Yesterday Zev Mo Green and I were invited to VatorSplash NY which was held at the infamous Webster Hall. This was an event meant to showcase some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs in NYC. We were given the opportunity to socialize and meet a handful of young companies. We had a wonderful conversation with two incredible women — Tanjila Islam (CEO) and Bhavna Lal (Director of Business Development) of Tiger Trade. Fundamentally, the company helps build business relationships between buyers and suppliers — from around the world. As the evening continued we spoke with a handful of impressive startups like AutoSlash. This company is dedicated to saving you money on car rentals by re-pricing your rental several times a day.

The Splash was kicked off by Mike Hudack of blip.tv. Hudack took the time to journal the history of blip.tv. He explained the joy of getting blip.tv’s first $50,000 check all the way to sealing a $200, 000 deal in the men’s bathroom. 2010 has been a good year for the online video startup according to the Business Insider — 113 million views in October, received $10.1 million in Series C funding, doubled its staff to 36 and increased sales 5x’s over 2009. I don’t think that Roizen could have chosen a better person to lead off the VatorSplash NY event.

Vator.tv is the brain child of Bambi Francisco Roizen. Vator is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded in 2007. The company is a professional network that allows startups – entrepreneurs – to showcase their products and services. Roizen explained that VatorSplash NY was the company’s first event in NYC. The night was rather exciting as ten start-ups were given about 3 minutes to pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capital judges. The judges were a collection of some of the most respected leaders in the space, like — Ron Bloom of Mevio, Deborah B. Jackson of DBJ Capital LLC and Amish Jani of FirstMark Capital.

These were the ten start-ups that took the stage and gave their 3 minute pitch:

To be honest with you, I have never really cared much for the Roku player or Netflix for that matter. I am able to get all my content through Hulu, Boxee, XBOX Live Market place and Verizon FIOS. I was not about to add a 5th gadget to my video consumption pleasure. I am not going to lie – it would be grand if I could pair down the gadgets too 1 or 2 devices and stop giving Verizon FIOS so much money every month. I have not had any real luck or faith in any one device – that is until Roku’s announcement of its’ new service. Today Roku, announced its’ Channel Store.

The store has thirteen channels and they fall into three categories:

Featured

• NetFlix
• Pandora
• MLB.com
• Amazon Video

Free

• MotionBox
• Mediafly
• Blip.tv
• Twit.TV
• Facebook Photos
• Revision3
• FrameChannel Flickr
• MobileTribe
• Pandora

Premium

• NetFlix
• Amazon Video
• MLB.com

The Channel Store will be similar to the ever popular mobile phone app stores. The Store will be rolled out over the next few weeks and more channels will be added between now and the Consumer Electronics Show in January. What would be fantastic is if one of those channels were to be a Hulu channel. In any event, Roku enters an already competitive space – it has to contend with the likes of XBOX, PS3, Boxee and Hulu. Now, Roku does have one major advantage – price. The cheapest Roku will run you $79.99.

I am fairly excited about the Channel Store – this may actually force me to pick up a Roku player.  In my opinion, due to price and number of channels, the Roku player warrants a space on your gift list.