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Our Latest Issues
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Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
Tuesday Mobile ads ‘irritate’
Spain's TV soccer under threat
Regional standards in mobile?
Hughes to buy Gilat?
BBC selling Resources
Hytner for Top Up
Premier League live on mobileAdvertisements on mobile internet and TV services are "irritating" for consumers, according to new research from Universal McCann. The survey covered 9,500 people with a mobile phone and an internet connection in 21 countries from the UK to Mexico. Two out of three respondents owned a portable music or media player, 45% had a laptop, while 28% used a portable gaming machine.
Tom Smith, research manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the research showed that the traditional rules of advertising apply. "People like something that provides a benefit such as access to content, things like sponsorship, branded content, giving stuff away like Coca-Cola gave away songs on iTunes. People always complain about things that are interruptive - it still works in traditional media but in this environment consumers have so much choice where they source content from and if it detracts from the experience they will go elsewhere."
Branded content and opt-in Bluetooth downloads are better ways to reach the millions of people worldwide using portable gadgets such as phones, music players and games devices, the study suggests.
In the US voice calls still account for 65% of mobile phone usage and data only 20%, while in the UK 50% of all phone usage is for data - particularly text messaging - and only 40% for voice. Japan had the highest usage of data services, with voice calls accounting for only 24% of mobile phone usage.
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Spain's TV soccer under threat
From David Del Valle in Madrid
The conflict between the TV production company Mediapro and Spain's largest pay-TV group Sogecable over football TV rights threatens to "switch off" the TV transmission of the Spanish football League for the present 2007-2008 season.
Two weeks before the National Championship begins, both parties continue clashing, in spite of Mediapro's attempt to open negotiations with Sogecable. Mediapro claims to have the rights to 8 football teams whereas Sogecable has the rights to the rest. In the meantime, football teams are hopeful of getting yet more money from the battle.The fight for the football rights broke out when Mediapro announced the rights to most of the Spanish football teams from 2009-2010 season. Sogecable launched legal actions against the production company claiming for E40 million damages.The importance of the fight was underlined as it was revealed three out of four pay-TV clients subscribe to a pay-TV service to watch football. According to a report by a Spanish University, football is the main driving force behind pay-TV subscriptions. 78 per cent of pay-TV clients engage in a pay-TV service mainly to watch football, above all in male's case.
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Regional standards in mobile?IMS forecasts mobile will come down to a regional split between DVB-H and MediaFlo and others. It says over the last few months, various market developments have spawned a new dynamic in the broadcast mobile TV marketplace. With the European Commission favoring DVB-H as the Pan-European broadcast mobile TV standard, AT&T abandoning Modeo and DVB-H in favor of MediaFLO, and Crown Castle’s subsequent divestiture of Modeo’s spectrum, the lines defining a strong regional base for various standards are becoming clear.
IMS Research is forecasting that by 2011 the Americas region will account for 60% of worldwide FLO subscribers. Similarly, Europe is forecast to claim 61% of worldwide DVB-H / DVB-SH subscribers. Other standards, such as T-DMB and ISDB-T, are also expected to become increasingly region-specific between 2007 and 2011, with an increasing number of these standards’ subscribers coming respectively from Korea and Japan.
Anna Hunt, Research Director at IMS Research, comments, “Operator and government decisions about which mobile TV standard to deploy in each country or region depend on a number of variables including spectrum availability, existing cellular and DTT infrastructure, market needs, and national political and economic interests. This has resulted in a situation where in certain regions, different standards gained a distinct advantage in building the consensus required to deploy a broadcast network, thereby gaining the first-mover advantage so key in a standards war.”
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Hughes to buy Gilat?Reports from an Israeli newspaper said Hughes is bidding to buy Gilat for $12 per share. The bid reflects a price of $465 million. Gilat operates in the U.S. through its subsidiary Spacenet, which reported an upswing in business this quarter. Assuming Gilat's board of directors decides to accept the offer, the transaction will need approval of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
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BBC selling Resources
BBC is selling its studio facilities, including cameras at Elstree, home to soap operas EastEnders and Holby City, in the latest effort to cut costs. BBC Resources generated revenue of £125m (E182m) and operating profit of £5m in 2006-07 and the BBC said it had already received several expressions of interest from trade buyers and private equity firms.
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Jim Hytner, former marketing executive with Sky, ITV and C5, has been hired as commercial director of Top Up TV. It is a return to television for Hytner after three years at Barclays Bank.
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Premier League live on mobile
A Barclays Premier League match was shown simultaneously live on TV, PC and mobile. “Viewers could follow Wigan vs Middlesbrough live at home, at work or on the go with live coverage on Sky Sports (in standard or high definition), skysports.com and Sky Mobile TV” said Sky.
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Thursday 16th August 2007Witness lists out for YouTube case
Sirius streamed to stereos
DirecTV: broadband powerline
Mobile UGC revenues to rise tenfold by 2012
Telefónica launches DTH service in Brazil
J. Murdoch £4m bonus
J:COM updates subs
Conde Nast Easy Living on You Tube
RTL selects DataMiner
Witness lists out for YouTube case
Court filings of the witnesses to be called in the YouTube v Viacom copyright battle show the video site wants Viacom contracted comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose programmes were once among the most viewed on YouTube, to give testimony.
The two hosts of the Viacom hits ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ were listed as numbers three and four out of 32 people called by YouTube to give depositions in Viacom's case against it and parent Google. Viacom Executive Chairman Sumner Redstone is number eight on YouTube's list. Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman and general counsel Michael Fricklas top the list. At the head of Viacom's list are Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.
Viacom sued Google and YouTube in March after failing to reach a distribution agreement. Viacom said YouTube carried the entertainment company's programs on its site without permission. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Viacom clips, many of which feature the two comedians, have been removed from the Web's top online video service. At the time, Viacom said its Comedy Central shows were among the most viewed video clips on YouTube's service. Before the suit, Colbert had even urged fans to make him a star on sites like YouTube.
Google has said it abides by existing laws that protect Internet services from the content uploaded by users, so long as it promptly takes down copyrighted materials that were placed there without permission after being notified.
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Sirius streamed to stereos
Sirius Satellite Radio is making reception easier on home-based radios. The company is to announce that it has struck a deal with Sonos for Internet streaming most Sirius channels through home stereo systems.
Sonos has for years been selling a wireless, multiroom system for playing consumers' entire digital collection of songs throughout their homes, with hand-held controllers that allow different music in different rooms. Sonos has shipped 200,000 units of its product. Sonos is compatible with RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Apple's iTunes, Napster and Microsoft's Zune.
"Working with innovators such as Sonos is important to our ongoing strategy of delivering our content beyond the car," said Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin, who is in the midst of trying to merge Sirius with its rival, XM Satellite Radio.
Sirius sells radio units for the home, as well as portable units, though some complain that it's an inelegant solution because of line-of-sight issues between antenna and satellite. Sonos, operating from the Internet, has no such issues. The Sirius-Sonos connection will cost Sirius subscribers, who pay $12.95 per month, an extra $2.99 after a 30-day free trial
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DirecTV and Current Group have struck a wholesale distribution agreement that will enable DirecTV to offer its customers Current’s BPL (Broadband Over Powerline) high-speed Internet service and VoIP services at the end of 2007/beginning of 2008. DirecTV customers will be able to access the Internet by plugging a BPL modem into virtually any outlet in their home. The increased upload speed is particularly important as users rely on greater speeds to play interactive games or send significant volumes of digital content through the Internet.
Under the terms of the agreement, DirecTV will have access to Current’s BPL network, initially in the Dallas/Fort Worth BPL network that will cover approximately 1.8 million homes and businesses over the next several years. DirecTV will be able to market a bundle that includes DirecTV high-speed Internet and VoIP services to its residential customers. The deal also provides DirecTV the ability to add other geographic markets as Current builds out its network.
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Mobile UGC revenues to rise tenfold by 2012
Social networking services will dominate a burgeoning market for mobile user-generated content, according to a new report from Juniper Research.
Globally, end-user generated revenues from social networking, dating and personal content delivery services will increase from $572m in 2007 to more than $5.7bn in 2012, with social networking accounting for 50 per cent of the total by the end of the forecast period.
According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, even though social networking sites are in their infancy, the exponential growth experienced by a number of mobile service providers – in some cases achieved primarily through viral marketing seems to affirm that there is huge potential in this area. “The key challenge now is for those providers to monetise that interest,” he said.
Holden added that, in the medium term, the highest levels of growth could well be experienced in developing markets with limited fixed broadband access. "In these markets, the mobile phone is becoming the predominant means by which people access the Internet. Hence, the overwhelming majority of online social networking will be conducted via the handset rather than the PC."
