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Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
*Seasons Break
Tuesday
Friday 6th January 2006
Gates goes show biz
232,000 subscribers ADSL pay TV
CES waits on Google video
Pay-TV mises out in Oz rules deal
Delphi invests in ONDAS
DISH Network passes 12 million, XM six
Panasonic to make Comcast digi STBs
Toshiba HD DVD from March
Amino, STM combo
Woolfe joins Sky
Gates goes show bizBill Gates used his now traditional CES opening address to put entertainment front and centre of strategy while at the same time denying he saw Google as Microsoft's biggest threat.
Gates outlined his vision for a future where entertainment integrates with applications like messaging, word processing and web browsing, with software that can work across various devices. "We've talk about the decade of digital lifestyle and work style. What that means is all these tools become mainstream. Software will come in and make things both simpler and more effective."
Gates announced partnerships with Direct TV and its U.K. counterpart, BSkyB. The Direct TV deal will allow consumers to get Direct TV video onto a Windows Media Center PC as well as on its gaming console, the Xbox 360. "These (partnerships) will allow you to enjoy high definition content and take that away on a portable media device" for what Gates called both the "two-foot experience and the 10-foot experience."
Along with Justin Timberlake, the Microsoft chairman unveiled a new music service, Urge, to directly compete with the iTunes. Urge launches with over 2 million tracks for purchase separately or for a take-all subscription, an option the iTunes music store doesn't have. The offering will include exclusive material from MTV.
Gates indicated that later this year Microsoft will start selling external HD-DVD drives, which will enable users to watch high definition DVDs via their Xbox machines and also allow greater interactivity. At the outset, the new drive will be only for movies and does not include games.
Microsoft also announced partnerships, including one with Philips, to sell cordless telephones that will carry internet voice calls for users of its MSN instant messenger service, as well as regular telephone calls, a new departure in the competition between so-called VoIP services.
Meantime Gates told reporters he didn't see Google as his main competitor which he named as IBM. He said the press gets obsessed with 'cool' companies like Google and Apple but the likes of IBM and Nokia were just as important.
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232,000 subscribers ADSL pay TV
From Sotires Eleftheriou in ParisLes Echos reports that 232,000 subscriptions were taken out in France to pay TV platforms via ADSL during 2005, three times more than in 2004. The report states that TPS had 38 percent of the market, while Canal+/Sat had 62 percent.
Breaking down the subscriptions between ISPs, France Telecom recruited 180,000 new pay TV subscribers on behalf of the two platforms, of which 83,000 were for TPS and 97,000 for Canal. Neuf-Cegetel brought in 12,000 new subscribers, two thirds of which were for Canal and one third for TPS. Finally, Free brought in 40,000 subscribers for Canal; Free does not carry the TPS bouquet on its service.In the two years that digital TV has been available via ADSL, it has attracted a total of 300,000 subscriptions, of which 140,000 are for TPS and 160,000 for Canal.
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CES waits on Google videoGoogle co-founder Larry Page is expected to announce today that it will begin allowing consumers to buy videos from major content partners through the Google site and will also roll out new downloadable software bundles that will heighten Google's competition with Microsoft..
Under the major upgrade to Google's video-search service, consumers will be able to pay to download and view videos. Google plans to announce partnerships with some major players including CBS and the National Basketball Association..
The software bundle from Google will include the open-source Firefox Web browser, a version of Norton AntiVirus software, Adobe Reader software, RealPlayer multimedia software, and Trillian instant-messaging.
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Pay-TV mises out in Oz rules deal
By Rose Major in MelbourneAustralian pay-TV provider Foxtel has missed out in the bidding for rights to the Australian Rules league (AFL), and must now negotiate with two free-to-air networks to continue screening the sport.
Networks Seven and Ten won rights to broadcast the league from 2007 to 2011, after matching a A$780 million bid from Foxtel and the Nine Network. Seven had "last bid" rights after missing out on the previous contract.
The companies have indicated they will seek a deal with Foxtel for some of the eight matches a week – all played on either Friday night, Saturday or Sunday – to be shown by the pay-television broadcaster. But Foxtel is likely to get fewer matches than if its bid with Nine (whose parent company PBL is a part-owner of Foxtel) had been successful.
Complicating the process will be Seven's ongoing court action against parties including News Corp, PBL and Telstra (Foxtel's shareholders) over the collapse of its own pay-TV arm C7.
Mobile TV rights are not included in the deal. These are currently held by Telstra, which offers scores, news and video highlights to its mobile subscribers. Telstra is in negotiations with the AFL to renew the contract, which is likely to include live mobile TV rights in future.
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Delphi invests in ONDASDelphi Corp. announced that it has become a strategic investor and technology provider for ONDAS Media, (ONDAS) the European satellite radio company.
