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Our Latest Issues
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Tuesday
Friday 9th January
Microsoft’s Ballmer: convergence will save CE
Jail sentence for pirating Digital Plus
TF1 looks to shed France24 liability
Pace expects to hit targets, doubles customer base
Poland DTH overtakes cable
ITV joins Virgin catch-up
Broadband speeds slower than advertised
CompleteTV acquires CIMA
New Microsoft Mediaroom Anytime
Starz selects Tandberg
Turner gets the edge with Octoshape
Microsoft’s Ballmer: convergence will save CEMicrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer, taking over from Bill Gates in his first CES keynote, said one of the biggest areas of opportunity for the consumer-electronics industry - even given the current economic recession - is to converge the capabilities of PCs, phones and TVs.
"In the future you will be able to connect to information and people you care about instantly, across any of those screens." The TV has the most potential for evolution as an Internet-connected platform, according to Ballmer. "For more than 60 years the TV has been at the centre of the family entertainment experience," he said. "But the capabilities have largely remained the same. As TVs become more networked over the next few years, the boundary between the TV and the PC will dissolve."
Ballmer said HDTV displays will become cheaper, lighter and more portable, presenting a significant opportunity to link those into a broader set of information and applications: "Screens and displays will literally be everywhere."
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Jail sentence for pirating Digital Plus
David Del Valle in Madrid
A Spanish Court in the North of the Country has sentenced a hotelier to six months in jail and to pay E20,000 for pirating Sogecable-controlled pay-TV platform Digital Plus. It is the first jail conviction in the country, but, possibly not the last one as there are 15 legal proceedings started against 24 hotels for illegally distributing the Digital Plus signal. Many hotels or other commercial establishments are distributing the signal without authorisation. Over recent years Sogecable has made 260 claims against piracy.
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TF1 looks to shed France24 liabilityFrench broadcaster TF1 is discussing the sale of its 50 per cent stake in news channel France 24 with French authorities who are their partners. TF1 could receive about E2 million, significantly less than it had hoped to recoup. It would ‘sell’ the stake to government holding company Audiovisuel Exterieur de la France. The parties said that an agreement would be predicated on TF1 renewing a contract requiring it to support the continued development of the channel for a seven-year period.
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Pace expects to hit targets, doubles customer base
Set-top box maker Pace said it was confident in meeting City expectations for 2009, thanks to ongoing strong demand. The company, which confirmed it expected to meet 2008 forecasts, said it was continuing to take a prudent view of the market given the global economic downturn.
Pace had previously said that the strong dollar would hurt 2009 profit because more than 95 per cent of the components used in the group's boxes were priced in dollars.
CEO Neil Gaydon said the adoption of high definition and standard definition digital TV services had helped the company capture solid growth in the pay-TV market. "During the year Pace more than doubled in size and significantly grew its global customer base through organic development in our main markets of Europe, the Americas and Australasia; and through the acquisition of Philips set-top box and connectivity solutions business. We are pleased to have delivered this excellent performance against the macro environment that prevailed in 2008." Pace will announce its full 2008 results in March.
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Poland DTH overtakes cableThe number of DTH subscribers in Poland has exceeded the number of cable subscribers for the first time. According to figures from Wirtualne Media, there were a total of 4.7 million subscribers to DTH services as the end of December, over 40 per cent more than a year previous. The number cable homes in the country is estimated to be around 4.5 million.
The landmark was discovered following the publication of subscriber figures for Cyfrowy Polsat and Cyfra+, the two leading platforms.
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UK cable operator Virgin Media has secured a deal with ITV to show some of the broadcaster's programming through its on-demand service.
ITV will make 40 hours of its programming from channels ITV 1, 2, 3 and 4 available each week. Programmes will be available for seven days after they are broadcast. Some 500 hours of older comedies, documentaries and dramas also will be available through Virgin's programme library.
Virgin Media's on-demand service already offers BBC and Channel 4 programmes and has 3.5 million customers and averaged 45 million views per month in the third quarter of last year.
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Broadband speeds slower than advertisedThe average UK broadband speed for consumers is 3.6 Megabits per second (Mbit/s), sufficient for many applications but well below advertised speeds, regulator Ofcom has reported.