Other findings from the report suggest that the volume of downloads from mobile personal content delivery sites such as SeeMeTV are expected to rise from less than 200m in 2007 to more than 9bn in 2012.
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Telefónica launches DTH service in Brazil
From Branislav Pekic in RomeSpain’s Telefónica has officially launched its digital satellite TV service in Brazil, which forms part of a new triple-play offering - Telefónica Trio.
The cheapest package - ‘Essencial’ (Basic) - includes a broadband Internet connection, free local calls on the fixed network and a pay-TV package with 18 channels.
The channels are: A&E, BandNews, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, Discovery Kids, Disney Channel, E!, ESPN, Fox, Fox Life, MTV Brasil, National Geographic, People+Arts, Sony, TCM Classic Hollywood, TNT, VH-1 and Warner Channel. Initially it will be offered at a promotional price of US$35, after which the monthly subscription free will increase to US$59.35. The most expensive package, called ‘Total’, offers unlimited broadband and all the premium movie channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc), and costs US$165 during the promotional period.
Viewers will also be able to select six other thematic ‘mini packages’, each of them costing US$6 each. In some areas, Telefónica will offer the pay-TV package via the cable and MMDS network of TVA, at the same prices.
However, one of the major problems faced by Telefónica is the lack of channels from Globosat, the largest content producer in the country. Both cable and broadband operator Net and DTH platform Sky Brasil carry all 13 pay-TV channels produced by the subsidiary of the TV Globo network.
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The BSkyB chief executive, James Murdoch, has received a cash bonus of almost £4m (E5.79m) following the achievement of operational targets over the last three years. The sum comes on top of the near-£3m remuneration package Murdoch received for the year to the end of June. The payout relates to the vesting of shares that Murdoch received in August 2004 and November 2005 under BSkyB's Long Term Incentive Plan.
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J:COM updates subsJupiter Telecommunications, has announced that the total subscribing households as of July 31, 2007 served by J:COM’s 23 managed franchises reached approximately 2.71 million, up 477,200, or 21.4 per cent since July 31, 2006.
The increase is attributed to growth of the subscribing households in existing service areas and the addition of newly consolidated franchises. Combined revenue generating units (RGUs) for cable television, high-speed Internet access and telephony services reached 4.72 million, up 821,600 or 21.1 per cent since July 31, 2006. The bundle ratio (average number of services received per subscribing household) stood at 1.75 as of July 31, 2007 compared to 1.75 as of July 31, 2006, including Cable West Inc.
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Conde Nast Easy Living on You Tube
Conde Nast Interactive has announced the launch of an Easy Living channel on YouTube. The channel will host a range of short cookery videos fronted by David Herbert, Easy Living magazine's food editor, all of which are easy-to-follow recipe demonstrations.
The move follows the launch of Vogue, Glamour and Brides on video-sharing site. Since going live in mid-June, Vogue has received more than 230,000 video views, and Glamour just over 194,000.
Abigail Chisman, general manager for Conde Nast Interactive, said, "We're keen to capitalise on this premier destination for online video as a platform for our brands.”
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RTL selects DataMiner
Skyline Communications, supplier of multi-vendor network management solutions, announces that Broadcasting Centre Europe (BCE) signed a contract for the supply of a comprehensive DataMiner NMS platform to manage its entire technical infrastructure end-to-end. The DataMiner platform will integrate more than 60 different types of devices and systems from various vendors, and is unique in its kind as it will span across different BCE departments, including broadcast, terrestrial transmission, IT and Telecom. The DataMiner platform will enable BCE to gradually consolidate its network management needs into a single platform, offering a broad range of professional applications such as alarming, trending, reporting, correlation, automation, notification.
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Half UK homes ready for switchover
Portuguese cable TV subscribers close to 2m
Time Warner Look Back service
Spain prepares for mobile TV launch
Green light for German mobile TV venture
DirecTV delivers NFL
SINA and Nimbus score Premiership football
Neptuny content recommendation system for IPTV
Vision TV chooses NDS solutions
Widevine granted patent
Technetix German branch
Half UK homes ready for switchoverHalf of all UK households have now converted all their TVs to digital, according to fresh research. The Ofcom/Digital UK Tracker survey also shows a steady increase in public awareness and understanding of switchover, which begins in Whitehaven, Cumbria in October and then rolls out across the entire country, finishing in 2012. Every household will need to make sure all their TVs are capable of receiving a digital signal, when analogue services are closed down.