ONDAS expects to launch a full subscription-based satellite radio service in 2009 with more than 150 channels of music, sports, news and entertainment as well as digital telematics and data services across Europe. In addition to being a strategic investor, Delphi will also provide hardware.
On the basis of its many years of experience as a supplier of hardware to three different satellite radio broadcasting companies in the United States, Canada, and Asia, Delphi will design and manufacture satellite terminals, OEM receivers and portable electronics equipment capable of receiving the satellite audio, video and data information from ONDAS.
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DISH Network passes 12 million, XM six
"DISH Network continues to raise the bar for the way people watch TV, having added one million subscribers in 2005," said Charles Ergen, chairman and CEO of EchoStar. " DISH Network is able to provide its 12 million customers a world-class television viewing experience for the best value in the pay TV industry."In addition, XM Satellite Radio announced it has more than six million subscribers. The satellite radio company also projected it will end 2006 with more than nine million subscribers on the strength of products introduced at CES, its content lineup and growth in the factory-installed new car market.
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Panasonic to make Comcast digi STBsPanasonic and Comcast Corporation announced the industry's first agreement for the manufacture and deployment of Comcast's new series of digital cable set-top boxes, referred to as "RNG." These set- top boxes will be compliant with the OpenCableT Application Platform (OCAPT) specifications. In another industry first, the companies have agreed to make Panasonic's OCAP middleware available to Comcast, as well as to jointly explore and develop extensions to the OCAP specifications. The new boxes are designed to improve and simplify the consumer's home entertainment experience.
Under the agreement, Panasonic will supply Comcast with advanced digital cable set-top boxes with the processing power and advanced functionality that enables the kind of performance, flexibility and ease of use that consumers want. The Panasonic digital set-top boxes will have high-definition digital video recording (DVR) capabilities with a minimum of 250 GB storage capacity, which essentially doubles the amount of DVR storage currently available on Comcast DVR set-top boxes. In addition, these boxes will have both MPEG-2 and H.264 decoder capabilities.
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Toshiba HD DVD from MarchToshiba said it would start selling the first next generation HD-DVD player in the US from March and a notebook PC with HD-DVD drive within the year. The new players, which will be capable of showing video in high definition format, are priced from as low as $500 and up to about $800 at the high end.
Sony, meanwhile, announced it would launch in June the first advanced DVD player using the Blu-ray disc standard it is supporting. Sony did not give a price range for its players but Pioneer also unveiled a high-end Blu-ray disc player to be launched in the US in May at $1,800.
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Amino, STM comboAmino has announced that its software stack for IPTV set-top boxes is to be combined with STMicroelectronics's ST7100 family of semiconductors. This creates a ready for use set-top box blueprint for manufacturers. The combined platform permits set-top box manufacturers to remove a large proportion of the software research and development cycle and enables them to create reliable, high-performance products in the shortest possible time frame.
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Woolfe joins SkyLiving TV controller Richard Woolfe has been appointed head of Sky One. Woolfe succeeds James Baker, who stepped down from Sky's flagship entertainment channel last month to head the broadcaster's interactive division.
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Thursday 5th January 2006
Spain: DTT beats all forecasts
Studios to coincide DVD and VOD window?
Motorola radio service
XM goes portable
CE sales will hit $134bn
Disney adds to iTunes line up
BT WiFi deal
Philips takes News Internet role
Bell to trial IP PRIME
Thomson PMR
Broadcom dual chip
Spain: DTT beats all forecasts
From David Del Valle in MadridThe penetration of DTT in Spain is surpassing industry forecasts. Around one million homes are already enjoying DTT, two months after the launch of the RTVE-led platform with 18 TV channels. This represents a penetration rate of 4.7 per cent, according to consultancy firm Corporacion Multimedia.
The sales of set-top boxes over Christmas have doubled the number in the market, passing the forecasts made by ASIMELEC, the Spanish Electronic Companies' Association, in November. It had forecast that by the end of the year 850,000 homes would have access to DTT, reaching 2 million by the end of 2006.
The STB's price ranges between E50 (basic STB) to E150 (the minimum price for a MHP-based box).
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Studios to coincide DVD and VOD window?Cable companies and major studios are discussing releasing movies through VOD on cable the same day they come out on DVD. According to the WSJ some studios could do a trial run early this year.
Historically studios have staggered release windows to maximise revenue Now, declining box-office and slower growth in DVD sales, along with the emergence of new technology, have prompted talk of eliminating the traditional windows. Studios need to judge whether releasing movies earlier to video-on-demand would cut into DVD sales but studios and cable operators are now betting they will make more money if they give consumers quicker access to movies they want, in the form they want them.
