UK pay-TV and broadband telco Virgin Media clocked its first annual profit in 2011, as its TV set top boxes continued to be an engine of video on-demand viewership.

Virgin Media has finally made live Spotify’s first UK TV app. Virgin Media customers who are Spotify Premium subscribers can access the music service through Virgin’s new TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) set-top box.

Richard Branson is no stranger to investing in mobile media: among his more notable moves have been establishing *Virgin Mobile* years ago, and more recently moving into iPad publishing with Project magazine. Today comes news of his latest foray into the wireless world: an investment in the mobile payments startup…

According to figures from IE Market Research, there are currently 832 million paid users of digital music worldwide, with that number expected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2014. Today, announcements from streamed entertainment provider Aspiro and the music download service 7digital point—respectively announcing a new white-label distribution deal and…

The co-creators of the Virgin-branded iPad magazine Project are merging it with an iPad newsstand service, Other Edition, creating a new company called Virgin Interactive Publishing (VIP).

BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) has been ordered to weaken its stranglehold on Hollywood films on pay-TV after an investigation by the Competition Commission. In a provisional decision published on Friday morning, the commission said that BSkyB’s contracts with the six major Hollywood studios present a significant barrier to entry to potential…

TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) had a great quarter—no surprise, since the numbers include a big chunk of the $500 million patent settlement it won from DISH Network and Echostar (NSDQ: SATS). The first payment propelled TiVo to a $139 million net profit, compared to a loss of $14.2 million in the…

UK telco and TV platform Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) could ape its rival BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) by investing in a public WiFi network, so that its subscribers can consume their TV bouquet on the go.

We still don’t have the official, bigger picture of what Google (NSDQ: GOOG) intends to do in its music strategy, and whether it will have what it takes to make an effective inroad into the legitimate digital music market dominated by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), but now we have what appears…

The UK’s Court of Appeal has upheld a decision that strips TV EPG maker Gemstar, now part of Rovi, of three patents.

UK cable telco Virgin Media’s average customer take climbed to a record £47.51 ($76.61) per month in Q4 - but that could boom when it launches TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) and if it finally gets its quad-play strategy ticking.

I was literally in the middle of writing about Project‘s delayed second issue when I had to reload the page and it was for sale. Oddly, the Jan. 9 post about the delay was gone (thank you, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) cache), replaced completely by an earlier post about the new…

As CES has confirmed, the world has woken up to the potential of over-the-top TV. To which Tivo CEO Tom Rogers might say, what took everyone so long?

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  AOL (NYSE: AOL) is looking at a major restructuring that could include the jettisoning of its revenue-generating dial-up business from its still recovering display business. The breakup plan also hinges on hopes for a merger with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)—nevertheless, this…

“2011 is going to be pretty transformative for the UK television landscape,” says Virgin Media’s director of digital entertainment Cindy Rose. “There’s a lot of next-generation television products coming to market.”

UK cable operator Virgin Media’s connected-TV future now rests firmly in the hands of TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO), which is re-entering Britain after seven years out.

Word reaches us that Virgin’s virgin iPad-only magazine is Christened “Project” and is due to hit the tablet’s iTunes Store at this link with a launch by Richard Branson in New York on Tuesday; price unknown.

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  The Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) is desperate to unload Newsweek magazine—but not desperate enough sell to Avenue Capital Group because of worries related to the hedge fund’s plans to partner with the publisher of the National Enquirer. [WSJ] » …

AT&T’s change in data plan prices today may mark the beginning of the end for unlimited data plans. Quite literally, the U.S. might be at a crossroads where demand is reaching supply, and people will have to pay up or simply cut back on their usage to remedy the problem.…