LAS VEGAS — Many web publishers have made a great business – and a big audience – out of online video. Now, could the last mile may be taking that video to the big screen in the living room?

Xumo hopes so. The joint venture between Panasonic and MySpace’s latest owner, Viant, is a software layer for connected TV devices from Panasonic, LG and Vizio, making a lean-back, TV-like experience out of internet video.

“We have carriage in over 20 million homes now,” Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Think of it as a website or mobile app, but giving you a channel on a connected television.

Viant started Xumo over a year ago now, with the Vizio link-up announced at CES. The outfit boasts video from “premium” publishers like Glamour, Wired, WSJ, PopSugar and GQ.

The company takes a piece of video advertising revenue but also wants to support video subscription revenue.

For Vanderhook, it’s about putting back together the pieces of content exploded by the internet.

“It allows fragmentation to take place on the television screen,” he says. If you thought cable meant a multiplication in TV channels, Vanderhook says connectivity will shake things up further: “You’ll see a few thousand digital networks be created in television.”

 

This video is part of a series produced at CES which are sponsored by Adobe.

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews