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Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
Tuesday
Friday 17th February 2006
Irdeto takes over CryptoTec
First French DTT viewing figures
Spain to launch commercial DVB-H TV in 2007
XM marketing widens losses
Eutelsat revenue up
Sky mobile on Symbian
New chief for ITV Play
Bainbridge joins BBC
Hackforth for Entone
Irdeto takes over CryptoTecPhilips Electronics is to transfer its conditional access business to Irdeto. Philips’ CryptoTec develops and sells content protection products such as advanced security systems for cable, satellite, terrestrial and IP networks under the CryptoWorks brand. In addition to conditional access for digital TV, Irdeto also offers software-based content security for IPTV services as well as multiple DRM and conditional access products for premium mobile content and mobile TV.
Hans Streng, CEO, Philips Digital Networks said: “The conditional access industry is moving towards consolidation, and Philips has been looking into various options for the CryptoTec business. Reaching this agreement with Irdeto is considered to be the solution that offers the best future-proof direction for customers and staff.
CryptoTec will thus find a new home where conditional access is the absolute core of the business. Philips will continue focusing on promoting open-standards DRM.”
”With the acquisition of Philips’ CryptoTec, Irdeto will strengthen its position in the pay media industry, and will now have over 300 customers on six continents.
Customers using CryptoWorks will continue to be fully supported and in addition to this can now also benefit from a broader choice of content security solutions,” said Graham Kill, CEO of Irdeto.
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First French DTT viewing figures
From Sotires Eleftheriou in ParisTelevision audience measurement institute Mediametrie has published the first results for French DTT. In the last quarter of 2005 nearly two million people aged four and above, in 850,000 connected homes, were able to receive DTT, or 3.6 percent of all homes in France. And by 31 December 2005, 1.3 million DTT set top boxes had been sold says Mediametrie, quoting figures from GfK.
The first figures reveal that TV viewing in DTT homes is on average 20 minutes a day more than in analogue homes, four hours four minutes compared to three hoursforty-four minutes. The viewing share of the traditional channels (TF1, France 2, France 3, Canal+, France 5/Arte, M6) is 74% in DTT homes, compared to 87% in all TV homes. So, the share of "other channels" is double that in DTT homes compared to overall French TV homes (26% compared to 13%).
Mediametrie gives the figures for the three DTT channels which are already clients of Mediametrie: NRJ 12, NT1 and TMC. TMC came first, with a viewing share (in DTT homes) of 6.1%, rising to 11.9% between 6pm and 7 pm. NT1 achieves 3.2% viewing share, reaching 6% between 7 pm and 8 pm. NRJ had 1.2%, reaching 4.2% between 10 am and 11 am. These results are based on a viewing panel of 360 people during a four-week period, from 2 to 29 January 2006.
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Spain to launch commercial DVB-H TV in 2007
From David Del Valle in BarcelonaThe Spanish MNO Abertis will deploy a mobile TV network throughout Spain, enabling the commercial launch of DVB-H-based mobile TV in the first quarter of 2007. The company - which is also the main terrestrial TV transmitter company - is breaking into the mobile TV market and hopes to play a leading role in the carriage of mobile TV signals.
"Our impression is that the new mobile television will be launched in the first quarter of 2007. There still are some frequencies allocated to operators", said Abertis at the 3GSM Congress. Abertis, along with Telefonica and Nokia, has taken part in the first DVB-H trial in Spain in recent months. First results reveal that 55 per cent of the 500 participants would pay for a mobile TV service. On average the participants spent 16 minutes per day watching mobile TV, mainly from home.
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XM marketing widens losses
XM Satellite Radio Holdings posted a bigger fourth-quarter loss on increased marketing and programming costs related to growing its base of subscribers. The company posted a quarterly loss of $268.3 million, up from a loss of $188.2 million a year earlier. XM Satellite said it has more than 6 million subscribers, and is on track to reach 20 million by 2010.
Meantime, Canadian Satellite Radio, which operates the XM Canada service north of the border, closed on its $100 million U.S. offering. The company said it intends to use net proceeds from the offering to pay for ongoing operating expenses including subscriber acquisition costs, marketing and advertising expenses, broadcast operations and programming costs, among other items.
