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Widevine Technologies, the only provider of multiformat and multiplatform DRM and the recognized “Switzerland of DRM”, has announced it is actively securing the distribution of Flash-based content from Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures Television for Gaia Online. One of the fastest-growing hangout sites on the web, Gaia Online is geared towards teens who want to play games, make friends and participate in social networking. Widevine, which secures premium content during delivery and consumption, was a critical enabler of Gaia’s licensing deal.

Gaia’s monthly visitors number more than 2.5 million a month with tens of millions of views. It currently offers movies and television shows available for community members to watch within the Gaia Cinemas. Designed to entertain and enable interactivity, Gaia Online streams Flash-based titles to members using Windows® PCs or Mac® computers. Widevine secures the content during streaming and after decryption to further prevent against piracy tools such as screen scrapers and stream recorders.

Widevine investors include: Charter Ventures, Constellation Ventures, Macrovision, Pacesetter Capital Group, The Phoenix Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Cisco Systems, Telos Venture Partners.

www.widevine.com, www.gaiaonline.com

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Tags: Charter Ventures, Cisco Systems, Constellation Ventures, Gaia Online, Macrovision, Pacesetter Capital Group, Sony Pictures, Telos Venture Partners, The Phoenix Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Warner Bros, Widevine Technologies

The mobile phone company O2 is reported to be planning to launch a pay-TV offering in the UK from 2008.

O2, owned by Spanish telecoms company Telefónica, already has a broadband offering in the UK after acquiring Be Broadband. According to UK media reports it wants to add a TV service.

It is thought it will trial the service, ahead of a full roll out, if successful, by end 2008. O2 already runs a similar service, O2TV, in the Czech Republic, offering 55 channels and video on demand content from Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, Disney, Paramount and HBO. It also holds the rights for the Czech national ice hockey league.

Tags: Disney, HBO, O2, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Telefónica, Warner Bros

Its one week to go to the launch of hulu, the joint venture of General Electric’s NBC Universal and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Hulu is a free, advertising-supported video download service which will also feature shows from Sony Pictures Television and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

Potentially an Apple iTunes video killer, on Monday, Hulu will open a private Beta test and offer about 90 TV shows from the four companies and smaller partners ranging from current prime-time hits such as “Heroes” and “The Simpsons” to vintage shows “Miami Vice” and “The A-Team”. It will also make about 10 feature films available including “The Breakfast Club” and “The Blues Brothers.”
Shortly after the test begins, these shows will also be made available on a handful of the biggest online distributors Time Warner Inc’s AOL, Comcast Corp, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo.

Tags: Apple, Hulu, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, NBC, News corp, Sony Pictures