Following Sling's recent deal to distribute its Slingbox through UPC, the pan-European cable operator, announced at IBC, I drafted a comment that Sling could end up getting Tivo'ed. By which I meant that while Tivo started out as a disruptive force, it has depended on operator partners for its survival. Those partners' primary interests lie in maintaining a strong vertical relationship with their customer base, and reducing technology partners to vendor status. Sling also started out as a maverick independent, but deals with UPC and other distributors risk jeopardising its disruptive potential. So news that Sling is to be acquired by Echostar only intensifies those concerns. How disruptive can Sling be when it is owned by a major distribution partner of Hollywood? You can hardly blame Sling's founders for taking the money, and if they had a choice of similar partners, EchoStar was a good one. Charlie Ergen's outfit is as close to the maverick end of the scale as a Hollywood partner can be, but that ain't very close... According to EchoStar: "EchoStar has been pleased with the progress and commitment the company has made establishing Sling Media and the Slingbox as powerful and beloved digital media brands. EchoStar’s acquisition of Sling Media will allow us to offer innovative and convenient ways for our customers to enjoy their programming on more displays and locations, including TVs, computers and mobile phones, both inside and outside of the home. This combination paves the way for the development of a host of new innovative products and services for our subscribers, new digital media consumers and strategic partners." The sting is in the tail. It's not a question that Sling can be good for Echostar - it will allow the firm to offer new TV and web-based services. And it will put pressure on DirecTV and the US cable companies to address their own place-shifting strategies more urgently. But the interest centres on EchoStar/Sling's international strategy and partner relationships. I hope to have more by the end of the week, after Sling's press event in London on Thursday.

At IBC Microsoft was giving demonstrations of Silverlight , first introduced at NAB in April. This is Microsoft's browser plug-in answer to Adobe Flash, allowing anyone with a browser (including, eventually, Linux) and a fast connection to stream high definition video. The plug-in was demonstrated offering some impressive "immersive" video experiences, including a multi-window "video puzzle" (the user had to re-create a full screen video from scattered puzzle pieces), as well as picture-in-picture and multi-screen capability. The demonstration was running on an Apple Macbook Pro, which did manage to freeze at one point until a new plug-in had been installed. What did they say about never performing with kids, animals and Microsoft software? But with an adequate broadband connection and sufficient PC power, these demonstrations indicate again how close the PC/web combination is to rivalling the TV/broadcast model for high quality content distribution. Interestingly Microsoft confirmed that they were unable to bundle Silverlight with Vista because of EU rulings. This may hold back its market penetration in the near term but is unlikely to do any lasting damage.

OpenTV's Matthew Huntington gave us an update on the company's progress at IBC. Matthew and I both go back to the early days of interactive TV, so there was some fond reminiscing of those heady times when it looked, if only for a fleeting moment, like the TV set might become a real rival to the PC in online services. Yes, people really did used to think we would be buying our weekly shopping, checking our bank accounts and sending email on the family TV set. And for a short time a few brave souls probably tried it a few times, using Sky's Open.... service. I vaguely recall managing to send a couple of emails using the remote control, which is scarcely believable in today's broadband world, never mind using dial-up. OpenTV benefited hugely from being the early leader in interactive TV, and in spite of more interactive TV misses than hits, has maintained its lead ever since. Now the company is looking to the next generation of interactive TV interfaces that will be possible on more powerful set-top boxes from 2009 onwards. Here is a (not very good) photo of what we might be seeing on our TV screens in a few years' time. 070920070062.jpg OpenTV is taking a refreshing user-centric approach to next-gen design challenges and evidently taking an innovative approach to how users will want to navigate a world of almost unlimited content from multiple sources: the wheel text input application seemed particularly useful. The company recognises that search and recommendation will be major challenges in the content environment and will need strong partners in this field, but it appears to be moving in the right direction. Patents have been filed in areas such as multi-faceted navigation. Home shopping, fortunately, did not feature prominently in the demonstration.