According to research based on 10 million separate tests of a range of suppliers' services, broadband speeds via DSL and cable vary by time of day due to the traffic levels on the network. Across the country, the speeds were slowest between 5 and 6pm on Sunday, when use of the Internet is at its highest, the report said.
CompleteTV, a UK company developing innovative set top technology for new generation Over-the-Top IPTV services, has announced the acquisition of the IPR and assets of CIMA Technologies. As an IPTV set top box developer, CIMA has been focused on both the IPTV and hospitality markets. CIMA has developed some highly competitive technology with its Elegance and Industria set top products and supporting software in the area of IPTV integrated web browsing and Adobe Flash Player user interfaces. The CIMA development team in China will enable CompleteTV to accelerate its Over-the-Top development plans and also ensure the company can achieve a greater number of custom developments for new and existing customers.
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New Microsoft Mediaroom AnytimeMicrosoft has unveiled Mediaroom Anytime, a new feature set for the Microsoft Mediaroom multimedia and IPTV platform that allows viewers to watch TV on their own time. The Mediaroom Anytime features take time-shifted TV to the next level, enabling viewers to access previously aired shows directly from the Interactive Program Guide or immediately restart currently airing shows without any preplanning or prior DVR recording. In addition, Microsoft announced that the Mediaroom platform has reached nearly 2.5 million subscriber homes worldwide, an increase of more than 1.5 million new connections in the past year alone.
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Starz selects TandbergTandberg Television, part of Ericsson, has revealed that Starz Entertainment has selected the next generation MediaPath Secure Content Delivery System to deliver the content for its on demand services. The upgrade provides Starz with DVB-S2 satellite delivery and other enhanced features, enabling Starz to deliver more content to its affiliates at faster rates. Starz On Demand, Encore On Demand, and MoviePlex On Demand provide hundreds of movies each month to subscribers viewing on cable, satellite, and broadband platforms.
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Turner gets the edge with OctoshapeTurner Broadcasting Systems (TBS) has. integrated the Octoshape Infinite Edge technology in their live stream offerings for both the 2008 elections and their live sports coverage. Octoshape provides TBS with an enhanced user experience by enabling high quality video with faster stream start times. Using the unique Throughput-Optimisation technology that lies at the heart of the Octoshape solution, streams start instantly and play for hours on end. The streams are available in multiple quality levels and automatically adapt to the network conditions at the edge, achieving the best possible experience for each individual viewer.
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Thursday 8th January
TV ads still outrank Web
Babelgum: "just ban Kangaroo"
Time Warner writes down $25bn
Blockbuster wants broadband deals
Sky Bet mobile
iPlayer delivers record performance
Motorola updates CCE
Rentrak audience measurement deal with NBC
LG Freesat TVs
Parsons for White House?
SlingPlayer Mobile and Slingbox HD
Sachs in at Volicon
TV ads still outrank WebA survey of 2,023 people for Deloitte’s Media Democracy report suggests TV advertising is twice as effective as online ads. Some 84 per cent of consumers said TV ads would influence them to buy a product - against just 45 per cent for online. So, despite advertisers getting more guarantees, monitoring and lower CPMs users still apparently find it easier to ignore web ads.
Some 64 per cent of respondents said any kind of Internet ads are more intrusive than newspaper ads and 26 per cent said they’re prepared to pay for web content just to avoid online ads. Half said they would click on web ads if they were targeted or offered free content. Against the assumption that web ads are more effective than newspaper ads - as testified by the migration of ad spend from print to web - respondents rated newspapers just as likely as online to influence their consumer habits, with 45 per cent saying it influences purchases, but magazine ads more effective, on 54 per cent.
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Babelgum: "just ban Kangaroo"Babelgum has called for the scrapping of the BBC/C4/ITV JV Kangaroo declaring any other option would breach Competition Commission rules. In its written response to the Commission’s suggested remedies to keep the JV legal, Babelgum says only one of the proposed options – banning the project - is realistic. Last month Kangaroo made its compromise proposals in response to the commission’s range of options, offering to give up the exclusive rights to its content. Kangaroo said two other proposals - reverting content rights back to producers and giving access to rivals - would make the project unworkable.
Babelgum highlighted the Commission’s concerns that UK VOD players could be disadvantaged when seeking syndication deals, saying Kangaroo’s rivals could be exploited through unrealistic prices for BBC, ITV and C4 content.
