TV Anywhere Services from Bell, Astral, Extend Media

A new broadband service, TMN Online, lets subscribers with The Movie Network watch movies and series on their computers anywhere in Canada.

Available through the Bell TV Online portal at bell.ca/tvonline, TMN Online gives subscribers the 'TV Anywhere' offering for free as part of their existing television subscription.

The first content provider to make their content available through Bell TV Online is Astral Media Television Network, the companies announced.

ExtendMedia Corp., the multi-screen video management solutions provider, reports that its OpenCASE platform is powering Bell TV’s first TV Anywhere-style video service.

“The addition of TMN Online to our Bell TV Online portal is an important milestone as we evolve our business to meet our customers’ desire for anytime, anywhere digital video services,” Kevin Crull, President of Bell Residential Services, said in a release. “Bringing a service like this to market also requires a robust technology platform and deep domain expertise. We’ve launched a number of offerings with ExtendMedia, and the company has proved itself to be a strong partner in digital media distribution.”

ExtendMedia says its OpenCASE platform was purpose-built to meet the needs of content creators and distributors seeking to build, deploy and manage unified video services across PC, TV and mobile devices. Built from the ground up to be platform-neutral, OpenCASE includes out-of-the-box integration with leading ad servers, CDNs, DRM providers and encoding platforms, supports both paid and ad-supported business models, and can deliver streamed or downloaded content to multiple devices.

Bell TV’s TMN Online service also represents the first production launch of OpenCASE’s support for Microsoft Silverlight video and PlayReady DRM.

“ExtendMedia has a front row seat in the remaking of the entertainment industry; it is remarkable to help industry leaders like Bell launch innovative services that break barriers like TMN Online,” added Tom MacIsaac, CEO of ExtendMedia. “We are ardent that successful, profitable online video services need to offer a wide variety of content, support multiple business models and deliver premium content to as many consumer devices as possible. Our OpenCASE platform was purpose-built to deliver on these requirements.”