Thomson Signs on with CableLabs

On Wednesday, Thomson announced that it had signed an agreement with CableLabs for the latter’s CableCARD Host Interface License Agreement (CHILA) specification. The agreement allows Thomson to build two-way digital devices, such as set-top boxes and customer premises equipment, with a CableCARD removable security interface that may be sold to cable subscribers via retail channels. The CHILA specification defines the interface between a digital cable receiver or set-top box and the CableCARD module distributed by the cable operator, thus providing a standard platform for two-way interactive devices. The CableLabs agreement follows on the heels of Thomson’s new residential cable product lineup launched last month comprising a triple-play residential gateway, a hybrid cable-IP set-top box and VoIP wireless cable modem. HDTV Could Hit Double Digit Growth In a new study, IMS Research estimated that about 20.6 million HDTV displays will be shipped worldwide this year. The double-digit growth expected in this market over the next five years will result in a forecast of nearly 60 million HDTV displays shipped in 2010. The study also said that HDTV sets that are able to receive and decode HD programs without a set-top box will begin to account for the majority share of the global market in 2007. Still, HD monitors that require a set-top box are likely to account for significant shipments through 2010. Charter Chooses Navic Navic Networks announced the deployment of its Addressable Advertising service with Charter Communications earlier this week. Navic’s Addressable Advertising service allows operators and their advertisers to target groups of customers using interactive enhancements on 30-second, 60-second and long-form advertising. According to a press release, Charter is working with advertisers to use Addressable Advertising to link or "telescope" customers from a commercial to long-form, video-on-demand content. Telescoping can be used by advertisers with compelling promotional or instructional videos. One example is that an automobile dealer could use this functionality to show virtual test drive videos of their latest models. Gaming Buzz Buzztime Entertainment said that the average monthly usage of the Buzztime Channel for cable TV had doubled in four existing cable systems with the recent addition of the first series of Buzztime single-player games. The player usage results were averaged over the first 90 days of availability across the four cable systems offering the expanded Buzztime Channel to their digital cable TV subscribers. Buzztime’s iTV game service for cable TV was bolstered this year by the addition of six new single-player game selections to the existing multiplayer Buzztime Trivia Channel that enables real-time game show competitions.