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Our Latest Issues
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Tuesday
Friday 6th March
Wall out at UKTV
Italian pay-TV revenues pass advertising
UKTV on Sky Player
YouTube and Universal mull music channel
VOD behavioural study
Sky Movies ‘unwatched’
Conax sees strong growth
Orange satellite success
Microsoft, NXP Windows Media for DVB-T2
Dialog Telecom selects Scopus
Wall out at UKTVMalcolm Wall, the chief executive of Virgin Media's content business, is leaving the business. His departure comes as Virgin Media is said to be preparing for the sell-off of its TV channels business. Virgin Media Television's 50 per cent stake in UKTV could also potentially be folded into a new commercial joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Channel 4. BBCW is the other partner has a buy out option if there is a third party bid.
Wall joined Virgin Media in 2006 to run its content business. This includes Virgin Media Television, owner of channels such as Living, Challenge, Trouble and Bravo, and housed the company's 50 per cent stake in the UKTV pay-TV joint venture with the BBC. Wall was also chairman of UKTV, which operates channels including Gold and Dave.
Wall joined Virgin Media from United Business Media, where he held the role of chief operating officer. He has also worked for ITV companies including Granada, Anglia and Southern.
City analysts have estimated that Virgin's TV assets could be worth more than £500 million (E560m) with the 50 per cent stake in UKTV, which includes channels such as Dave, Gold and Eden, valued at up to £350 million. However valuations are complicated by the BBC involvement and plummeting ad revenues. The same business under the Flextech name was withdrawn from sale when a reserve of £800 million wasn’t reached at the time of the NTL and Telewest merger.
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Italian pay-TV revenues pass advertising
From Branislav Pekic in RomeBy 2012, pay-TV revenues will surpass advertising income in Italy, according to the latest research by the Milan-based e-Media Institute consultancy.
The research indicates that advertising revenues will continue steadily, even after the strong fall in 2009, while revenues from pay-TV, pay per view and video on demand services will grow at an average annual rate of 9.8 per cent, reaching E3.8 billion in 2012.
By 2012, around 50 per cent of the Italian population will acquire a pay-TV service, with the dominant platform being digital satellite, followed by digital terrestrial, which should have around 4.5 million users in three years time. IPTV could finally end the long period of stagnation, carving itself a role as an integration platform between free-to-air and pay-TV. However, for 2009 there are not predictions of a rapid growth of the IPTV market in Italy.
According to the e-Media Institute, a total of 398 digital TV channels are currently available in Italy, 219 of them free-to-air (55 per cent of the total) and the remaining 179 subscription-based (including PPV and VOD services). General entertainment, sports and channels dedicated to movies and TV series are the most numerous. Two highlights of the report are a strong growth in "kids/teens" channels (over 20).
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UKTV on Sky PlayerUKTV has struck a deal with BSkyB's Sky Player service to make channels including Gold available on an online TV service. Sky Player will offer on demand content from UKTV’s Gold and factual service Eden to Sky subscribers. The channels will be added to the Sky Player subscription service, which was launched in December. The service is also adding National Geographic Wild, Sky Real Lives and Sky Movies Screen 1 and 2 to its on demand line up.
Archive programming will be available on-demand along with a chance to catch up with the channel's current output.
In December BSkyB revealed a choice of three online Sky Player TV subscription packages - ranging from £15 (E17) to £34 per month - including channels such as Disney, MTV, Sky Sports, British Eurosport and Nickelodeon.
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YouTube and Universal mull music channelGoogle 's YouTube and Universal Music are in talks to create a premium online music video service. If they reach a deal, the service could mark a significant step forward in Google's attempt to generate revenue from YouTube, which it acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006.
They are in talks to create a stand-alone site to showcase music videos by Universal artists, according to reports. The deal would ideally be broadened out to include videos by artists at the other major music labels in a concept similar to the TV shows available on NBC Universal and News Corp's Hulu.com.
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VOD behavioural studyThe Coda Research Consultancy has released findings from its three month market and behavioural study of UK Video on Demand via TV and online.
Coda's project "Video on Demand: Behaviour and Trajectories" shows that the launch of Project Canvas, and the launch of an aggregated subscription based VOD service by the middle of 2010 will have significant impacts upon behaviour and revenues.