The survey of more than 2,400 households found that 50 per cent of households surveyed reported that all their television sets were digital; 87 per cent of respondents were aware of switchover, the highest level recorded to date; 66 per cent understood how to prepare for switchover, up 25 percentage points year-on-year.
The report follows publication in June of Ofcom’s latest digital television progress report showing more than four out of five homes had digital television. Multichannel conversion was 81.7 per cent and digital TV penetration (excluding analogue cable) stood at 80.5 per cent . For the first time, Ofcom reported that more than half of all TV sets in the UK (51 per cent) are now digital.
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Portuguese cable TV subscribers close to 2m
From Branislav Pekic in RomeAt the end of June, in Portugal there were 1.897 million subscribers of pay-TV services, distributed by cable or satellite, up 6.5 per cent on the same period in 2006 and 0.9 per cent higher on the previous quarter.
Figures published by Portuguese telecom regulator Anacom show that pay-TV subscribers represent around 34.4 per cent of households, a 2.1 per cent increase of the penetration rate, year-on-year. Out of the total pay-TV clients, 76.5 per cent subscribe to cable TV services, which had 1.5 million subscribers, up 3.8 per cent on the same period a year earlier (a net addition of 53.000). The percentage of cable subscribers in relation to the Portuguese population is 13.7 per cent, up 0.2 per cent percentage points on the previous quarter.
During the second quarter of the year, the distribution of cable TV subscribers per region remained practically unchanged, with the Lisbon region concentrating 49.2 per cent of total cable TV subscribers.
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Time Warner Look Back serviceMedia giant Time Warner is set to offer its cable customers a free recording feature for their televisions--one that will not allow them to skip commercials.
The service, called Look Back, will let cable customers watch certain shows after their original broadcast in the same way a DVR does, but without an extra monthly fee, and with the fast-forwarding function wholly disabled.
Time Warner Cable plans to start offering Look Back in October in South Carolina and then gradually introduce it around the US.
Spain prepares for mobile TV launch
From David del Valle in MadridThe Spanish Government is finalising the regulation of the mobile TV market to be completed by the beginning of September that will pave the way for the launch of around 20 mobile TV channels.
According to the Administration's plan, one multiplex will be designated for mobility TV, whose content will be accessible to mobile phones, portable computers or PDAs. A public tender will be called to award the licence to operate the network (with potential bidders such as Axion, Abertis or even cellcos -Telefonica, Vodafone or Orange - whose content will be provided by different companies only needing an administrative authorisation.
So far, several mobile TV pilots have been implemented throughout the country, with results indicating that the service was used an average of 16 to 25 minutes per day, watching mainly music clips and traditional TV broadcasts.
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Green light for German mobile TV ventureGermany's Federal Cartel Office has given the go ahead to Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile plans to set up a mobile television joint venture. The companies plan to base the venture on the DVB-H standard mobile TV technology.
Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile plan to work together on technology and on content procurement, but marketing is to be carried out by the individual companies and possibly by contracting providers.
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DirecTV NFL (National Football League) Sunday Ticket customers who subscribe to the SuperFan option will now have the entire weekly line-up of live NFL games available via web-stream to their PC or laptop computer during the 2007 NFL regular season.
In addition, DirecTV’s new Supercast service will provide NFL SuperFan customers the ability to receive in-progress highlights from NFL games on demand via their mobile phones. NFL Sunday Ticket mobile will offer highlights along with complete scores and clock updates from every game.
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SINA and Nimbus score Premiership footballChina online media company SINA and global sports distributor Nimbus Sport have obtained broadcasting rights for the much coveted football matches of the English Premier League.
Effective immediately, Chinese football fans will be able to watch English Premier League matches live either via paid TV or the Internet. As the availability of paid TV is limited in China, SINA presents users with more options by offering live, online broadcast of the games.
SINA's Broadband will carry live, online coverage of all 1,140 English Premier League matches for the next three seasons lasting until 2010. Web users will be able to subscribe on an annual, monthly, and per-game basis. In addition, SINA Sport Channel’s in-depth coverage will also feature highlight packages on a free-of-charge basis. Separately, SINA also obtained the rights to provide live, online broadcast of the Italian Serie A professional football league in China.
Nimbus Sport will market its mobile and Internet rights to countries across the globe- including Japan, Korea, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Brazil and New Zealand.
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Neptuny content recommendation system for IPTVNeptuny, a player in the IPTV sector, is launching ContentWise, a predictive content recommendation system for IPTV operators that will help viewers select the right content to suit their tastes and requirements. ContentWise generates recommendations for media content tailored to individuals’ preferences based on user ratings and content metadata1 enabling them to quickly find suitable content.