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Eutelsat Communications reported revenues 6.4% up at E395 million for the first half ended December 31, 2005. Excluding a one-off income from penalties related to Atlantic Bird, the revenue growth was 2.6%.
Video Applications revenue rose 1.3%, reflecting notably the continuing increase of TV channels broadcast by Eutelsat (+75 channel growth from June 30 to December 31, 2005). Data Services revenue was up 7.9%, due to strong growth in Value Added Services (+25.8%), reflecting business development with corporate and institutional customers and sustained activity in emerging countries. Multi-usage leases increased 4.2% owing principally to a favourable dollar/euro exchange rate.
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British Sky Broadcasting and Symbian announced that BSkyB had selected Symbian OST for Sky by mobile, the interactive application that puts the digital TV service into the hands of mobile phone users. Symbian develops Symbian OS, the market-leading open mobile operating system for advanced mobile phones, also known as smartphones, which is licensed to the world’s leading handset manufacturers.
Symbian says its OS application offers a range of TV content, including sports, entertainment, news and weather and provides access to a wide range of interactive services including personalised news, sports headlines and ‘on the fly’ betting for Sky Bet account holders.
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ITV announced the appointment of William van Rest as Controller of ITV Play.
Van Rest will assume full responsibility for Play’s financial performance, creative programming and operational delivery. Launching later this year, ITV Play programming will be shown across ITV’s family of channels, following successful trials of Fremantle’s Quizmania, currently airing on ITV1 overnight and Optimistic’s Play Sudoku on ITV2.
Van Rest joins ITV from Optimistic Entertainment where he created and launched the original participation TV channel in the UK, QuizNation, in 2003.ITV also announced that it has promoted Interactive Producer Tanya Carus to the position of Commissioning Editor for ITV Play. Tanya has been with ITV since 2001 and has extensive experience of viewer participation on multiple platforms.
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Bainbridge joins BBCThe BBC has appointed David Bainbridge, who headed the business-to-business arm of YooMedia, to lead the marketing of its digital and new media services.
His responsibilities will include driving the BBC's Building Digital Britain activities - including driving the take-up of digital television and radio, On Demand TV usage, new internet/broadband penetration and driving the reach of the bbc.co.uk sites.
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Hackforth for EntoneEntone Technologies, the provider of personal video content delivery solutions, announced that Sarah Hackforth will assume the role of Vice President Sales & Operations EMEA. Since it started its EMEA operations in 2002, Entone has deployed its personal video solutions with many of the region’s leading service providers, including Ascent Media, Arrivo on Demand, BBC, Lyse, Maxisat, Telecom Italia, Telewest, VNL, and many others.
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Thursday 16th February 2006
3 will bundle Skype
Neuman quits EchoStar
TPS debuts pay DTT
Sony Ericsson, Nokia co-operate on DVB-H interoperability
Wait two years for switch-off, says committee
Alcatel chief calls for hybrid mobile TV
Real turns profit
Nintendo goes TV
Chance quits ITV
Nvidia and DiBcom collaborate for mobile TV handsets
Another Freeview ‘may day’
Broadata integrates MPEG 4
Controlware Video-Over-IP partnership with T-VIPS3 will bundle Skype
From Colin Mann in Barcelona
Hutchison’s 3 networks are to sell handsets with Skype software built in. Hutchison’s Europe managing director Christian Salbaing said a trial of the service in Sweden would likely result in a rollout in that country later this year.
He said all Hutchison’s 3 businesses in Europe would eventually offer Skype 3G phones, and he believed all 3 networks were likely to follow suit. Hutchison Whampoa operates 3 networks in Seden, Italy, the UK, Denmark, Ireland, and Australia. The two-year-old VoIP pioneer Skype was bought by eBay last year for $2.6bn.
Hutchison will limit risks to its revenue by ruling out “dual-mode” handsets, which can use free wireless hotspots as well as mobile networks. Salbaing said it was too early to say whether it would lower average revenue per user but added: “We don’t think we’re going to bring values down, it’s going to enhance the value proposition.” Around three-quarters of all calls from mobiles are made to other mobiles and the cost of calling a mobile phone with Skype is not always cheaper than a traditional call.
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Neuman quits EchoStar
EchoStar's president and chief operating officer Michael Neuman has stepped down just eight months after joining the satellite broadcaster to assume many of Chairman Charles Ergen's day-to-day responsibilities.
No explanation was provided but analysts and investors question whether Ergen -- whose family controls more than 90% of its voting shares -- really intends to give up much of his authority. Jimmy Schaeffler, of the Carmel Group consultants said the resignations of Neuman and his predecessors "suggest the challenge and uniqueness of the EchoStar culture. It's not an easy place to work."
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TPS debuts pay DTT
From Sotires Eleftheriou in ParisTPS is to start its pay service on French DTT under the name "Pack TPS TNT", comprising five channels: the premium channel TPS Star, LCI (news), Paris Premiere (events), Eurosport and TF6 (entertainment).
The monthly subscription is E19.90 for the first six months and then E24.90 per month, including rental of the set top box.. Following the insistence of the regulator CSA, it will also be possible to subscribe to TPS Star as a stand-alone channel. TPS was not happy at all with this condition as it plans to use its premium channel to drive subscriptions. So, it has set the price point for TPS Star stand-alone at E18.90 a month (including decoder rental).
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Sony Ericsson, Nokia co-operate on DVB-H interoperability
From Colin Mann in BarcelonaSony Ericsson and Nokia plan to co-operate to achieve interoperability in DVB-H enabled devices and secure multi-vendor mobile TV services and pilots from 2006 onwards. Both parties recognize DVB-H as the preferred technology for terrestrial digital broadcast mobile TV, and are active in ongoing standardisation and technology development to enable an improved mobile TV experience for the consumers.
"Sony Ericsson believes that mobile TV will be a key growth area for the mobile phone industry in terms of handsets, applications, content and services," said Mats Lindoff, Chief Technology Officer, Sony Ericsson. "We are pleased to announce this co-operation with Nokia on developing DVB-H interoperability as we believe this will be one of the key technologies driving the mobile TV market in the future."
Ilkka Raiskinen, Senior Vice President, Multimedia Experiences, Nokia said that availability of interoperable DVB-H enabled mobile devices was crucial in opening up the mass market for broadcast mobile TV.
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Wait two years for switch-off, says committee
From Rose Major in Melbourne
An Australian parliamentary committee has recommended that analogue television be switched off on January 1 2010, two years later than the current target date.
In a report by the standing committee on communications Digital Television: Who’s Buying It?, the chair says that “now is the time to ‘get serious’ about ‘getting digital’” but acknowledges that it would be unrealistic to move forward with the current switchover date. Around 1.2 million homes have digital-terrestrial television – 15.5 per cent penetration – although over 1.1 million homes have either Foxtel or Austar’s digital pay platform. It is not known how much crossover there is between these subscription and free-to-air digital homes.
Other recommendations include dropping the ban on the existing commercial free-to-air networks launching spin-off channels, although these would have to also be free-to-air. Current high-definition quotas should remain in place, the committee recommends.
Also on the list is a recommendation that the government work with stakeholderds to establish a testing and conformance centre for equipment and that a mandatory labelling scheme be set up.
The government is due to release a draft media bill in the next couple of weeks which will include its plans for digital television.
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Alcatel chief calls for hybrid mobile TV
From Colin Mann in BarcelonaMarc Rouanne, COO Alcatel Mobile Communications Group, has suggested that a hybrid solution is best placed to ensure the successful take-up of mobile digital TV. Rouanne said that mobile TV had to happen. “There is spectrum available; broadcast will come later. We say it has to be hybrid. The consumer doesn’t care how it is delivered.”
To meet the challenge, Alcatel has launched its ‘Unlimited Mobile TV for Mass Market’ project, a unique combination of DVB-H-based terrestrial and satellite broadcast delivery in the S-Band, complementing existing 3G/UMTS networks. Rouanne suggested that this approach allowed operators to protect and leverage their 3G investments while offering unlimited coverage, unlimited audience, unlimited number of TV channels and maximum interactivity.
S-Band is a telecom frequency band reserved for satellite usage, which is immediately adjacent to the 3G/UMTS spectrum and is available across continents. It is homogenised at the European level, and allows instant multi-country nationwide geographical coverage.
Alcatel has also been selected by T-Mobile International to provide its affiliated companies in Germany, the UK and Austria with a fully integrated interactive mobile TV solution. This solution will enable T-Mobile's ‘TV in Your Pocket’ service, allowing the operator to address the growing mobile TV market, while enhancing its subscribers' experience with interactive and personalised mobile TV programmes.
Rouanne said the deal illustrated the pivotal role that Alcatel was committed to play in making mobile TV a mass market reality.
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Real turns profit
RealNetworks swung to a net profit in the fourth quarter, bolstered by a cash payment from Microsoft as part of an antitrust settlement. It said net profit totalled $295.6 million in the fourth quarter versus a net loss of $1 million in the period a year before. Revenue rose 15 percent to $83.6 million on increased music subscriptions.
RealNetworks received $478 million in cash from Microsoft during the quarter to settle an antitrust case over the software giant's decision to bundle Windows Media Player for free within the Windows operating system. The company has seen steady increases in the number of paid subscribers to its Rhapsody and other music services, while its online game unit is also growing.
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Nintendo goes TVUsers of the dual-screen DS portable game machine may soon be able to surf the Web and watch high-definition television programs on their devices in addition to playing games. The Japanese company said it plans to begin selling a Web browser in June and launch a card with a digital television receiver by the end of the year. "These products propose a different use for the DS in entirely new fields," Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said. Nintendo, which has sold 14.4 million DS units worldwide including 6 million in Japan, aims to reach sales of 10 million DS devices in Japan alone by the end of 2006, Iwata said.
The company said a card with an antenna will enable owners to watch television programmes for mobile devices, which Japanese broadcasters are expected to begin offering from April 1.
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Chance quits ITV
Former Sky exec David Chance has quit the board of ITV, as his involvement with Top Up TV and other TV ventures meant too many conflicts of interest.
"As his involvement in other television ventures has developed over recent months, it has become increasingly difficult for David to fully participate in all board discussions," ITV said in a statement. Chance predicted Top-Up will reach its break-even target of 250,000 subscribers by the middle of this year.
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Nvidia and DiBcom collaborate for mobile TV handsets
From Colin Mann in BarcelonaProgrammable graphics processor technologist is collaborating with mobile digital TV semiconductor specialist DiBcom to create a DVB-H reference design for mobile handset TV platforms. By working together, the two companies plan to offer a solution that will deliver advancements in the broadcast quality of mobile TV on next-generation mobile handsets.
Michael Rayfield, general manager of handheld GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) at Nvidia, said that the combination of the DiBcom demodulator and Nvidia’s GPU meant mobile phone manufacturers would get high-quality video decoding capabilities with high bitrates, low interference, and extremely low power levels.”
“There is a clear need for solutions that facilitate the integration of DVB-H into mobile handsets.” suggested Yannick Levy, CEO of DiBcom, who added that there was a growing demand for mobile TV solutions on mobile phones.
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Another Freeview ‘may day’An investigation has been launched by UK’s Ofcom, after a second Freeview set-top box sparked a search and rescue operation. Coastguards were alerted after an emergency 1215 distress call was picked up at RAF Kinloss in Scotland.
It was traced to the home of a 67 year-old woman near Plymouth, who was confronted by two officials at her front door on January 24 after Falmouth Coastguard sent out two lifeboats. A similar incident occurred in Portsmouth last month.
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Broadata integrates MPEG 4Broadata Communications is adopting the latest MPEG 4 video compression and quality-of-service IP transmission protocol into its fibre optic audio/video/data (AVD) transmission system products. “Although video over IP is a very attractive approach for numerous real time multimedia delivery applications, users are still hesitating to adopt the technology due to the concern in video transmission quality” remarked BCI President and CEO, Dr. Freddie Lin. “To ensure the highest quality in AVD delivery, we have been leveraging the latest MPEG 4 video compression with our own unique IP QoS protocol. The combination of the two technologies over high bandwidth fiber optic links eliminates this concern of poor video transmission quality”.
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Controlware Video-Over-IP partnership with T-VIPS
Controlware, a supplier of video access, transmission, and management solutions for broadcast networks, has entered into a partnership with Norwegian technology company T-VIPS AS for the distribution of the latter's product portfolio in North America. The new relationship will combine Controlware's expertise in video networking and management with T-VIPS's innovative solutions for using IP networks to transport professional broadcast video.