The studios most enthusiastic are Walt Disney, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox. Proceeds from video-on-demand sales typically are split between studios and cable operators. If films are released to cable earlier, studios could demand a bigger share of the revenue. Cable companies, meanwhile, are eager to boost their video-on-demand business.
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Motorola radio serviceMotorola, the world's No. 2 cell phone manufacturer, revealed details of its plans for iRadio, a subscription music service that will go on sale this year, putting Motorola in competition with XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.
Motorola's iRadio service will first run on the Rokr E2 cell phone, which, unlike the first Rokr phone, will not include Apple Computer’s iTunes music software. Motorola aims to sell the service and phone via mobile operators. Motorola said in October its first cell phone for iRadio would be able to hold about 70 hours of music.
The iRadio service will include 435 commercial-free radio channels, including genres such as Heavy Metal, Rockin' Cowboys and Angry Women. Its satellite rivals also provide specialised music channels, often without ads.
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XM goes portableXM Satellite Radio said it plans to launch a pair of portable, hand held radio receivers that will also store your own digital songs. The two devices, called the Helix and the Inno, and manufactured by Samsung Electronics and Pioneer Electronics respectively, will store and play MP3 files and those encoded using Windows Media software. Both will sell for $399.99 in the first quarter of this year.
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CE sales will hit $134bnWorldwide sales of consumer electronics will rise to a record $135.4 billion this year, says the US Consumer Electronics Association. The prediction was released at the opening of the CES show in Las Vegas. ``The numbers say it all -- the consumer electronics industry is hot,'' Gary Shapiro, chief executive officer of the trade group, which is sponsoring the Las Vegas show and whose members account for $125 billion in annual sales, said.
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Disney adds to iTunes line upThe Walt Disney Co. is adding content from its ESPN channel and ABC sports to the shows it already sells on iTunes. It said that the content will include condensed versions of all four Bowl Championship Series college football games this season, as well as content from ABC Entertainment, Touchstone Television, ABC Family, ABC News, Buena Vista Television, the Disney Channel and SOAPnet.
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BT WiFi dealBT has struck a deal with Wi-Fi hotspot operator The Cloud to bring wireless broadband coverage to nine UK city centres. The deal will see 500 BT payphones in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge and Liverpool, as well as in the London Boroughs of Kensington & Chelsea, Camden and Islington, fitted with Wi-Fi boxes.
The Cloud said the move will allow more than 4m people to connect to the Internet without wires. The first phase is to be complete by March 2006, and the network will be available to Web users with access to BT Openzone, O2, SkypeZones and Nintendo WiFi services.
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Philips takes News Internet roleNews Corporation has promoted former McKinsey man Jeremy Philips to take charge of his firm's Internet investments. He has been working on Internet strategy at News Corp's HQ for the past 18 months, and takes the new role of executive vice-president, office of the chairman, and will also join the company's executive management committee. As well as overseeing News Corp's Internet business, Philips will be responsible for strategy and acquisitions across the company.
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Bell to trial IP PRIMESES Americom announced that BellSouth has signed an agreement to trial IP PRIME, its centralised, satellite-centric video distribution solution that enables telcos to bundle and distribute hundreds of standard and HD television programming channels with voice and broadband services.
SES Americom will provide BellSouth with video aggregation, encoding, monitoring, and transport over the IP PRIME platform, which is based at the SES Americom IPTV Broadcast Centre in New Jersey. The IPTV solution will be delivered over the AMC-9 satellite.
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Thomson PMRAt the Consumer Electronics Show, Thomson has introduced the LYRA X3000 Personal Multimedia Recorder, a handheld multipurpose device that will soon feature secure high-speed video transfers from select DIRECTV digital video recorders. Along with this DIRECTV2Go capability, the pocket-sized LYRA X3000 by RCA allows for the direct recording of up to 40 feature-length films from multiple video sources without using a computer and is ideal for digital subscription music content all in the palm of your hand.
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Broadcom dual chipBroadcom Corporation a leader in wired and wireless broadband communications semiconductors, announced the industry’s first DVB-S2 (digital video broadcast satellite version 2) receiver chip that features two integrated tuners and demodulators. The capabilities of the new Broadcom receiver go beyond current DVB-S2 silicon implementations in both integration and performance, offering manufacturers a significantly lower cost solution for the development of DVB-S2 capable satellite set-top boxes (STBs), personal video recorders (PVRs), satellite receivers and integrated multi-functional home media centres.
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Wednesday 4th January 2006
Starz broadband movies
Imagenio hits 200,000 subs
OFT clears NTL and Sky deals
Trai pushes for upping cable FDI
Sling TV anywhere
Thomson new media division
Starz broadband moviesUS cable network Starz Entertainment is to launch an internet movie download service backed by partnerships with Microsoft and Sony. The service, called Vongo, joins CinemaNow and the Hollywood studios-backed Movielink but it is the first to offer the same slate of films that currently play on its cable channel for a monthly fee.