If the above occurs, Coda predicts a transition in viewing behaviour in the UK, which will result in the following by 2015:
- VOD via TV consumption will increase four fold, from 7 million hours per day now, to 28 million
- VOD via PC/laptop consumption will increase four fold, from 5 million per day now, to 20 million
- Linear viewing (i.e. broadcast via TV) will see a decline of 15 per cent, from around 190 million hours per day now, to 160m
- VOD via TV and online will impact PVR viewing, which will increase by only 30-40 per cent, to 14 million per day
- An overall increase in AV viewing of 3 per cent, to 219 million hours per day (across all platforms)
- Ad revenues from VOD will be hit £500 million. Roughly three fifths of this will be generated from TV VOD
- Ad revenues from linear TV will decline by 10 per cent, to £2.86 billion
- Subscription revenues for a movie aggregator online and via TV will approximate £192 millionCoda's research also shows that UK Internet users currently consume at least £1.3 billion (E1.46bn) worth of illegally sourced video content per year. This will continue to increase despite warnings about prosecution, unless rights owners work closely with service providers to open up current and archive broadcast and movie video by way of aggregated services.
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Sky Movies ‘unwatched’A fifth of subscribers to Sky Movies - at least 891,000 UK households – hadn’t watched a single movie on the service in an entire month, according to a YouGov survey on subscription movie viewing habits conducted on behalf of BT Vision.
50 per cent of Sky customers surveyed spend more than £45 (E50.6) on their monthly TV subscription service, with 63 per cent of people who subscribe to a bundle of Sky services paying more than £50 a month for their services. However, 49 per cent of respondents had only watched three or fewer movies in the previous month, with well over half (59 per cent) saying that they had watched fewer movies on Sky movies 1 or Sky movies 2 than they had expected to when they signed up.
When asked why they didn’t watch as many movies as they expected, 50 per cent said that the movies weren’t of interest, with 15 per cent confirming that the movies weren’t playing at the times they wanted to watch them.
The survey shows 71 per cent of respondents agreeing that they would rather watch movies on demand when they want to see them rather than when the broadcasters have scheduled them. This suggests a dramatic change in the way people want to watch movies.
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Conax sees strong growthContent security provider Conax, has reported 36 per cent revenue growth in 2008 based on global sales of its smart card security solutions. Conax‚ success is highlighted by strong growth in leading industry markets Europe, India, China and Latin America.
Conax is today the third largest provider of content security globally for digital TV. In 2008 Conax increased card deliveries by 40 per cent from 2007 and captured 58 new customers. Conax now delivers security solutions to more than 300 Digital-TV operators in 78 countries and has local staff in 10 countries around the globe.
"A comprehensive digitalisation process is taking place globally, with an anticipated doubling of today’s 350 million digital TV households by 2013", commented Geir Bjørndal, the company’s EVP Sales & Marketing. "Conax has gained a reputation worldwide as a secure and dependable security provider, and is now well positioned through its strategy to tap the growing digital-TV market. Additionally, many of our large customers are experiencing strong growth with the global digitalisation of TV and evolving markets, resulting in additional card sales."
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Orange satellite successOrange France has reported a 66 per cent growth in pay-TV customers across its IPTV and satellite platforms in Europe last year, rising from 1.2 million at the end of 2007 to 2.1 million by the end of 2008.
The France-Telecom company had the majority of these customers, or 1.9 million, in France, with 201,000 subscribing to its DTH service, and thus around 1.7 million subscribing to its French IPTV service. Orange’s good news continued with reports that its content services continued to experience rapid growth in France, with domestic VOD downloads more than doubling in 2008, rising from 5.1 million in 2007 to 12.1 million in 2008.
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Microsoft, NXP Windows Media for DVB-T2At DVB World 2009, Microsoft and NXP, the semiconductor company founded by Philips, will demonstrate a prototype TV tuner for Windows Media Centre based on the new DVB-T2 digital terrestrial transmission system.
The prototype, which comprises all major functionality of NXP’s upcoming DVB-T2 one chip solution and is designed for the Windows 7 release of the Microsoft operating system, paves the way for consumers to enjoy HD digital terrestrial TV services on a Windows PC. With a TV tuner based on NXP’s technology, Windows Media Centre users will be able to watch, pause, and record live HD TV wherever there is a HD DVB-T2 service.
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Dialog Telecom selects ScopusScopus Video Networks has confirmed that Dialog Telecom, Poland's second-largest independent telecommunications operator, has launched its new IPTV service using a video distribution network based on Scopus video networking solutions. At the core of Dialog's new IPTV video distribution network is the Scopus Eldorado NMS (Network Management System), which offers redundancy and a centralised view of the entire network to simplify troubleshooting and help Dialog engineers maintain consistent, high-quality transmissions for 24 channels.
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Thursday 5th March
SBS drags on Sat 1
ITV in free fall
Viacom open to 'TV Everywhere'
ZillionTV, the hardware Hulu?