"No other network-support company has the kind of broad North American
broadcast customer support base as Controlware," said Fred Schwabe-Hansen,
executive director at T-VIPS. "This partnership enables us to offer our products to customers in the United States supported by Controlware's access and management technology."
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MovieBeam goes national and HD
Motorola partners Microsoft
FT “tighter control”
Russia Today in Arabic
Cellcast first for 3G TV
Irdeto protects Olympic HD
IPTV Advertising Specialist gets £1M Second Round
Axiros for EWE TEL
Conax for Tele2Vision
MovieBeam goes national and HD
Disney, Intel and Cisco Systems have confirmed ambitious expansion plans for MovieBeam, the on demand movie service seeking a slice of the $10bn US movie rental business.
The service will launch in 29 markets representing nearly half of US homes with its core service of a $199 MovieBeam STB that holds 100 films customers can rent for $1.99-$3.99 each. The box will be updated with as many as 10 new films each week, which will be datacast via a digital signal carried over the broadcast television spectrum. Some films from Disney and Warner Bros will be supplied in HD at $4.99 a time.
MovieBeam has secured content rights from most Hollywood studios and Disney will make its titles available to MovieBeam on the same date they are released on home video. Bob Iger, chief executive of Disney, said: “Consumers have come to expect entertainment content when, where and how they want it, and with its increased reach, enhanced technology and support from investors like Cisco and Intel, MovieBeam will create that convenience.”
Disney founded MovieBeam four years ago but suspended the service last year after trials in three US cities. It has since revived the project after bringing in Intel and Cisco as partners. Cisco will make and sell the STBs – which come with a “paperback book size” antenna - under its Linksys brand.
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Motorola partners Microsoft
From Colin Mann in BarcelonaMotorola is to begin selling mobile phones loaded with Microsoft’s music software. Motorola said on that it would continue selling models with Apple’s competing iTunes but Motorola phones with Microsoft’s Windows Media format will go on sale in the second half of 2006.
Motorola said it introduced handsets with Microsoft’s media support in response to demand from network operators, and that it would sell handsets tailored to music download services from individual network operators.
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France Télécom said it would cut about 17,000 jobs worldwide as it reported a rise in full-year earnings and pledged that it would exert a “tighter control” over its businesses. The teleco said 22,000 jobs would go through natural reductions in the next three years. The company said it planned to cut 16,000 jobs in France and 1,000 jobs abroad, and hire 6,000 new recruits.
It confirmed that sales were E49bn last year, an underlying increase of 2.5 per cent. This was in line with its revised guidance of 2-3 per cent growth. Net profit almost doubled in 2005, increasing from E3bn to E5.7bn, in spite of the impact of a E256m fine levied in December by France’s competition regulator, which had disciplined all three of the country’s top mobile telephone operators for collusion.
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Russia Today in ArabicRussia Today, the new satellite news channel, is to start broadcasting in Arabic as well as English. According to the channel's director, Sergei Frolov, the Kremlin-funded station designed to promote Russia abroad will launch the Arabic-language service by the end of the year. It will be run by the former al-Jazeera executive Akram Khuzam. The 24-hour news channel currently broadcasts "Russian views on world and domestic events" in English to satellite audiences in across the world.
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Cellcast first for 3G TV
From Colin Mann in BarcelonaCellcast plc the interactive digital broadcaster announced its first television show to fully integrate 3G mobile calls from viewers. Cellcast’s TV dating programme, Text2date, which is broadcast daily on the youtv2 channel on the Sky Digital platform, will allow members of the public with 3G mobile phones to send in video content and participate with studio guests and other viewers.
The Company recently completed the integration of inbound 3G video into its proprietary Interactive Platform. Working with the mobile services company Requestec, Cellcast plans to roll the technology out across the entire portfolio of its television formats in a fully-moderated, time delayed environment. The Company is also integrating Requestec’s Fonebar service into its platform to enable video chat between mobile users.
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Irdeto is deploying its Digital TV conditional access solution at RAI in Italy, allowing RAI to conduct a public demonstration of the quality of high definition to the Italian public and visitors to the Torino Olympics.
The initiative sees HDTV distributed using MPEG4 encoding to set-top boxes with Irdeto smart cards located in a variety of public venues throughout Torino and at the Olympic Mountain. ST, Comteck Video Enterprise, Panasonic and Tandberg have also supplied technology to this valuable demonstration.