The Commission is working to February 8th deadline to make its final judgement on Kangaroo.
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Time Warner writes down $25bn
Time Warner announced it will record some $25 billion in write-downs for the fourth quarter, with nearly $15 billion of it coming from Time Warner Cable. Time Warner, which owns 85 per cent of the cable company but has been planning to spin off the stake to shareholders, said beyond the cable business, the write-downs will involve the falling value of its publishing and America Online units. The Time Warner Cable write-down reflects its cable franchising rights.It had been expected that Time Warner might have to admit it also paid too much for acquisitions other than its disastrous merger with AOL, as it still carried over $42.5 billion in goodwill on the books last year.
The latest write-downs come after Time Warner recorded nearly $100 billion in goodwill write-downs in 2002 as the tech bubble that fuelled AOL's purchase of Time Warner deflated.
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Blockbuster wants broadband dealsBlockbuster, the largest US movie rental chain, is open to collaboration with telecom companies such as Verizon and AT&T as it expands into the video-on-demand business, chief executive officer Jim Keyes said. "As we move toward video-on-demand and pay-per-view, Blockbuster is well positioned not only to compete on our own, but also to partner with others," Keyes told a Citigroup media conference.
Blockbuster in November rolled out a digital media player that allows customers to download high-definition quality movies to their TVs via broadband lines. Verizon and AT&T have begun offering packages of high-speed Internet and video along with phone services to help them compete better with cable service providers.
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Sky Bet mobileUK pay TV giant Sky is readying plans to offer Sky Bet as a mobile service, which will be an extension of the company’s existing online, interactive TV and telephone betting services. The service is set to launch later this month. BskyB is partnering with mkodo to roll out the service reports—mkodo already provides managed services to BBC, Turner Broadcasting and Rank Interactive (Blue Square). Back in September Sky signed with mfuse to run the service—that appears to have been called off.
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iPlayer delivers record performance
The BBC announced that iPlayer has delivered record end of year figures.
December 2008 saw 41million requests to view BBC TV programmes via BBC iPlayer, the biggest month since launch in December 2007. This compared to just over 35 million requests in November 2008. The total number of requests for the year now stands at 271 million (25 December 2007 to 25 December 2008). During the seven day period from Christmas Day to 31 December the total number of requests to view BBC TV programmes via BBC iPlayer was 8 million.
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Motorola updates CCEMotorola has launched a new update of its innovative Motorola Communications Convergence Engine (CCE), the software behind next-generation TV. The Storefront 1.0 update brings new options to the entire process of marketing and bundling IPTV, Internet and physical goods. The CCE update will also help network operators deliver services such as video and gaming that millions of consumers want, when they want them, to the device(s) of their choice.
Motorola CCE Storefront 1.0 is designed using the latest in IPTV technology. Storefront 1.0 enables IPTV operators to create personalized on-demand experiences for subscribers as well as the ability to offer new bundled services which include multimedia content. The resulting ‘storefront experience’ allows consumers to browse personalised catalogues of content via TV, web and mobile devices.
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Rentrak audience measurement deal with NBCRentrak has unveiled a multi-year agreement with NBC Universal (NBCU) to use Rentrak's Mobile Essentials service which has been in trial with NBCU Mobile since early 2008. The Mobile Essentials tool will allow NBCU Mobile access to timely data to continue to enhance NBCU's market leading performance.
Rentrak's Mobile Essentials system analyses trends and tracks massive amounts of data in hard-to-aggregate formats such as video clips, SMS messaging, video games and other mobile content in order to provide immediate answers to questions that have traditionally required fielding extensive market research and consumer panel studies.
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LG Freesat TVsLG has linked with the UK’s Freesat to launch products integrated with Freesat functionality, later this year. Though the venture will kick start with manufacturing digital TVs integrated with Freesat tuners, there are prospects for launching more Freesat-integrated products in future, LG noted.
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Parsons for White House?CNN was reporting that Richard Parsons, former chairman of CNN parent Time Warner, may be in line for Commerce Secretary in the Obama administration. Parsons is one of a dozen members of the Obama Economic Advisory Board, which is helping the President-elect come up with ideas to get the economy moving.
