Amazon.com begins testing a service that lets users watch videos rented or bought over the Internet directly on televisions, as part of a trend to link personal computers and TVs. The announcement comes a day after Wal-Mart Stores introduced a test version of its video download service, which is the first by a major retailer to have the backing of all Hollywood's major movies studios.
NEC and Tatara Systems reach an agreement for NEC to integrate Tatara's femtocell convergence solution into NEC's Home Gateway Solution architecture. Tatara and NEC will collaborate on end-to-end solution packaging, marketing, trials and deployments of NEC's Home Gateway Solution into the rapidly emerging UMTS femtocell market.
NTV-Plus, a direct-to-home satellite service provider in Russia and the Ukraine, has deployed a high definition MPEG-4 services for its local customer base. NTV-Plus has also implemented standard definition MPEG-2 encoders and distributed statistical multiplexing to more efficiently compress and deliver locally encoded and multiplexed SD video programming.