Vongo will rely on Microsoft's Windows Media technology to provide copyright management and the ability to let customers watch movies on portable media devices. Starz, a division of Liberty Media currently has a technology deal with RealNetworks. for an online movie service. Starz executives said they were in discussions to "migrate the service to Vongo."
Starz has access to about 40 per cent of all first-run Hollywood films made available to cable subscription services such as HBO and Showtime.
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Imagenio hits 200,000 subs
From David Del Valle in MadridTelefónica’s ADSL pay-TV service, Imagenio, ended 2005 with more than 200,000 subscribers, breaking through its target mark in less than one year after its launch in Madrid, Barcelona and Alicante last January.
Imagenio is now available to almost 4 million homes in 140 cities throughout Spain. The company has been deploying ADSL2+ since May, intensifying its campaign to capture as many subscribers as possible. Currently, Imagenio offers 48 TV channels and 15 audio services, as well as several interactive applications including video on demand with a catalogue of more than 400 cinema titles and 1,000 hours of news, music video clips, documentaries and TV series.
Subscribers can enjoy triple play at a promotional price of E20 per month until the end of January.
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OFT clears NTL and Sky dealsThe UK Office of Fair Trading has cleared NTL's $6bn takeover of rival cable TV operator Telewest. The OFT also cleared BSkyB's £211m (E305m) purchase of internet company Easynet.
Meanwhile, NTL is expected to up its offer for Virgin Mobile, although there are doubts as to whether the revised bid by the UK cableco will be enough to secure a deal. Newspapers reported that NTL is expected to increase its £817m offer for Virgin Mobile - which is 72 per cent owned by Sir Richard Branson - by around 10 per cent.
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Trai pushes for upping cable FDIIn order to facilitate the convergence of technologies in India, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Monday asked the government to hike Foreign Direct Investment in the cable TV industry to the level in the telecom industry (74 per cent). The regulator also asked for allowing spectrum trading in the telecom sector.
Currently, delivery of TV signals through satellite-based technology (DTH) has an FDI cap of 20 per cent. The same product when delivered through cable attracts an FDI cap of 49 per cent. No cap has been specified for IPTV which can be delivered on telecom infrastructure. However, the FDI cap for telecom companies who will offer IPTV is 74 per cent. "This will throw up opportunities for exploiting these divergences and may thwart the introduction of new technologies," Trai said. To alleviate this problem, the FDI limit in cable industry should be enhanced to take advantage of the buoyant mood of foreign investors, Trai added.
Trai also raised the issue of spectrum trading. Currently, if an operator finds a telecom service unprofitable and wishes to provide other services, the existing allocation rules will stand in the way. "The way out is to permit a new entrant to use the spectrum of an existing operator, provided he is able to compensate the operator. Such flexibility in the use of spectrum is necessary to ensure that this scarce resource is always put to the best use," Trai said.
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Sling TV anywhereSling Media is set to unveil new software that adds the capability of linking your TV subscriptions to mobile devices to its Slingbox hardware product. Sling Media co-founder and head of business development Jason Krikorian said support for mobile devices always has been part of the company's vision.
"There are solutions for live and recorded TV on mobile phones, but now for the first time you can have full access to every single channel you've got at your house," he said. "It's not just a TV experience on your phone, it's your TV experience, like you have at home when you're on your couch."
The new mobile client works with any device that uses Microsoft's Windows Mobile Platform versions 4.0 or 5.0. A visual version of a remote control pops up on the screen, making it a straightforward process to choose whether to watch television live from their home cable set-top box or satellite receiver or something recorded on their digital video recorder.
Sling Media does not collect any fees beyond the initial $250 purchase price of the Slingbox hardware. The only additional cost for the service is for the mobile data service at whatever rate the user's carrier levies.
Sling Media also is going to release a PAL version of its Slingbox for the European market at CES, as predicted when the company signed a deal for decoders from a new family introduced by Philips Electronics.
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Thomson new media divisionThomson announced the formation of a Thomson-Inventel Advanced Product Development Group to further reinforce and accelerate the development and deployment of innovative broadband service delivery platforms and home networking solutions to its network operator and Internet Service Provider client base.
To better address existing and, in particular, anticipate future needs, the Thomson-Inventel Advanced Product Development Group will develop cutting-edge broadband service delivery products and solutions for subsequent industrialization and commercialisation by the Telecom and Home Networking Business Units of the company. The group will be headed up by Eric Carreel, co-founder of Inventel, and consolidate all the necessary expertise around residential gateway, home networking and other broadband applications technologies within the company.
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