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SlingPlayer Mobile and Slingbox HDSling Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation, is demonstrating a version of SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone being developed for the iTunes store at this year's Macworld. Sling Media will deliver a version of SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone to Apple for certification in Q1.
Sling Media is also unveiling a prototype of the new SlingPlayer for Mac HD which allows Slingbox PRO-HD users to stream HD content to their Mac desktop or laptop computer. The new SlingPlayer for Mac HD is a web-based version of the SlingPlayer software that will be accessible from Sling.com, Sling Media's recently launched video entertainment web site.
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Sachs in at VoliconVolicon has confirmed the appointment of Andrew Sachs as senior director of marketing for the cable, IPTV, and mobile video operator industry. In his new role, Sachs will be responsible for developing the market for Volicon's Observer and Observer RPM solutions. Sachs has more than 18 years of experience in test and measurement solutions. Since 2005, he has served as service assurance solution owner in JDSU.
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Wednesday 7th January
BT defends Vision slow growth
No ads for France, strike looms
Zon Multimedia to launch 100 Mbps service
Orange triple-play get Canal+ satellite
Lionsgate steps in for TV Guide
US DTT vouchers hit limit
PCCW: last Li bid
Tudou sued over copyright infringement
HDTV in China gaining momentum
Samsung – Yahoo web TV
Ziggo places Arris order
Bouygues Telecom deploys Verimatrix
BT defends Vision slow growth
BT Vision CEO Dan Marks is convinced BT Vision "is a fantastically compelling service." While he agrees 350,000 sign ups is not many customers, but believes it compares well with the first two years of Sky or cable. "I feel the criticism of our growth is unjustified."Marks is sticking by the launch target of building a subscriber base of two to three million in three to five years, and last year BT said the service will hit three million by 2010. "We still feel we can stick by those projections. About 50 per cent of UK TV households have rejected Sky and cable," he says and believes they will warm to low cost pay-TV and VOD services – he refuses to state the ARPU of current Vision subscribers.
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No ads for France, strike loomsFrench viewers have for the first time watched prime-time television without advert breaks, as President Nicolas Sarkozy's media reforms get under way, but journalists at the national stations are threatening to strike.
Advertising is now banned on French public television between 20.00hrs and 0600hrs and will be phased out altogether by 2011. It is part of Sarkozy's move to shake up public broadcasting. He says his plan will improve the quality of programming but critics and unions say it is a power grab that will deprive state broadcasters of funds, they say it will lead to the ‘Berlusconiation’ of French TV, particularly given a new proposal to allow the President to appoint the head of national networks.
Sarkozy says the move will allow state-run channels to make better quality programmes because they will no longer have to attract large audiences in order to secure advertising revenue. The shortfall will be funded through a higher tax on advertisements aired on private channels and a new tax imposed on internet providers and mobile phone operators, the government says.
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Zon Multimedia to launch 100 Mbps service
From Branislav Pekic in RomePortugal’s Zon Multimedia is launching the Zon Net Wideband service, offering connection speeds of 100 Mbps by using a hybrid technology which combines coaxial cable and fibre optics.
Following a successful pilot in Lisbon, the service will be commercially launched for 200,000 households in Lisbon and Porto. Zon plans to make Net Wideband available to all households covered with the TV Cabo network by the end of 2009. For a monthly fee of E59.49, Zon Net Wideband offers 100 Mbps in download and 4 Mbps in upload, as well as unlimited traffic.
In order to achieve this performance, Zon introduced the EURODOCSIS 3.0 technology. The Wideband modem, according to Zon, already supports a future evolution to a fibre optic network. Users will be able to download movies in HD in only a few minutes and see the movie instantaneously.
Zon Multimedia currently has 1.5 million pay-TV subscribers, 450,000 internet users and 250,000 voice clients.
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Orange triple-play get Canal+ satelliteOrange and Canal+ have signed a multi-year agreement to allow Orange triple play customers who are not eligible for TV by ADSL to subscribe to Canal+ and/or Canalsat, as well as Foot+ by satellite.
In 2009, Orange triple play customers with satellite TV will be able to receive these offers directly on a single ADSL/satellite hybrid set-top box provided by Orange. A technical cooperation agreement between Orange and Canal+ Group will allow both partners to use the same (Astra) satellite resources. To broadcast its own channels, Orange also signed an agreement with SES Astra. The service that Orange TV is offering its triple play customers via the Astra satellite will be very similar to that available via ADSL.
