In what is an early Christmas present to lovers of online video in the U.K., the BBC Trust has approved the BBC’s participation in Project Canvas. Along with partners ITV, Five, Channel 4, BT, and TalkTalk, the BBC is now fully on board Project Canvas.

Canvas Emerges

Project Canvas emerged in the aftermath of Project Kangaroo, which the Competition Commission shuttered after complaints from Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB and Virgin Media about the possibility of it creating a monopoly.

The BBC moved on to Project Canvas, a more ambitious undertaking, and one that has also been the subject of criticism from BSkyB and Virgin Media, the largest satellite and cable operators in the U.K.

But no matter, as Project Canvas has now cleared the first hurdle on its path to becoming reality.

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Boxee is forging ahead with plans not only for a beta of its improved interface, but a new set-top box from D-Link, and new content partners. Mainstream adoption should surely follow these impressive plans, at least if the content is there.

Boxee

Boxee is best described as a cross-platform, open-source media center for all. It allows computer users to manage all their media content, including video, from one central location thanks to a downloadable piece of software.

Boxee works on PC, Mac, and Linux and is designed to be used with a TV, bringing Web video into the living room. In August, Boxee secured new funding to enable it to take the service to the next level. And it’s doing just that.

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Telestream, a leading provider of media workflow solutions (basically easing the process of getting video ready for broadcast), has announced that its Episode Series encoding applications have been handpicked by digital media aggregator and distributor, Digital Music Group Inc (DMGI).

DMGI basically pushes online content by doing all of the admin i.e. processing, encoding, delivering, and marketing before punting the transcoded material into the market place.

Big Names Under Its Belt

Founded in 2005 with an express focus on music it wasn’t until 2006 that the company branched out into video content. Now the household names that DMGI processes video for include big hitters such as iTunes, Joost, YouTube, Walmart, Amazon, Veoh, Netflix, Helio and mSpot.

Juniper Networks are the company behind the E-Series Routers, a system allowing IPTV providers a greater level of choice and give more targeted  advertising services.

“Juniper Networks has added the E-120 Router to their E-Series which offers providers the ability to give media agencies and programmers viewing data with a level of detail that even Nielsen can’t provide,” said Gary Southwell, Juniper’s director of multiplay solutions. 

“It’s no longer a sample of subscriber activity, it’s a per channel, per time slot, per ad slot view of actual IPTV usage.”

“The E120 addresses a major concern for service providers, specifically how to cost-effectively scale their IPTV services to reach a larger subscriber base served by smaller, space and power-constrained sites,” said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst, Broadband and IPTV, Infonetics Research.

Motorola is not a company that you may instantly associate with IPTV boxes, or set top boxes in general. If you asked the man on the street what Motorola does he would probably mention cell phones.

However Motorola has had a strong placement in the set top box (STB) market for some time. Last year it announced that it has shifted 50 million cable boxes.

In case you blindly missed Stage6 Day here on Web TV Wire and also on Web TV Hub, you may not know that DivX is boasting the compatibility of its DivX videos in over 70 million consumer electronic devices.

Those 70 million devices span from the many partner companies that DivX has teamed up with over the past few years. Davis Freeberg decided to delve a little deeper into these partnerships to see who has come one board with DivX and who has been jumping ship.

While watching individual TV channels on different websites you were probably not aware that some of them will have been powered by thePlatform.

ThePlatform has been powering a variety of online video destinations including ABC News, A&E, Amp’d Mobile, CNBC, College Sports TV, Court TV, Comcast, E!, Hearst, Microsoft, the Oxygen Network, PRIMEDIA, Scripps, Sony/BMG Music, Ruckus, Vongo, Telstra, Verizon Wireless, and G4.

The features that really separates thePlatform from other video platforms like Brightcove is its ability to customize.