Gemstar-TV Guide International has allocated $2.8 million in Series A funding to Seattle-based BuddyTV, part of the Advanced Media Research Group Inc.

BuddyTV is an online content network providing broadcasting tools and user-complemented content. Gemstar-TV Guide is an international publisher best known in North America for its long-established TV Guide brand.

Buzzwire Inc. today announced a beta preview of its streaming mobile media service, which lets users create their own customised program line-up and access it on their mobile phones anytime, anywhere.

Buzzwire.com includes audio and video feeds to cater for almost anybody bringing personalized content to suit every individual taste. Should they choose, users can organize, save and share their selections within minutes.

UK broadband and mobile operator Orange has signed a multi-year video on-demand deal with Disney-ABC International in preparation for its looming IPTV venture.

Subscribers to the service will be granted access to watch a selection of films from Disney, Touchstone and Miramax, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Déjà Vu and Wild Hogs.

“We’re committed to developing a digital TV service that will allow our customers to get more from their TV by putting them in control of the best quality entertainment,” said Tim Pearson, Director of IPTV for Orange.

The iPlayer, the BBC’s new online TV service, launched last Friday offering users the chance to download and watch a selection of the channel’s most popular shows from the previous seven days.

For the corporation’s director general, Mark Thompson, the launch of iPlayer is as big a milestone as the arrival of color TV, but others are criticizing its reliability and late emergence into a crowded marketplace.

Screen Digest Analyst, Arash Amel, told BBC News that in the two weeks he had been testing the service in a closed beta environment he had come across “technical fault after technical fault.“

Mobile phones are increasingly becoming the most important mass medium ever created. They’ve achieved this by being able to integrate all of the media that humanity has known and created up to now.

What’s more, mobile phones and it’s integrated media allow users to become producers and not just viewers.

Mobile phones, like any media, also appeal to advertisers, and are increasingly becoming a way companies promote products and services to us. 

In Japan for example, there is already a successful mobile advertising market generating significant revenue streams every year.

But how can this new mobile-based advertising model conquer the world? Is there anything that will facilitate the spreading of a phenomenon which is likely to provoke a radical change in the digital lifestyle of millions of mobile users?

Following a BBC investigation, Deputy Chief Constable Brian Moore of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that online video companies should remove videos of child violence and crime and turn the details to police.

“We would question who is in a financially better position to police the likes of YouTube,” Deputy Chief Moore said. “Those in the private sector, who are earning huge amounts of money, or police forces which are currently having to stretch budgets.“

A YouTube spokesman confirmed that they do not employ anyone to pre-screen videos, but Hayden Hewitt, co-founder of Liveleak stated that his site does check all videos prior to hosting them. “All this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we’re going to show it,” Hewitt said.

[Via BBC News]

The release candidate (RC) of the long awaited Microsoft Silverlight multimedia authoring, encoding and user platform, a direct competitor to the Adobe Flash environment, has been released.

Silverlight’s cross-browser, cross-platform approach targets content providers who distribute video and rich media over the Internet; developers and designers who build rich interactive applications; and end users who seek a better quality experience in viewing Web-based media.

The Major League Baseball playoffs will use Silverlight as their new online video platform. Microsoft also has Silverlight partners in Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, and Netflix.

Whether Silverlight will make as small a dent in Adobe’s dominance in the field as Microsoft’s XPS did to PDF remains to be seen.

[Via PC Magazine]