As well as the bouquet of Orange TV channels and catch-up services, all Orange triple play subscribers to Canal+ and Canalsat bouquets will now be able to access Canal+ catch-up on demand and Canalsat on demand. These services, included in the subscription to Canal+ or Canalsat channels and already accessible via PC, will be available in 2009 directly on TV via the decoder supplied by Orange.
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Lionsgate steps in for TV Guide
In a surprise last minute move, Lionsgate has stepped in to snap up TV Guide Network and its web presence after the owners had agreed to sell to TV producer Allen Shapiro and One Equity Partners. The news sees owner Macrovision Solutions Corp. selling the company for $255 million to the Hollywood studio. The sale price is essentially the same as the previous deal. In a statement Macrovision president and CEO Fred Amoroso, says: "This transaction improves the probability and the timing of closing the transaction." Amoroso continues, "Throughout our divestiture process, speed, certainty to close and the overall terms of the transaction have been important considerations for us."
Lionsgate co-chairman and chief executive, Jon Feltheimer said "This is tremendous real estate, rarely available, that fits extremely well with our strategy of combining content creation, distribution and direct access to the consumer."
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The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) is putting new DTV-to-analogue converter box coupon applications on a waiting list, having already run up against its statutory maximum of $1.34 billion funding limit.
That means anyone down that list won't get their boxes in time for the Feb. 17 transition date. "On Sunday, Jan 4, NTIA hit our funding limit," acting NTIA head Meredith Baker told reporters. "Anyone who is requesting funds now will be put on a waiting list and will be mailed coupons on a first-come, first served basis."
The $40 coupons can be used to buy a converter box that allow analog-only over-the-air TV viewers to continue to receive a signal after the transition Feb. 17 date for the ending of full-power analogue TV.Those on the waiting list--there are currently 103,000 on the list--won't get the coupons until money is freed up from expired coupons, a tally of which is done weekly. Baker said that $14 million per week was being freed up in expired coupons.
Currently, NTIA is set up to distribute 51.5 million coupons, but that number could be 60 million by the end of the program March 31, Baker said. If so, even with all the money from expired coupons, NTIA might need some more money. As to converter box availability for all those viewers with coupons, Baker said that demand could outpace supply by 2.5 million if additional coupons were distributed, but also has said previously retailers have "generally kept pace" with demand and "would work to ensure inventory is available if additional coupons are to be distributed."
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PCCW: last Li bidRichard Li, chairman of PCCW, and his Chinese state-controlled partner have raised their offer to take the Hong Kong telecoms company private in an 11th-hour bid to win over disgruntled minority shareholders. Just before a meeting at which PCCW shareholders were expected to reject an initial buy-out proposal priced at HK$4.20 a share, Li and China Unicom, PCCW’s two largest shareholders, lifted their offer by 7.1 per cent to $2.2 billion, or HK$4.50 a share. The revised offer was final, they said. A vote on the new bid has been adjourned and is likely to take place in February.
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Tudou sued over copyright infringementOver 80 copyright holders including video portal Joy.cn, film distributor PolyBona Film, and record label Orange Sky Entertainment have formed an anti-piracy alliance, and are suing China’s largest video-sharing site Tudou.
In May 2008, Joy.cn filed suit against Tudou for unauthorised use of its video content, which Tudou resolved in November with an out-of-court settlement that included compensation to Joy.cn. In 2008, Tudou was repeatedly brought to court on copyright infringement charges for the unauthorszed use of hundreds of films and television series. In September last year, it launched its Hei Dou ("Black Bean") HD channel dedicated to broadcasting authorised content. Gary Wang, CEO of Tudou, stated that the site is now developing a new copyright verification system that will address copyright issues stemming from the upload of unauthorised content by users.
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HDTV in China gaining momentumAn IMS Research study has revealed that 46 million homes in twenty-five Chinese cities have converted from analogue to digital cable. While DTH is expected to serve the majority of HDTV households in the Asia Pacific region, cable in China is expected to be the dominant digital platform for the country by the end of 2009, passing 69 million households by that time. IMS Research forecasts that 3.2 million of these digital cable households will have the capability of viewing HDTV programming by the end of 2013.