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IPTV Advertising Specialist gets £1M Second Round
Packet Vision, the company behind a pioneering network-based delivery platform for addressable IPTV advertising – an approach that will enable eventual one-to-one communications between TV advertisers and individual viewers – has announced that it has raised a second seed round totalling £1 million (E1.7m).
Packet Vision, founded in May 2004, says it is the first company world-wide to combine all the functions for highly targeted advertising - media server, splicer, playout router and management system - into a single, ‘pizza box’ style enclosure that is tailor-made for IPTV.
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Axiros for EWE TEL
Axiros, a premium supplier of IP service oriented network- and access management software, today announced that EWE TEL of Germany chose the Axiros Axess Open CPE Management Software Platform as Germany's first deployment of the DSL Forum's TR-069 standard in the field. The solution was selected via Pan Dacom Networking, a leading German System Integrator.
Besides supporting the DSL Forum TR-069 standard, the Axess TR-069 Auto-Configuration Server (ACS) software platform supports the TR-104 standard for VoIP as well as various working drafts of the DSL Forum, such as WT-111.
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Conax for Tele2VisionConax has made an agreement with Tele2Vision for content protection of their digital platform through the system integrator Teleste. Swedish Tele2Vision, part of the Tele2 Group, has ordered a turn-key solution for their digital IP video platform from the broadband technology group Teleste. Teleste will act as a systems integrator in the project, managing all third party product compatibilities. Conax has been selected to provide the conditional access solution for this TV platform.
Tele2Vision will start offering digital TV services, in addition to their previous offering, and the backbone transport of the services takes place over an IP network. The digital platform will be implemented during 2006.
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Virgin, NTL and Microsoft pact for mobile TV
FCC: Cable Losing Ground
HW sells 10% of 3 Italy
BT links with Endemol
Saban will keep Sat 1
ADB for Turin HD trial
NDS and DiBcom ally for CA
Arabsat sat internet
Virgin, NTL and Microsoft pact for mobile TV
NTL and Microsoft are to team up with Virgin Mobile to launch what is expected to be Europe’s first nationwide digital television broadcast service for mobile phones.Confirmation of the service is expected to made at 3GSM in Barcelona.
Virgin Mobile, which is the target of a potential £920m (E1.33bn) offer by NTL, is preparing to launch the TV service to subscribers by the middle of the year following a four-month trial in 2005. Virgin Mobile TV, as it is expected to be called, will run over the UK’s established digital audio broadcast (DAB) network. It is expected to offer at least five TV stations and access to a large number of radio channels. The service is offered on a wholesale basis by BT as the ‘Movio’ service which it has developed in conjunction with Microsoft. Meantime, TV Licensing has warned UK mobile phone TV viewers that they still need a valid licence, and said without one they could face a fine of up to £1,000.
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FCC: Cable Losing GroundThe Federal Communications Commission annual report on pay-TV competition found that the market continues to grow despite customer losses for the biggest competitor. The FCC found that cable subs declined slightly in the past year. Cable's share of the pay-TV market was about 69.4 percent in 2005, down from 71.6 percent for the same period a year earlier.
Satellite TV companies served almost 27.7 percent of all pay-TV subscribers, compared to about 25.1 percent in 2004. As for other competitors, those subscribers choosing alternative pay-TV delivery technologies decreased, representing 2.9 percent of all subscribers in 2005, compared to 3.3 percent in 2004.
The numbers are as of June 2005. At the end of the period, there were 109.6 million TV households, compared to 108.4 million in 2004. Of that number, about 94.2 million TV households subscribed to a pay-TV service, compared to 92.2 million in 2004, the FCC said.
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HW sells 10% of 3 ItalyHutchison Whampoa is planning to sell 10 per cent of 3 Italia in a private placement that values the mobile business at E9bn after the company scrapped the planned listing of the operation. The valuation was lower than the E12bn sought by Hutchison earlier, reflecting poor investor sentiment towards 3 Italia and the European telecommunications market. Some suggested the planned UK floatation would also be shelved.
Canning Fok, managing director, blamed weak conditions in Europe for the delay. He said the company would work on educating investors about its business, and plan to re-launch the initial public offering, without giving any timetable.