Disney looks at online subs
Recession hampers mobile entertainment
Rules for behavioural ads
Time Warner alliance with Adobe
CNS selects Nagravision CA
Arris debuts ConvergeMedia
Roku doorway to Amazon VOD
SBS drags on Sat 1German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 cut its 2008 dividend and initiated a new cost-saving programme after its SBS arm and poor advertising markets propelled it to a net loss. The company said it was writing off E180 million against SBS for which it paid E3.3 billion in 2007. For 2008 the Group’s consolidated revenues were E3.054 billion with adjusted EBITDA of E674.5 million.
ProSieben, majority-owned by private equity firms KKR and Permira, posted a net loss of E129.1 million for 2008 against a profit of E35.8 million for 2007. Thomas Ebeling, CEO of ProSiebenSat.1, said key priorities for a "very difficult" 2009 would be to improve its costs structures and cut its net debt, which rose slightly to E3.4 billion.
Battered by the German stock market the company has dropped 90 per cent of its value in a year for a market cap of just E139 million and analysts are predicting a debt for equity swap.
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ITV in free fallITV the UK commercial channel has reported a worse than expected loss of £2.7 billion (E3bn) after massive write downs on its assets. Its operating profit was £167 million down 41 per cent on 2007 with virtually all the damage done in the second half with a collapse of advertising revenue. ITV estimates Q1 09 advertising will be down 17 per cent year on year and things will get worse from there. The company is making 600 job cuts, closing studios and selling off ‘non-core’ assets. There will also be at least £65 million cut from programme budgets; several expansive dramas have already been abandoned.
Chairman Michael Grade said: "Current conditions in the advertising market are the most challenging I have experienced in over 30 years in UK broadcasting."The acute decline in revenue is down to the recession but by its own admission ITV has struggled to recover from the unmitigated disaster of ITV Digital the DTT venture that lost £1.2 billion, its underdevelopment of dotcom and its misguided strategy after over spending on Friends Reunited and the like, and its late arrival with additional digital channels.
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Viacom open to 'TV Everywhere'Viacom is sympathetic to Time Warner's "TV Everywhere" says CEO Philippe Dauman who said the company was "very open" to experimenting with models that would allow cable, satellite and telco TV subscribers to view cable content online. "We think it has to be seamless to the consumer, and we're working [with the distributors] on the consumer and technology side," he said.
Viacom, which represents 20 per cent of the ad-supported cable market in total viewers, has been particularly aggressive in experimenting with ad-supported streaming of its full-length content, often to the frustration of its cable distributors. At the end of 2008, Viacom which controls MTV, Nickelodeon and VH1 got into a heated contract renewal with Time Warner Cable after asking for a subscriber-fee increase of 15 per cent, despite streaming some of its most popular shows for free online.
Dauman pointed that for network customers they were investing more in exclusive video-on-demand programming for the cable distributors. "(We) provide great value to them, and they won't give us additional money for nothing. But whenever we've gone into a discussion with them, we have HD offerings to provide; we have more VOD we can give them. There're a lot of things that we can do for them that create value for them and justifies their paying more to us."
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ZillionTV, the hardware Hulu?ZillionTV is hoping to do for the set-top box market what Hulu has done for the PC. The startup, backed with content and investments from ABC/Disney, Fox, NBC/Universal, Sony and Warner Bros., has announced plans to offer ISPs a set-top box that will stream content to subscriber's TVs. Customers will have the option to rent or buy movies or TV shows, or watch the show for free, with advertisements.
The service will be run entirely as an on-demand offering, allowing users to buy and watch content as they choose. Users will pay $50 for the box, tacking on per-show and per-movie fees as they purchase them. ISP's will split revenues from consumer purchases, and make money upselling consumers.
The set-top box features a unique Nintendo Wii-like motion-sensing remote control used to highlight options on the screen. The device is slated for a fourth quarter release this year.
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Disney looks at online subsWalt Disney Co was considering moves like creating a subscription-based online video club to capture online consumers as well as revenue that is being lost to piracy, Chief Executive Robert Iger said.
Iger told analysts at the Deutsche Bank conference "We've also seen a pretty dramatic shift in how people consume entertainment with computers and mobile devices becoming more important to most viewers than television. The computer is a very important place to entertain people, and if we don't occupy space on those devices, others will," he said.
To that end, Disney was considering options that might include a subscription-based online rental club, in which users could access content from Disney's massive film and TV library by mail or online delivery. While moves to put more content online have been criticised as margin destroying, Iger said critics "aren't realising is the business that we are used to may be over. When it comes to piracy, are we better off moving content faster and cheaper than if they steal it and we get nothing?" he said.