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Samsung – Yahoo web TVSamsung and Yahoo have become the latest pairing to announce plans to launch a new web-based service for Samsung-branded TVs in the spring of 2009. Based on Yahoo's Widget Engine, the service will be available on select 2009 Samsung HDTVs and allow users to interact with a set of "TV Widgets" to complement and enhance the usual TV watching experience. These widgets include content from a range of Yahoo properties including Flickr, Yahoo News and Yahoo Weather along with third-party content from USA Today, YouTube, Showtime and others.Samsung's Yahoo Widget Engine TVs will be available in 13 countries in 2009, including the US, Canada, Mexico, UK and others.
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Ziggo places Arris orderArris has revealed that Ziggo, a major cable MSO in the Netherlands comprised of the former operators @HOME, Casema and Multikabel, has placed a large initial order for the Arris Touchstone TM702 series of DOCSIS 3.0-certified E-MTAs. Ziggo will use the in-home devices to market much faster Internet speeds along with carrier-grade Voice over IP service to the top tier of its over three million residential and business customers.
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Bouygues Telecom deploys VerimatrixVerimatrix, provider of content security technologies, has confirmed Bouygues Telecom as the latest network operator in France to deploy the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS) for IPTV. Bouygues Telecom is securing its MPEG-4 live broadcast and on-demand video content delivered via ASDL to the BBOX home gateway.
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Tuesday 6th January
‘Muted’ CES underway
Netflix, LG movies direct
TW, Viacom truce
ITV writes down Friends
BSNL launches IPTV in Haryana
CMMB trial in Hong Kong
Al Jazeera and Sony Ericsson mobile news
Intel and Adobe to extend Flash to TVs
Enensys and GoldSpot accelerate mass market Mobile TV
‘Muted’ CES underwayThe reality of the economic situation means this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, underway in Las Vegas, will be a relatively muted affair. The organisers are predicting attendance down over 10,000 on last year’s 141,000. The show's 2,700 exhibitors have taken considerably less space than last year's 3,000 exhibitors.
Jason Oxman of the Consumer Electronics Association said "A lot of companies are asking us for meeting rooms that haven't done so in the past." Companies are looking to do business at the show."
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Netflix and LG Electronics will soon introduce TV sets that can screen Netflix movies directly from the Web without an external box. Netflix, which is seeking to equip all home-entertainment screens with instant movie-viewing capability, also announced other partnerships, including one with Microsoft's Xbox 360 to embed the movie software in its game consoles.
Netflix subscribers who buy one of these devices can hook it up to their TVs to watch movies that can be downloaded from the Internet instantly, as part of their monthly rental plan. Subscribers can choose from about 12,000 movie titles and television episodes for instant viewing - an option the company introduced in 2007. Netflix's entire library consists of more than 100,000 titles.
The new high-definition LG televisions, which will be on view at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, are targeted at those Netflix customers who want the convenience of Internet-to-TV movies without the clutter of a set-top box or an additional DVD player.
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Time Warner Cable and Viacom have made an agreement that will allow TWC customers to continue to watch programming on Viacom's MTV Networks. TWC is expected to agree to pay a modest increase to Viacom in the new deal. The dispute arose after Viacom announced new fees for carrying its networks - adding up to $39 million a year on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars TWC is already paying to Viacom, according to TWC. Dudley described the 15 per cent overall increase in fees as "unreasonable," since programming rates are declining and the United States is facing terrible economic conditions.
According to Viacom, the new fees would amount to less than 2.5 per cent of what TWC generates from their average customer.
ITV writes down FriendsITV’s year end review of acquisitions has determined it will have to write down the value of Friends Reunited. Analysts argue the company could have made the contact site a leader in social networking but, instead, its audience has halved from 4.3 million beween 2007 and 2008. ITV paid £175 million (E220m) in 2005 for the business.
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BSNL launches IPTV in Haryana
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has launched IPTV services for its customers in the Haryana circle, in a bid to hold on to its falling landline subscribers. BSNL launched the service in Gurgaon, Faridabad and Ambala in association with Smart Digivision. The wireline subscriber base decreased to 38.05 million in the month of November 2008 against 38.22 million subscribers in October 2008.The Smart TV Group has entered into long term contracts with MTNL and BSNL for providing co-branded interactive video services to their customers in 54 large cities across India.
