A day long hike through the exhibition halls at this year’s CES has further highlighted the investments and advances many CE manufacturers have made in connecting and extending internet and VOD content to the living room.
In true Vegas form, companies like D-Link are spreading their bets across a field of platforms featuring unique content and functionality. D-Link is offering four flavors of their Medialounge Entertainment Network: partnering with the Divx Connected offering, promoting AMD’s ActiveTV solution and doubling down with Microsoft Media Center platform. Their latest offering is PC-on-TV which ports all PC content to your TV over a wired or wireless network at up to 1280×720 resolution.
As consumers continue to expand their PC use from pure productivity to networked entertainment the market for new and newly distributed content will continue its rapid growth. Companies will also be tweaking their monetization strategy, hoping to strike the right balance between subscription services and ad supported models in these emerging content channels. A variety of new ad formats and positioning within these channels will be opened up to beta advertisers throughout the year.