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BT links with EndemolBT has announced a major deal with TV production company Endemol to license programming and develop interactive content for its next-generation TV offering. Endemol will work with BT to deliver its distinctive programming and interactive content, tailor-made for BT's TV service. The two companies intend to build on Endemol’s experience at the forefront of developing interactive TV formats.
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Saban will keep Sat 1The consortium led by US billionaire Haim Saban has decided to retain its majority shareholding in ProSiebenSat.1 for at least another year following the collapse Springer’s bid. Shares in ProSiebenSat.1 have risen in recent weeks on stronger results and hopes of a higher offer from another media group or financial buyer.
The consortium, which holds 88 per cent of the voting rights and 50.5 per cent of the economic value of the company, includes Alpine Equity Partners, Bain Capital Investors, Hellman & Friedman, Providence Equity Partners, Putnam, Quadrangle, and Thomas H Lee Partners.
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ADB for Turin HD trialAdvanced Digital Broadcast is participating in a public broadcast pilot by RAI to provide live high-definition television (HDTV) coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Following RAI’s first HDTV MPEG2 based experiment, during the Italia ’90 Football World Cup, this new initiative will see HDTV distributed using MPEG4 encoding, to ADB set-top boxes located in various public locations throughout the City of Turin and the Olympic Mountain. ST, Comteck Video Enterprise, Panasonic and Tandberg will also supply technology to this valuable demonstration illustrating the future of digital television.
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NDS and DiBcom have collaborated to create a DVB-H software development kit that integrates the required elements for conditional access (CA) implementation in DVB-H receivers. DiBcom offers a reference design based on its DVB-H DIB7000-H integrated circuit that comes complete with software drivers for most mobile handset platforms including Windows Mobile 2005. This software can now be provided with a special code to customers so that it enables the implementation of a DVB CBMS compliant descrambling of encrypted live Mobile TV content, compatible with NDS mVideoGuard conditional access implementation.
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Arabsat and CETel GmbH a provider of Teleport & Satellite Services, announced the start of a new and joint satellite service from CETel's Teleport in Germany. The new DVB/SCPC Internet via satellite service started from CETel's high-power C-Band transponder on Arabsat 2B at 30,5° East in order to offer1- and 2-way broadband Internet services for the African and Middle east market and the possibility for dedicated connections for big communication carriers between the Middle East and Africa into the European fibre network.
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Verizon: we’re after cable
MSN building content mountain
Aussie pay-TV misses drama spend target
FCC backs programme choice
2.6m DVRs by 2010
Oprah for XM
Kreatel for Hull IPTV
Ortikon for Finnet
Arris, NTL test 100MBVerizon: we’re after cable
The chairman and CEO of US telco Verizon has pledged to spend billions of dollars building out a fibre network to compete with cable companies. "No one should ever doubt our resolve. That would be a huge mistake," Seidenberg said.
Ivan Seidenberg, speaking at the Media Summit New York conference, was responding to Brian Roberts, head of Comcast who said that Verizon was spending "gobs of money" on its FiOS television offering and would ultimately fail to win significant market share in video.
"Customers will decide if we're doing the right thing," Seidenberg said, adding that the company has already done a good job of adding high-speed data and video customers in the few markets where it has already launched FiOS. "People love the product. Cable companies are vulnerable."
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MSN building content mountain
The newly recruited new general manager of MSN has promised to increase investment as part of a renewed push by the software maker into media and entertainment services.
John Nicol, who once headed MSNBC's Web site, joined Microsoft in November to begin his current role. Nicol said the investment will go into partnerships, internal development "and acquisitions if we need it. We will expand much more into entertainment," Nicol said. "Microsoft is literally investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build out our entertainment."
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Aussie pay-TV misses drama spend target
From Rose Major in Melbourne
Australia’s pay-television drama channels have fallen some way short of the 10 per cent of their total programming spend they are required to put into domestic production.
Between them, the 17 eligible channels spent A$15.9 million of their total A$189.8 million on new Australian and New Zealand-made programming between July 2004 and July 2005
But under complicated rules, the channels can nominate to hold some of the spend over until next year, so avoiding censure by the regulator.
In 2001-2002, the only year in which the quota has been met during the last five years, new drama spend was A$21 million, out of a total of A$205.8 million.
