Three Japan-based media firms have teamed to create a new content company that will aggregate and distribute multichannel video services via ADSL and fiber-to-the-home technologies.
Jupiter Programming Co Ltd. (JPC), Tohokushinsha and SECOM will head up the company, called On-Line TV. JPC, a 50/50 joint venture of Liberty Media International and Liberty Media Corp., is the majority owner of On-Line TV.
On-Line TV will offer a lineup of linear TV channels to customers of three Japanese ISPs — Plala, Biglobe and @nifty — via a 1 Gbps backbone.
The consortium will conduct a three-month test beginning today with more than 1,000 consumers. A commercial deployment is slated for early 2004.