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Vision TV chooses NDS solutions
NDS, provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, has inked an agreement with Vision TV, a DTH satellite pay-TV operator based in Kiev, Ukraine. Vision TV is the first operator to be awarded a licence by the Ukrainian government for DTH broadcasting. NDS will provide Vision TV with VideoGuard conditional access and MediaHighway middleware, as well as an electronic programme guide. The platform includes the latest generation MPEG-4 compression via satellite.
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Widevine granted patentWidevine Technologies, provider of downloadable content protection, forensic watermarking and digital copy protection solutions, has confirmed that the Korean Intellectual Property Office has issued a new patent which provides intellectual property protection for use of Widevine Cypher Virtual SmartCard technologies to enable separable security of multimedia content.
The new patent is intended to provide a licensed downloadable security solution for content encryption, transaction processing, conditional access, rule-based rights and entitlements as well as flow control to include time shifting, trick play and progressive downloads.
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Technetix German branchTechnetix Group, the pan-European broadband engineering and supply chain solutions provider, has opened its new branch in Germany, making it the twelfth country worldwide where the company has local presence. This move comes just two weeks after Technetix announced its new division Technetix Americas, and it continues the company’s expansion plans to provide services to clients worldwide.
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Kofler quits Premiere
ISPs warn on iPlayer use
Liberty as credit bites
Kids know they shouldn’t download
Google shuts video service
Georg Kofler, chief executive of German pay-TV company Premiere AG, will leave at his own request by the end of the month and be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Michael Boernicke. Premiere said Kofler was leaving the company he rebuilt out of the ruins of Leo Kirch’s media empire to pursue interests outside the media sector after renegotiating Premiere’s rights to broadcast Bundesliga soccer.
Kofler sold all his remaining shares, representing 1.25 per cent of the company, through the market last week, Premiere said. The stake would have been worth around E23m.
Kofler said ”It makes sense for me to hand over responsibility to my successor before these crucial decisions are taken. I think the time is right for a change of leadership at Premiere now.”
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ISPs warn on iPlayer use
Leading UK internet service providers are warning they may restrict customers’ access to the BBC’s new iPlayer service unless the corporation contributes to the cost of streaming videos over the internet. Tiscali, BT and Carphone Warehouse have raised concerns that the iPlayer, which allows viewers to watch TV shows over the internet, will put too much strain on their networks if it becomes popular among a mass audience.
“The internet was not set up with a view to distributing video. We have been improving our capacity, but the bandwidth we have is not infinite,” said Mary Turner, chief executive of Tiscali UK. “If the iPlayer really takes off, consumers accessing the internet will get very slow service and will call their ISPs to complain.”
ITV and Channel 4 have also launched internet players and new media companies such as Joost are hoping to create businesses around on-demand television over the internet.
Turner said that unless they could agree a strategy with the BBC to share network costs, Tiscali would have to restrict users’ access to the iPlayer. This practice of “traffic shaping” is already used by Tiscali and several other internet companies to manage network traffic by giving lower priority to users who download large music, video or games files at peak times.
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Liberty as credit bitesLiberty has about $5bn to spend on acquisitions, John Malone’s international cable group said, heightening expectations that it could play a role in the delayed auction of Virgin Media.
Mike Fries, Liberty Global chief executive said it had “ample liquidity”, and the UK cable group was “something we are exploring, or should explore.” The delay to the Virgin Media auction, announced this week in the face of volatile credit markets, meant there was “not much to say” about the likelihood of Liberty Global’s participation, he added, but the group is understood to be considering whether to partner with another bidder given the scale of the target.
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Kids know they shouldn’t download
Children in Europe are aware of the risks of illegal downloading, but often rationalize their act by saying that everyone -- including their parents -- is doing it, according to a major European Commission survey.
Other excuses included: the download is for personal and private purposes; the Web sites presumably remunerate the artists; claims of harm inflicted on artists lack credibility; and DVDs and CDs are simply too expensive.
Almost all of the children surveyed in the 27 European Union member countries as well as in Norway and Iceland said they expect to continue downloading. They also said the risk of downloading a virus was far more dissuasive than the risk of legal proceedings.
The survey results found that most kids use the Internet several times a day and, while Internet use is to some extent limited by parents, most own their own mobile phones, the use of which is largely unsupervised.
