Las Vegas -- Here’s another snapshot of what else is making news at this week’s tech-fest in Las Vegas. Follow our continuing CES coverage at our CES news site.

-FreeCast is using CES to springboard its new Select TV Box (pictured), a broadband-connected video aggregation platform that, the company claims, will offer access to more than 350,000 TV episodes, 200,000 movies, 1,000 “web channels,” and access to local broadcast networks. The box, which will sell for $99, is paired with a $2.99 per month subscription service. 

-Quantenna Communications has teed up a 10G Wave 3 WiFi product family for a new generation of cable modems and gateways based on DOCSIS 3.1,  the new multi-gigabit broadband platform for HFC networks. To achieve that, Quantenna is pairing its True 8x8 QSR10G Wi-Fi platform with Intel Corp.’s DOCSIS 3.1-facing Puma 7 SoC. Quantenna said its WiFi platform can deliver up to 10 Gbps and deliver up to 12 simultaneous streams.

-JW Player, a digital and mobile video platform and player company, has raised a $20 million “D” round of funding led by existing investor Greycroft Growth, Greenspring Associates, Cueball Capital, and e.ventures. JW Player, which has raised $46.5 million so far, will use the new round to drive development of new data-centric SaaS products, boost international sales and marketing. The company said its flagship product, JW Player, is live on more than 2 million sites, and generates more than 1.3 billion monthly unique viewers across devices such as tablets, and desktops.

-NeuLion said Samsung Electronics will integrate its DivX CE software development kit to enable 4K live and on-demand streaming on Samsung’s lineup of 2016 Ultra HD TVs. NeuLion, which acquired video encoding/delivery specialist DivX a year ago, said its approach enables streaming up to 4Kp60 and is powered by the baseline NeuLion Digital Platform.

-MaxLinear is billing MxL3705 single-chip platform, equipped with MoCA 2.0 home networking technology, is the first to eclipse gigabit speeds on home-side coax networks. MoCA has become a go-to technology for multi-room DVRs and video gateways for the secure (and speedy) distribution of IP video over the home network. MaxLinear entered the MoCA market in earnest last year via the acquisition of Entropic Communications.

-Red Digital Cinema said Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will be the first production to shoot on its 8K “Weapon” platform. Weapon 8K captures 8K video at 75 frames per second, 6K at 100 fps and 4K at 150 fps.

-Tata Elxsi is showing off its RDK Deployment Accelerator Suite running on Ultra HD-capable set-tops reference designs powered by chipsets from STMicroelectronics. The demo offers a fresh glimpse at boxes that run the Reference Design Kit, the preintegrated software platform being managed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global. More than 200 companies, including chipmakers, set-top vendors and pay TV operators, have licensed the RDK.

-Valtech, an independent digital technology company, is the first implementation partner to build multiscreen apps via You.i TV’s Partner Program, which is being showcased by the company here in Las Vegas at the Encore Hotel. You.i TV, which recently closed a $15 million funding round, counts customers such as Sony Crackle (for its Roku app), the TreeHouseGO app for iOS and Android, Corus Entertainment, and shomi, the multiscreen SVOD service from Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications.

Quantenna Communications, the maker of next-gen WiFi chips, went to the well again, pulling out $22 million in a round led by Centerview Capital Technology, Vivint and NTT Group.

All major existing investors, including Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Rusnano, Sigma Partner and Venrock, also participated. Quanntenna, founded in 2006, has raised $166 million so far, according to CrunchBase data.

Tied to the new round, Ned Hooper, an exec late of Cisco Systems and now a founding partner of Centerview; and Harold Hughes, late of Intel and Rambus, were named to the Quantenna board.

Quantenna said it will use the funds to invest more in technology and customer-facing activities. Its customers include AT&T, DirecTV, Orange and Telefonica. Qualcomm and Broadcom are among Quantenna's competitors. 

Quantenna has been focusing on 802.11ac, sometimes called Gigabit WiFi, which will help to shore up in-home wireless backbones and other types of WiFi access points. Earlier this year, it claimed its “wave 2” 802.11ac chip hit usable throughputs of 1.3 Gbps,with Physical Layer throughputs of 1.7 Gbps. 

ASUS has launched the RT-AC87, claiming it’s the first Wave 2 802.11ac consumer router that uses dual-band spectrum and can pump out speeds up to 1.73 Gbps.

The device, which targets in-home wireless streaming of HD and even higher bit-rate 4K video, is powered by Quantenna’s QSR1000 4x4 Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output chipset, matched with Universal Beamforming technology that aims to maximize the router’s wireless range or boost the performance of older 802.11a/b/g/n clients, the companies said.

“As the number of wireless devices in the home increases, so does the importance of Wi-Fi quality,” said Margaret Chen, president of ASUS Computer International’s Open Platform Business (OPBG) Group for ASUS Computer International.

ASUS said it will begin to sell the product in North America “shortly” for an estimated MSRP of $269.99.

Outside of the retail sphere, Cable operators are looking to 802.11ac technology to feed high-quality video to IP clients from a primary gateway, setting it up as a wireless complement to wire-based high-speed technologies such as MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance). Service providers that use gear outfitted with Quantenna silicon include AT&T, DirecTV, Swisscom, Telefonica and Belgacom.

Quantenna shed light its 802.11ac chip for gateways and other home networking devices in May, claiming then that it would support usable throughputs of up to 1.3 Gbps – not far off from the chip’s PHY layer throughputs of 1.7 Gbps -- with beamforming techniques can keep the speed relatively consistent even as it blasts through walls and other obstructions.

In April, Quantenna talked up plans for more advanced WiFi technology that could pump out up to 10 Gbps using an 8x8 MU-MIMO architecture. Those chips aren’t expected out until sometime next year.