The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.

Will Microsoft Motion-Sensing TVs Go Head-to-Head With Apple ‘iTV’?
Microsoft is working on deals to license Kinect to TV makers Sony and Vizio, The Daily reported, noting that such technology could allow couch surfers to control their TVs with motion and voice. Currently, Xbox 360 Kinect owners are able to browse their Netflix queues and more by making gestures with their arms or using a number of voice commands…

 What Fox effect? Hulu sees little downside from authentication
When Fox announced that it would require TV Everywhere-type logins to stream a new TV episode the day after it aired, there was some concern that Hulu would see some of its audience disappear. But if comScore numbers are to be believed, Hulu’s audience over the first few months of the new TV season has remained largely intact, and was actually up in October.

 Why social TV startup BeeTV is calling it quits
I asked Solnik, is the social TV space too crowded right now? “Yes, it is a very crowded space, but I don’t think that was the problem,” he said. “I think there are some great services out there like IntoNow, GetGlue, Miso and others, but none has really captured the mass audience. Maybe there’s still something missing that none of us thought about, maybe the frictionless connection between a social interaction and watching a TV show was not solved yet. One of the barriers for all these services around TV is that what people really care about with their TV is the content.

Apple reportedly teaming with Sharp to build ‘iTV’
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is teaming up with Sharp to develop a connected TV that may hit retail outlets as early as the second half of 2012, according to a report from Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek. Misek’s report is sparking a barrage of speculation about the features that Apple’s “iTV” could offer, including the ability to let viewers use voice controls and hand gestures to navigate TV and Web video content.

‘Cord nevers’ will drive drop in pay TV subs, says analyst
Credit Suisse analyst Stefan Anninger says it’s not about people cutting their service, but never signing up for it in the first place. “The real challenge to the pay TV business model are behaviorally-driven cord-nevers,” he said in a new report. “These are tomorrow’s householders that are in their teens (and younger) today. They are growing up in an Internet-based video culture, in which the mantra of ‘why pay for TV?’ and ‘pay TV is a rip-off,’ develop.”

Flingo dives into social TV with synchronized TV apps
For their first appearance at CES (they’ll be at booth 74106), they’ll be announcing new technology — called “syncapps” — that they hope will catapult the company into the forefront of the social TV market. The apps automatically detect what you’re watching, and then enable viewers to share their favorite moments with their friends. Up until now, their main focus has been on building apps for clients to become the leading OS developers in the space and bring in revenue.

Rogers tests a la carte programming packages
Rogers Communications (NYSE: RCI) is beginning to pitch subscribers in London, Ontario, a $20 monthly package that includes about 40 cable channels. Subscribers can then choose to buy more packages of cable programming at prices ranging from an additional $26.38 to $33.48 monthly.

Social TV startup Miso raises $4m from Khosla Ventures
Just a few days after one social TV startup hit the dead pool, another is raising new funding. Miso announced Thursday that it’s raised a $4 million financing round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors Google Ventures and Hearst Interactive Media.

Fanhattan Beefs Up Selection With New Content Partners: Crackle, Lifetime, And PBS
Fanhattan has this great Smart Browse system that lets you filter down content by genre, rating, release date, service providers, and then choose how you’d like that content to be sorted. The only problem is that the more filters you use, the fewer options you have left to choose from — sometimes, no options at all. But that’s about to change, with three new media partners joining the Fanhattan folds: Crackle, Lifetime, and PBS.

Nielsen: TV homes will decline in 2012
About 3 percent of U.S. homes don’t have a TV, which is the highest level since 1975, according to Nielsen. The ratings firm also projects that the number of TV homes will decline from 115.9 million in 2011 to 114.7 million next year.

Dijit’s Universal Remote Control App Gets Revamped For The iPad
The social remote control app Dijit has certainly been getting around lately: it started off on iPhones, made the leap onto Android devices not long ago, and now the company has announced that an iPad-friendly version of the app is in the works.

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