--Dreampark Announces its Booth Plans for IBC 2010 --Epix Hires Ex-Showtime Exec, Signs First-Look Deal with Albie Hecht's Worldwide Biggies --Pan-European Interactive TV Project, FASCINATE, Receives EUR 9.35 Million of EU Funding --Gotuit Powering Broadband Video Portal for Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance"
The [itvt] editorial team is on the road this week and next, so we are covering most stories in round-up/summary form, and we anticipate that there will be some additional interruptions of our regular news publishing schedule beyond that. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience to our readers.
Swedish middleware provider, Dreampark, has announced the line-up of technologies and products that it will be showcasing in its booth (Hall 4, Stand A75) at the upcoming IBC show in Amsterdam. Among other things, the company will be showcasing its "Portal Generator" for its Dreamgallery middleware. According to the company, "the Portal Generator brings the Dreamgallery 'What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get' user interface to a new level. Operators can add new interactive services and see changes take effect in real time," the company continues in its press materials, "making it easier than ever for them to create a business portal and push revenue-generating opportunities to customers."
Epix, a subscription-based multiplatform (linear, VOD, online) premium programming service which is a joint venture between Viacom, its Paramount Pictures arm, MGM and Lionsgate, has announced the appointment of Maureen Taran as VP of original programming/live events. Taran was previously supervising producer for Showtime's celebrity talk show, "The Green Room with Paul Provenza." Prior to that, she was VP of programming for Montreal's Just for Laughs Comedy Festival. "Maureen is known throughout the industry as having a keen eye for identifying fresh and exciting new talent, particularly throughout the comedy circuits," Laverne McKinnon, Epix's EVP of original programming and development, said in a prepared statement. "Her proven ability to discover the 'next big thing' and cultivate and shape talent to help ensure long-term commercial success will be a great value for Epix." Epix has also announced a multi-project first-look deal with Albie Hecht's Worldwide Biggies. The first project to result from the deal is entitled "My: Moment" and is billed as "offer[ing] an inside peek into the mind of Olympic gold medal skier Lindsay Vonn."
CORDIS, an official publication of the European Union, has announced that a new interactive TV initiative, called FASCINATE, has received a EUR 9.35 million grant from the EU's Seventh Framework Program: "Do you sometimes get frustrated while watching a sports game or a live concert on television?," CORDIS's announcement asks. "Have you ever wished you could pick your camera angles or zoom in on a player at will? A network of European researchers is working to make this science-fiction fantasy a reality--be it on a panoramic LCD (liquid crystal display) screen with surround sound, or on a mobile phone. The FASCINATE ('Format-agnostic script-based interactive experience') received EUR 9.35 million from the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Program (FP7) to create a technologically advanced system for future immersive and interactive TV (television) services...In the future, a whole scene could be captured using multiple microphones and different types of cameras simultaneously," the announcement continues. "Together, this range of video signals would make up a multi-layered, high-quality representation of a whole scene, and the viewer should be allowed to navigate from one layer to the next as they please. The word 'format-agnostic' means that the technology would function on any kind of display, in terms of resolution, field-of-view, color, etc...The FASCINATE team believes that the technology will enhance a live music experience in different ways within three or four years' time. Using a mobile phone to connect to a set of fixed high-definition cameras capturing the event in real time, a rock fan in a stadium could zoom in on the bass player's fingers. After the gig, they could also retrieve the whole concert video and navigate to their favorite bits, both in time and space. At home, a football buff could also point to a particular player or choose to watch the game as if they were standing behind the goalkeeper." More information on the FASCINATE project is available here.
Gotuit Media--a company that offers metadata technologies which, among other things, allow end-users to instantly access the parts of a piece of video that interest them, and which can also be used by video publishers to allow end-users to make mash-ups out of their content, using metadata-defined virtual video clips--has announced that it is powering a broadband video portal for the Fox reality series, "So You Think You Can Dance." It previously launched a portal for another Fox reality show, "Hell's Kitchen" (see the article published on itvt.com, June 2nd). Earlier this year, Gotuit announced that it had formed a partnership with broadband video platform provider, Brightcove, which it said would "enable joint Brightcove and Gotuit customers [such as Fox] to leverage Gotuit's temporal, scene-level video metadata and unleash the full value of their online video archives."
