Digital Home Summit kicked off this morning with a great keynote presentation from Jim Gowen, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer of Verizon. Great kick off to our event.

Please follow DHS developments throughout the day on Twitter using #dhs11.

We’re pleased to announce that Roku  Vice President of Product Management, Rajeev Raman has joined our growing list of thought leader speakers.  Rajeev will join our keynote panel The Digital Home: Show Me the Money.

We’re thrilled to have Roku join this panel and the overall event, given their unique insight into OTT video and set-top-boxes. Rajeev will bring an important perspective to the event

With it’s acquisition of Blockbuster in April, DISH Networks is planning on launching a new movie-streaming service, which they hope can take on Netflix.

Blockbuster is already taking shots at Netflix on its own website, pointing out the 60% price hike, while promoting its Blockbuster Total Access offering. Despite losing vast market share to competitors in recent years, Blockbuster still operates some retail store outlets, along with a DVD mail and on-demand OTT video service.

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The time to register for Digital Home Summit is now. Early bird registration ends at midnight on Wednesday August 31st. Save up to $150 on your registration fees by registering before this deadline.

Come hear leading carriers including Verizon, Cox, Nex-Tech, AT&T, Ringgold Telephone, DirecTV, Kaplan Telephone, and others as they share their digital home vision and strategy. Digital Home Summit attendees also gain access to FTTH Conference educational sessions and the FTTH Expo on Wednesday September 28th. The Digital Home Summit is brought to you by telecompetitor.com.

Digital Home Summit has just confirmed another keynote speaker for the growing list of influential participants.  Vernon Reed, a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Laboratories in Austin, Texas, will bring expertise in content delivery and home networking to next month’s event.  Reed is a recognized IPTV authority and an expert in content delivery using broadband access systems and home networking technologies. He has been described as a master of end-to-end broadband system and computing technologies, core and home-network routing and switching processes, interfaces, protocols and applications.

Reed is a Technical Lead for IPTV Service Delivery Technologies and Testing, where he has Read the rest of this entry »

OTT video distributor and Walmart subsidiary Roku announced that it will distribute the recently released films and HD movies, plus original comedy, music and sporting events, from Epix - a studio joint venture formed in June made up of Lionsgate, MGM and Paramount.

The Epix TV network will stream recently released movies weeks before they appear on DVD, during the period of time they’re available pay-per-view in what’s known as the “pay-TV” window.

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In an effort to rationalize and streamline development of IP-driven smart grid and home networks and devices, the HomeGrid Forum, HomePlug Alliance, Wi-Fi Alliance and ZigBee Alliance have joined to form a new certification body, the Consortium for SEP 2 Interoperability.

SEP 2, for Smart Energy Profile 2.0, is an emerging “technology-agnostic” standard established in 2009 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to coordinate development of alternative smart grid and home networks and associated consumer electronic devices. The first-generation standard supported ZigBee but not IP.

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TiVo’s partnership with Best Buy has borne some fruit. The DVR pioneer announced the launch of “Insignia Connected TVs powered by TiVo Design” will be available at select Best Buy outlets and online as of today.

The 42″ Insignia Connected TV powered by TiVo Design is priced at $699.99. The 32″ model goes for $499.99. No paid subscription to TiVo is required.

The connected Insignia HDTVs integrate Internet with existing cable or satellite television services and include TiVo’s user interface and “certain search capabilities,” which enables viewers to search broadband video by title, actor, director, keyword and other criteria.

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We’re happy to announce that James Gowen, Vice President – Supply Chain Operations & Chief Sustainability Officer for Verizon will be our featured keynote speaker. Gowen has an interesting role with Verizon. In addition to overseeing the supply chain for the CPE that enables their digital home strategy, he also is the lead executive at Verizon tasked with lowering their carbon footprint. Gowen will offer a keynote presentation which outlines Verizon’s vision of the digital home and explains how they are enabling it for their customers.

We’re also thankful to CHR Solutions for becoming our latest sponsor. CHR will sponsor the event’s luncheon.

With OTT video viewing increasingly popular, Nielsen offers a snapshot of how consumers are watching online video from alternative service providers on its blog.

“How consumers tune in differs greatly across services,” according to a Nielsen research survey. The majority of Netflix users, for instance, said they watch Netflix content on a TV screen. In contrast, 89% of Hulu viewers said they watch directly via computer.

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