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Convergence is the keyword and just about every media and technology company with a chip in the game is betting on it through some form of technology or content integration.  Wednesday at the Intel Developers Conference, the biggest news among many announcements was the surprise pitch that Intel and Yahoo are joining together in a tie-up aimed at grabbing one of the biggest prizes: the marriage of Internet interactivity and traditional TV.  They’re calling the offering “Widget Channel.”

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When watching old movies, there’s always a prominent credit for Technicolor.  When future generations look back on movies from our era, they may be shown a similar credit for Intel.   The company known for being “Inside” our computers appears to be working just as diligently “behind”the scenes of Hollywood to advance the cause of 3D-Movie Making.

At the Intel Developers conference Wednesday, the 800lb Gorilla of the chip industry reaffirmed their deal with DreamWorks Animation.  Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co founder and CEO of the studio was on hand to demonstrate what their joint venture is yielding.

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Every major TV broadcast company seems to be exploring video on demand services but some are having a harder time than others. It appears the UK’s VOD joint venture between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 has been delayed again.

The Project Kangaroo offering, which has been called the UK’s replication of Hulu (a joint venture between News Corp and NBC Universal, was stalled in June to allow for an antitrust review by the Competition Commission (“CC”).

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From market research firms and trade groups, there are so many projections, forecasts and numbers thrown to the airwaves that it can become really difficult to keep track. To ease the burden, we periodically consolidate the info to one report. We’ve done comparative stats that put numbers in a context , and we’ve industry specific data dumps. This latest editionof the occasional "Metue: By The Numbers" report is a buffet from across the media, entertainment and technology sector. There’s a little on publishing, a little on web usage, some gaming data, TV… something for all interests. Metue By the Numbers:

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With most of the big names in the media/tech space reported, it’s been an up and down earnings season.   There have been some hits and some misses.  There’s been some positive guidance and some suspect.  Now three of the remaining big names have reported their performances.  Summing them up, here’s the tally from News Corp., Marvel Entertainment and Time Warner:

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Copyright law is a funny beast.  Even in its most recent incarnations, freshly stamped with Congressional approval, it rarely keeps pace with changing business models and new invention.  It’s evolutionary law subject to seemingly constant interpretation (and re-interpretation) to match legislative intent to new market paradigms.  A case in point: in March 2007, the U.S. District Court in New York ruled a digital video recorder (DVR) that used remote storage instead of a local hard drive violated copyright laws.  Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) reversed the ruling and said Cablevision’s planned remote storage DVR (RS-DVR) is legal.

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In January, Netflix announced the first of several ambitious partnerships to integrate the software behind their “Watch Now” streaming video service into TV-connected consumer electronics.  The deal, they revealed just prior to the Consumer Electronics show, was with LG for a set-top box.  At the time, the battle for next-gen DVD standards was still ongoing so it was unclear if “set top box” meant we might see a DVD player (HD DVD or Blu-ray) or some other device.   Little clarifying information was provided.  Today, long after the standards war ended, the mail-order DVD pioneer and the South Korean electronics giant filled in the blanks with detail.

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