BlackArrow Raises $20 Million in Financing, NDS lead investor

BlackArrow, a leading worldwide provider of advanced advertising solutions for New Television platforms, announced it has closed $20 million in Series C financing. The round was led by strategic investor NDS Group - the leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, and included existing investors Cisco Systems, Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund and Polaris Venture Partners.

This financing provides new capital to expand product development and accelerate the deployment of the BlackArrow Advanced Advertising System to programming networks and on-demand television content providers across North American and international markets.

BlackArrow and NDS also announced the formation of a strategic alliance to offer an integrated suite of advanced advertising solutions and services. As part of its strategic investment, NDS will have a seat on the BlackArrow board of directors.

NDS creates proven technologies that enable leading pay-TV operators and content providers to generate revenues from digital content on more than 70 of the world’s leading pay-TV platforms. NDS’ security, enabling technologies and interactive applications are deployed on over 100 million devices worldwide - across set-top boxes, PCs and other media devices. BlackArrow’s multiplatform campaign management and ad decisioning services align with NDS’ advanced advertising platform, NDS Dynamic™, which provides solutions to identify, measure and engage audiences - thus creating the framework for the alliance.

AUSTAR and Rovi Sign IPG Patent License Agreement

Agreement Marks Growth of Rovi’s International Licensing Program

Rovi Corporation (NASDAQ: ROVI) and Austar United Communications Limited announced that they have entered into a multi-year license agreement for interactive program guide (IPG) patents owned by Rovi.

The agreement provides AUSTAR with a license to Rovi’s IPG patents for AUSTAR’s pay television services in Australia. AUSTAR is an affiliate of UPC Broadband in Europe, via parent company Liberty Global, Inc. UPC recently negotiated a similar agreement with Rovi.

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Technicolor Announces Strategic Partnership with Warner Bros.

Technicolor has entered into a strategic partnership with Warner Bros. covering a broad number of areas.

Technicolor and Warner Bros. have entered into a long term contract covering replication and distribution services for DVD and Blu-ray discs, which is expected to start generating material revenue in third quarter 2010. Warner Bros. is the worldwide market leader in terms of physical media volumes (DVD and Blu-ray combined). Technicolor is the world leading replicator of prerecorded physical media.

The strategic partnership also covers other aspects relating to strategic technology initiatives.

HGI announces partnership agreement with Broadband Forum

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) announced that it has signed a liaison agreement with the Broadband Forum that will lead to close collaboration by both organizations on the development of standards and specifications for broadband networks worldwide.

The comprehensive agreement is designed to enhance the already active cooperation between HGI and the Broadband Forum. It allows each organization to provide input, and to release copyright on work-in-progress specifications to the partner organization as working documents are drafted. The result will be acceleration and strong alignment of key specification work within the industry that leads to improvements in the capabilities of customers’ broadband networks.

The areas of cooperation by these two groups will be centered on architectural and functional requirements for customer located broadband equipment. HGI’s mission to solve the service, feature and technology challenges in the digital home complements the Broadband Forum’s core competencies in end-to-end architecture and management. The groups agreed to cooperate in addressing quality of service (QoS), software modularity, IPv6, energy efficiency and testing.

Both groups will meet regularly to discuss projects and priorities for industry standards in these and other areas. Both organizations bring a unique focus on a set of related problems, and are stronger by working together.

By jointly identifying goals, sharing work in progress, and avoiding duplication of efforts, our member companies receive better value for their investments of resources in our respective efforts. The industry has important issues to solve, and this agreement helps significantly.”

Together, the two groups represent over 200 companies, and over 30 service providers, including Arcor, AT&T, Belgacom, Bell, BT, Cable & Wireless, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Embarq, Fastweb, France Telecom, KDDI, KPN, KT, Magyar Telecom, NTT, OTE, Portugal Telecom, Qwest, SingTel, Swisscom, Telecom Italia, Tata Teleservices Ltd, TDC, Telecom Slovenije, Telecom New Zealand, Telefonica, Telekomunikacja Polska, Telekom Austria, Telekom Malaysia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Telkom SA, Telstra, Telus and Verizon.