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Google shuts video service
Google is shutting down a service that sold and rented online video, ending a 19-month experiment doomed by the proliferation of free clips on other Web sites.
The decision underscores Google's intention to concentrate on developing an advertising format to capitalize on the popularity of online video. Google already makes most of its money from ads, but most of those are static, text-based messages posted alongside search results and other written content on the Web.
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Monday 13th August
NBC, News Corp selling 10% of TV site?
Ofcom OKs UWB
Video downloads not popular
EchoStar up
LG Freeview Playback
Lumerias.com Opens
Ensemble for Starfish
NBC, News Corp selling 10% of TV site?
NBC Universal and News Corp. are reported to be considering selling 10 per cent of their jointly owned, but yet to be named or launched, online-video-distribution venture to private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners for $100 million.
The cash will be used to build and market the venture, which is scheduled to launch this autumn as an outlet for ad-supported and pay-per-view programming from more than a dozen networks and film studios. NBC and News had been expected to spend about $100 million setting up and marketing the venture.
Much of the programming for the venture, temporarily called New Site, will come from networks associated with the two companies, including the NBC network and News Corp.'s Fox network.
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UK’s Ofcom has removed the requirement for UWB devices to have a licence to use the wireless spectrum. Ultra-Wideband, which can be used to connect devices in the home.
It could also be used to wirelessly link satellite dishes or cable TV connections to set-top boxes, doing away with the need for cables to be poked through walls and run around skirting boards. Sky is understood to be looking at whether UWB could be integrated into its equipment.
UWB can operate over distances of up to 30 metres. Japanese electronics manufacturers are already producing modems that use UWB, while Cambridge-based chip maker ARM Holdings has deals with several companies that plan to make UWB devices.
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Video downloads not popularA new survey from Parks Associates has found that few consumers in the U.S. are satisfied with the videos they download from the Internet. Just 16% say the selection of videos available online is good, and only 13% say video downloads are sold at a reasonable price. Most tellingly, fewer than one in five consumers downloading video say they plan to download videos again
in the future.
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EchoStar upEchoStar Communications Corporation reported total revenue of $2.76 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, an 11.9 percent increase compared with $2.47 billion for the corresponding period in 2006.
Net income totalled $224 million for the quarter compared with $169 million in 2006.
EchoStar's DISH Network service added approximately 170,000 net new subscribers during the second quarter, ending the quarter with approximately 13.585 million subscribers to become the nation's third largest pay-TV provider.
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LG Freeview PlaybackLG Electronics becomes the first manufacturer to receive Group 2 Freeview Playback certification for its upcoming Time Machine LCD and plasma TV range. LG’s Freeview Playback accreditation was achieved after functional specifications were met.
Developed by the Digital Television Group (DTG), the industry association for digital television in the UK, the testing criteria ensure product quality for consumers.
James Atkins, marketing manager for LG brown goods comments, ‘As consumer lifestyle becomes more and more hectic, our new range of Freeview Playback certified Time Machine TVs ensures that favourite programmes will never be missed. It allows you to fit TV around your life, whether you press record when you go out on the town, or pause a live game whilst getting a beer, you_ll never have to miss a thing.’
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The Germany-base service offers a solution to search and navigate the rapidly growing amount of online video. The system behind Lumerias.com processes all major video formats, including WindowsMedia, QuickTime and the popular Flash Video format. This enables the search engine's users to find videos from all kinds of sources and all major social video sites.
Lumerias.com says it is not a meta search-engine, this means Lumerias.com is based purely on original technology developed specifically for the task of
processing video data. The index is the result of continuous webcrawls and
holds in its current phase over two million searchable videos.
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Ensemble for StarfishThe Starfish Television Network gives exposure to non-profit organizations such as Children's Miracle Network, Rotary Club, Operation Smile, and Mothers Without Borders. It has now installed an SDI with embedded audio signal chain that relies heavily on Ensemble Avenue.
Andy Carleton, our new Production Engineer says “All of our national network feed goes through the Avenue frame. Client tapes are ingested into the 360 Systems MAXX server. The 360 server broadcast signal as well as a secondary signal path are both routed to an Avenue 5160 bypass protection switch. The secondary/backup feed into the 5160 is a Chyron ChyTV unit with a loop of graphics and music. The 5160 monitors audio presence, video threshold and video freeze. If the primary incoming signal drops below any of the parameters, the 5160 automatically selects the ChyTV as a secondary feed.”
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