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CMMB trial in Hong KongHong Kong television station TVB has launched CMMB technology tests in Hong Kong, in cooperation with the State Administration of Radio Film and Television's (SARFT) Academy of Broadcasting Planning and Beijing-based CMMB equipment manufacturer Wiflare Technology. Wiflare is responsible for constructing the CMMB system, with broadcasts from Temple Hill to cover Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and Shatin. Five channels will be broadcast, three from TVB; the J2 paid channel, and the Jade and news channels.
Signal tests are to be carried out on an outdoor, in-door, and in-vehicle basis. Mobile phones, MP4 players, GPS devices and USB TV receivers were tested. The results found that clear and reliable signals could be received in all test areas.
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Al Jazeera and Sony Ericsson mobile news
The Al Jazeera Network and Sony Ericsson have formed a new partnership that will bring headline news straight to mobile phones. Headline news will be available in both English and Arabic. Several Sony Ericsson handheld devices currently on the market in the MENA region will have an Al Jazeera RSS feed preinstalled. Owners of the devices can request daily international news updates straight from the Al Jazeera Network through the RSS feed.
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Intel and Adobe to extend Flash to TVsAdobe Systems and Intel have revealed plans to collaborate on the development to port and optimise Adobe Flash technology for the Intel Media Processor CE 3100. The result is expected to provide consumers with richer and more seamless Web-based and video viewing experiences through advanced Intel-based cable set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, digital TVs and retail connected AV devices.
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Enensys and GoldSpot accelerate mass market Mobile TVEnensys Technologies and GoldSpot Media have successfully integrated their solution to enable Mobile TV service providers to deploy targeted and interactive advertising in DVB-H. Enensys DVB-H head-end technology and GoldSpot’s Cue Zones ad solution help Mobile TV service providers develop predictable and profitable advertising business cases to supplement subscription revenues.
Friday 2nd January
Viacom channels off TW Cable in dispute
Tiscali TV over in Italy
Harmonic buys Scopus
Viacom channels off TW Cable in dispute
Time Warner Cable subscribers may not have Viacom channels, including Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and 15 other networks for the New Year as they are set to go dark as part of a license agreement renewal dispute between the two companies.
Viacom asked Time Warner Cable for an increase of just under 25 cents per subscriber per month for carrying its 19 channels. The company justified the increase by saying its channels have been undervalued by Time Warner Cable. "Americans spend more than 20 per cent of their TV viewing time watching our networks, yet our fees amount to less than 2.5 per cent of what Time Warner generates from their average customer," said a Viacom statement.
In what is becoming a larger source of contention between MSOs and cable networks, Time Warner Cable cited the ubiquity of Viacom shows online as a reason for not valuing the networks as highly. Shows such as The Hills and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are available in full for free online.
"Given our audiences, digital is a great compliment to the linear, but in no way is it a replacement," said an MTV Networks spokesperson. "In fact, we've seen linear ratings increase across our networks as online usage has increased. We understand this is a sensitive issue for our affiliates and we have been exploring authentication technology to further reinforce our commitment to partnership."
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Tiscali TV over in Italy
Tiscali TV IPTV service will cease at the end of the year. The company has told subscribers the December fee be waived. The company has struggled to attract more than 50,000 subs since it failed to strike a pay-TV deal with Sky Italia. Instead it offered themed channels and ‘personalised’ or self-scheduled TV. The network will stop carrying the Italian Digital TV channels in mid-January. No reasons for the closure were given but as the third entrant and without compelling pay channels the service was not viable. The closure must throw further doubt on the future of the UK operation – a sale process to BSkyB stalled just before Xmas on price.
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Harmonic buys Scopus
Harmonic is acquiring Scopus Video Networks. The acquisition will extend Harmonic’s worldwide customer base and strengthen its market and technology leadership, particularly in international video broadcast, contribution and distribution markets.
Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by the Board of Directors of both companies, Harmonic will pay $5.62 in cash for each outstanding share of Scopus, representing an enterprise value of approximately $51 million, net of Scopus’ cash and short-term investments.
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