Wednesday, November 19, 2008

PermissionTV adds HD-quality video

By Mass High Tech Staff

Video platform provider PermissionTV Inc. will announce this morning it is linking its online video publishing platform technology to the streaming high-definition-quality TV service provided by Utah-based Move Networks Inc.

The two companies met at the opera, said Bob Lentz, CEO of Waltham-based PermissionTV. The New York Metropolitan Opera had been using PermissionTV to publish video of performances online. When it sought to upgrade to HD-quality video, it signed up with Move Networks.

“What the Met was trying to do was expand their different offerings to opera lovers throughout the world, as they’ve done in high-definition in the movie theaters,” Lentz said, referring to movie-theatre screenings of opera performances. “They wanted to bring operas through an online experience. Collectively we felt the best experience would be a high-definition experience online.”

After collaborating on the Met project, the companies decided to integrate the two products.

PermissionTV’s platform allows online video publishers to manage subscriber accounts, insert closed captioning and add interactive items like polls or links to other videos the viewer might be interested in, Lentz said.

The relationship allows PermissionTV to offer streaming video at 720 horizontal scan lines of display resolution and brings Move Networks’ streaming video service into new markets, said Move Networks vice president of marketing David Rice.

PermissionTV closed a $9 million round of funding in June, led by new investors Castile Ventures of Boston and Point Judith Capital of Rhode Island. The capital brought the company’s total funding to $10 million since last November and added Castile Ventures’ Carl Stjernfeldt and Point Judith Capital’s Sean Marsh to the company’s board.

Returning investors included Common Angels, CramerOnline, Inflection Point Investors, the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp., SAS Investors, and the Venture Capital Fund of New England.