CALIFORNIA: This is an alliance that aims at taking the concept of Video on Demand (VOD) beyond just films. TVN Entertainment which provides on demand television programming, management and delivery services has announced a new VOD services agreement with sports broadcaster ESPN.
 

TVN will provide ESPN with a range of VOD Services. These will support the broadcasters distribution strategy, including encoding, asset management, site-specific metadata and multicast transport to VOD systems throughout North America. This will be accomplished through TVN's Adoniss platform.

Additionally, TVN and ESPN will explore other VOD opportunities including rapid delivery and real time encoding of time- sensitive content, as part of TVN's TVNow rapid VOD transport service.

ESPN's interactive sales VP Matt Murphy was quoted in an official release saying, "ESPN is committed to supporting its affiliates with outstanding content that will allow customers to experience high-quality, branded content from our extensive VOD library. TVN supports our VOD efforts with their ability to customise packages market by market. The flexibility that their platform offers will bring our unique VOD titles to the local and regional levels and capitalise on the seasonality of major sporting events."