for pay-TV operators, as it showcases optimized solutions for customization, monitoring and monetization at the TV Connect exhibition kicking off Tuesday in London. The Opera TV Store is an HTML5, cloud-based app marketplace built on Opera's advanced browsing engine, which is already supported by the leading set-top-box (STB) vendors. It gives users a rich selection of entertaining apps and provides one of the friendliest TV web...

Shazam and Screenvision have announced an exclusive new partnership that will bring the Shazam for TV advertising platform to movie theaters across the United States. The union of Screenvision's giant theater screens and Shazam's Social TV and Second Screen technology will enable consumers to engage with many of the ads they see before a movie – allowing them to receive special offers, enter sweepstakes and bring home and share more information about the products and services that pique their...

Samsung has snatched up the team behind MOVL, a company that makes entertainment applications for smart TVs, GigaOm reported Monday. Not surprising. We have been covering Movl's steady rise since late 2010. From their original expansion internationally, after winning Samsung's "Free the TV Challenge in 2010, to unleasing the WeDraw app on Samsung platform, covering their expansion with WeDraw to Google TV, to them taking on Apple Airplay long before DIAL is trying to with Swipeit. When MOVL...