Eligible channels include Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, Hallmark Channel, The Disney Channel, Fox 8, Fox Kids/Classics, and UKTV.
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To no one’s surprise, the FCC's a la carte report has proposed that consumers could be better off underthe system. The report also explored several a la carte options consumers and industry companies could consider when studying programme choice.
The FCC report also took aim at what it calls "mistaken calculations" in a 2004 study on a la carte conducted by Booz Allen, which was originally submitted by the cable industry for commission consideration. The Media Bureau said the Booz Allen Study failed to net out the cost of broadcast stations when calculating the average cost per cable channel under a la carte. As a result, the study overstated the average price per cable channel by more than 50 percent.
The report said the current industry practice of bundling programming services may drive up retail prices, making video programming less affordable and keeping some consumers from subscribing to a pay-TV service.
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2.6m DVRs by 2010
IMS Research estimates that by the end of 2005, over 2.6 million households in Europe were using a DVR by 2010 it believes this figure will be 41m . Growth is expected to come primarily from operator deployments of integrated DVRs, although DTT and FTA satellite DVRs will make a significant contribution to the total market.
Before 2005, the only successful DVR story in Europe consisted of Sky+ in the UK. In 2005, various pay-TV operators, including Sky Italia, Telewest, NTL, Viasat, Casema, and Premiere, launched or announced plans to launch a DVR service.
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Oprah for XM
Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Radio and XM Satellite Radio announced an exclusive, three-year agreement to launch "Oprah and Friends," a channel that will become part of the satellite radio service's programming line up. "Oprah and Friends will debut in September and feature a broad range of original programming from Harpo Radio including regular segments hosted by popular personalities from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and O-The Oprah Magazine and an exclusive original weekly reality radio show with Winfrey and Gayle King.
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Kreatel for Hull IPTV
Kreatel Communications has been selected to supply set-top boxes, software platform and development kits for STREAM, a pioneering on-demand IPTV project in Hull.
STREAM will launch in spring 2006 with two channels. Learning STREAM gives pupils and parents access to on-demand video-based learning materials that support the schools’ curriculum. Video materials will be broadcast into school classrooms and into homes, packaged with support materials and assessments. Seven schools are part of the first phase of Learning STREAM, with childrens’ centers, adult education venues and Further Education colleges scheduled to be added later.
Business STREAM will enable small and medium sized enterprises to promote their products and services online through tailor-made company profiles. The channel will also provide coverage of local business events and celebrate good news stories. Health and Community channels will be added to STREAM over the next two years.
The services are run by Broadband Capital Ltd a not-for-profit company established by Hull City Council in June 2005 to develop and deliver innovative approaches to public service delivery using IPTV. The company’s local on-demand television service, STREAM, uses advanced codecs to deliver video-rich public services into 2,000 homes.
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Ortikon for Finnet
Ortikon Interactive has delivered its ORTIKON ACE IPTV Middleware to the Finnish telecom and MSO operator Finnet Group. The delivery consists of a large-scale IPTV Middleware system with an expandable set of iTV services. The system utilizing Kreatel's IP STBs has already been operative since the beginning of February. This IPTV solution also complements the previously deployed ORTIKON ACE MHP Platform in Finnet's cable television network and now extends interactive TV services to the operator’s broadband network.
At the first stage Finnet is providing IPTV services in three geographical areas of their network covering a customer base of 220, 000 households. The services consist of dozens of TV-channels and several types of interactive services like Electronic Program Guide, e-mail, pay-tv, news and information services.
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Arris, NTL test 100MB
ARRIS and NTL, the UK’s leading consumer broadband provider, announced field trials of a 100 Mb/s ultra speed data service using the ARRIS FlexPath channel bonded solution incorporated in its Cadant C4 CMTS and Touchstone Wideband Modem.
Leveraging off the ARRIS FlexPath wideband channel bonding technology, NTL is able to demonstrate a variety of innovative services on its cable network that customers could access simultaneously, something which would simply not be possible at today’s bandwidths. These services include the ultra fast downloads of large media files; security services including closed circuit television; inexpensive video conferencing; internet-based gaming; and the multicast streaming of multiple high definition television channels. Using the FlexPath 100 Mb/s solution, these and other IP services can be delivered over existing cable networks using readily available home networking devices.
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