Wednesday Media Digest

Distribution:
* P2P: i2hub shuts down; NBC Universal deal with Peer Impact (= Wurld Media); Bram Cohen (BitTorrent) settles with MPAA
* AOL, IAC, Hearst, Allen & Co, Accel Partenrs and General Catalyst Partners fund Brightcove $16.2m in Series B VC round
* TiVoToGo extends transfers to iPod Video (Apple) and PSP (Sony)
* Microsoft launches Xbox 360 in the US

Film:
* Blu-ray Disc Group denounces HP technoloy (DRM, interactivity)
* Thomson plans digital cinema in France, UK, Belgium
* 20th Century Fox (News) content on Movielink, 7th studio (adds 1200 titles)

TV:
* Major broadcasters US: DVR recording is good for advertisers
* Cisco buys Scientific-Atlanta, $6.9 bn
* Microsoft partners with CableLabs for HDTV in Windows Media Center (on PC, Xbox 360, etc.), available late 2006
* Analogue-digital transition: delayed in the Netherlands (proposed 2006); House US approves date Dec 2008, $830m for converter subsidies

Games:
* DreamWorks Animation deal with Activision; Liberty Media buys 51% of Fun Technologies
* Microsoft launches Xbox 360 in the US

Print:
* Newspapers US: 47.3m visitors (+15.8%) in September, penetration 31.9% (Q3: 41.5m = 27.7%), time spent 38m08s (NAA); Top 10 sites +11% to 39.3m in October (penetration 25.8%) (Nielsen//NetRatings)

STM:
* 10 publishers (Elsevier, Pearson, Princeton UP, Wiley, Sage, Thomson, Chicago UP, American Psychological Ass, Houghton Mifflin) sue copy shops (Gnomon Copy, Copycat Print Shop)
* Open access: BioMed Central will publish ‘Geochemical Transactions’ form American Chemical Society as of January 1, 2006

Corporate:
IPO: Endemol
M&A: Liberty Media/Fun