All of the panel sessions at this year’s Streaming Media Europe were filmed, and every week we’ll be featuring one here on the blog. This week it’s the session “Reaching Multiple Screen Convergence: Streaming to the PC, Mobile, Television, and Gaming Devices.” The concept of seamlessly transferring a video session between the television, PC, mobile, and/or gaming device at the consumer’s will is multiple-screen nirvana. This session provides a look at how close we are to reaching this goal and what strategies network operators and content publishers can employ to encourage adoption while monetising these new services.

Speakers are:
• Martin Sutherland, Director, European Sales, Vantrix (moderator)
• Pierre-Yves Le Berre, VP, Business Development, Anevia
• James A. Neufeld, Product Specialist, never.no
• Jim Taylor, Chief Technologist, Sonic Solutions International Digital Media Alliance (IDMA)

If there’s still any doubt about multiple screen—and multiple device—convergence, take note that Jim Taylor was until recently best-known for his work in the optical media field and is the man behind DVD Demystified.

Project Canvas—the proposed joint venture from BBC, ITV, BT and Five to build an open internet TV platform—has launched an official website to promote the initiative and improve on a perceived failure to communicate its goals to the public. The site will aggregate announcements from as well as news about Project Canvas, and will eventually also host technical information for consumer device manufacturers and SDKs for developers.

The “charm offensive,” as Digital TV calls it, may be too little, too late, as current conventional wisdom (and analyst opinion) suggests that, like Kangaroo before it, Project Canvas might be shot down, though this time it may be halted by the BBC Trust, which had initially indicated it would approve the initiative this past autumn, as StreamingMediaGlobal.com’s Adrian Pennington wrote last month.