We met today with Gerhard Bickmann, CFO of German cable operator, Kabel BW, who spoke at NDS's annual IBC press lunch. In a one-to-one discussion, Herr Bickman shared with us his views on digital TV and platform competition in Germany. In contrast to KDG, Germany's largest cable company, KBW is not planning to enforce a customer migration to digital TV, as it would lose too much money on subsidising or giving boxes away for free. Instead it is awaiting some clear decision from the German government that Germany should complete the switchover to digital by a certain date. This would make it clear to consumers that analogue switch-off was coming, and they would be more inclined to consider migrating to digital cable. Herr Bickmann's frustration with German policy-making was evident, given that other countries in Europe (Finland and Luxembourg) have made clear their intentions that all cable networks should become 100% digital. He seemed if anything, and perhaps surprisingly, less concerned with the threat of competition from Deutsche Telekom. DT's rollout of VDSL is not considered to be a major challenge as the availability of the highest speeds will be very limited. KBW is confident that it will trump DT's offer with universally available 100Mbps broadband once it begins to roll out Docsis 3.0 technology next year.

SES Astra's top brass, Ferdinand Kayser, President and CEO, and Alexander Oudendijk, Chief Commercial Officer, kicked off IBC tonight with an update to press and analysts on Astra's latest initiatives. Most significant is their attempt to wean German consumers off their favourite diet of free digital TV. 16.7 million Germany homes receive television through either their own or a community dish, and the vast majority of those watch only free channels. While analogue receivers are still numerous, the transition to digital is well under way, with around half now using digital receivers, again primarily to watch free-to-air channels. On September 1st SES Astra set about trying to change this by introducing a "basic pay" satellite platform called Entavio. SES Astra serves as the service provider and business enabler, but the platform is intended to be open to any broadcaster or device manufacturer that conforms to the system specifications. An Entavio set-top box will still receive vast numbers of FTA TV and radio channels, but it also has built-in addressability and pay TV capability. At launch, Entavio customers can choose to pay €1.99 a month for the new Premiere Flex package. They may also opt for the regular premium pay TV packages from Premiere. The plan sounds logical for broadcasters and device vendors, which are desperate to create additional value from the German market. But it would seem to be a momentous challenge to persuade millions of German TV viewers, who have never paid a monthly fee for TV, to start doing so, even if it is only €1.99 a month. Much will depend of course on what channels are on offer for this sum. There has been considerable controversy in Germany in the run-up to the Entavio launch, with arguments between consumer groups, regulators and broadcasters over the proposed migration of free channels to pay TV. I suspect there are many more battles to be fought before most Germans start paying up. Over The Top or Round The Back? Exploring The Emerging Multi-Billion Web Video Landscape, Revenue Outlook and Adoption Scenarios Attend Strategy Analytics' Analyst Forum at IBC. Registration is Free.

I noted back in May that news channels would soon come under pressure to move to HD, and sure enough CNN has made its move. The channel launched CNN HD on September 1st, which is basically a high def mirror of its standard definition US CNN feed. The notable phrase is "the company's global commitment to provide more news and information in that format (ie HD) for years to come". If anyone anywhere still doubts that HDTV is the future, this surely dispels those concerns. Over The Top or Round The Back? Exploring The Emerging Multi-Billion Web Video Landscape, Revenue Outlook and Adoption Scenarios Attend Strategy Analytics' Analyst Forum at IBC. Registration is Free.

as we reported some time ago... Akamai of course is referring to its own approach of managed edge delivery networks. We, on the other hand, have seen "good enough" HD over the open web. The key question, so far unanswered, for all the different approaches is if they can scale to supporting potentially millions of simultaneous users. Over The Top or Round The Back? Exploring The Emerging Multi-Billion Web Video Landscape, Revenue Outlook and Adoption Scenarios Attend Strategy Analytics' Analyst Forum at IBC. Registration is Free.