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Recession hampers mobile entertainmentA report from Juniper Research warns that, while its best case forecasts estimate that the mobile entertainment market will reach nearly $36 billion in 2010, revenue growth will be markedly lower if the global recession fails to bottom-out over the next twelve months.
Using a scenario-based approach to assess the impact of the recession on the mobile entertainment industry, the report found that average annual growth over the next two years declines from nearly 19 per cent under the best case scenario to less than 7 per cent in the worst case, with mobile TV, user-generated content and music amongst those sectors which are particularly exposed.
According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, "Some entertainment services appear to be highly susceptible to the downturn. Furthermore, given that operators will perceive that consumers will be increasingly reluctant - or unable - to purchase content, they may in turn be less likely to roll out expensive, higher risk services: a dedicated mobile broadcast TV network is a prime example".
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Rules for behavioural adsInternet companies in Britain are being asked to sign up to a new code of conduct for behavioural advertising, in an attempt to quell invasion of privacy concerns over the controversial marketing technology.
The UK's Internet Advertising Bureau has announced a set of guidelines for the systems, which have stirred up passionate reaction among civil liberties and privacy campaigners. Ten companies have already signed up to the guidelines, including Google, Yahoo and Phorm, the controversial UK behavioural ad company, and the IAB said it was important to come up with standards to codify this area of business. The IAB guidelines include a number of stipulations such as telling users clearly what behavioural tracking involves and gaining their consent for its use.
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Time Warner alliance with AdobeAdobe Systems and three Time Warner companies - Turner Broadcasting System, Warner Bros. and Home Box Office – have formed a strategic alliance to foster collaboration on the development of next generation video and rich media experiences.
As part of the alliance, these companies will also collaborate to accelerate the development of digital rights management for the Web and desktop, and metadata and audience measurement solutions to improve the discovery and monetization of content. The companies intend to utilise Adobe Flash Platform and video solutions to provide differentiated experiences for consumers of HBO, Turner Broadcasting and Warner Bros. Entertainment content across multiple distribution platforms.
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CNS selects Nagravision CANagravision has been selected by China Network Systems (CNS) one of Taiwan’s largest cable based television providers to protect the content rights and revenues of its new premium and high definition services. Nagrivision will start deploying its new generation smartcard in mid-2009. The Kudelski Group has expanded its already strong foothold in Taiwan, servicing all independent operators.
By providing service to CNS, Nagravision will extend its presence in Taiwan to over 1 million subscribers of CNS. In addition to digital TV services CNS offers a full range of high-speed Internet and telephony services making it one of the largest triple play providers in Taiwan.
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Arris debuts ConvergeMediaArris has debuted its ConvergeMedia family of products - a comprehensive portfolio of media application and distribution platforms designed to help operators address the unique challenges of media service delivery.
The ConvergeMedia family enables operators to quickly and affordably offer On Demand and advanced advertising services that scale from small, centralised systems to the largest content distribution networks. Both of these platforms deliver any media over any network in any format to any consumer, create new revenue streams, improve operating margins, and enhance operator competitiveness.
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Roku doorway to Amazon VODRoku, maker of the popular Roku digital video player, has revealed that its customers can now watch movies and TV shows from Amazon Video On Demand. With Amazon Video On Demand, Roku customers can for the first time purchase or rent new release movies the same day they are released on DVD and watch commercial-free TV shows the day after they air– all from Amazon’s library of more than 40,000 movie and TV titles.
The compact Roku player connects directly the TV and uses a broadband Internet connection to deliver DVD-quality video instantly.
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Wednesday 4th March
Vivendi and Iliad take FT to EC over competition
Ofcom green lights super-fast broadband
European cable revenues climb
Setanta and ITV stall FA payments
Time Warner TV Everywhere
Sky is ‘recession resistant’
Pace profits up
TiVo narrows losses, new partnerships
Reuters online video service
C4 green button reminder
MoCA reaches 20m nodes
GlobeCast launches African DTH platform
Romania gets E!
Arris and Verivue deliver video solutions
Vivendi and Iliad take FT to EC over competitionVivendi and broadband provider Iliad have joined together to file a complaint with the European competition authorities against France Telecom claiming it has abused its dominant market position in the country’s fixed-line and broadband market.
Vivendi chief Jean Bernard Lévy noted that 11 years after the market was open to competition, France Telecom still had an "overwhelming position", earning some 85 per cent of gross margins before investment in the sector, leaving Iliad and Vivendi’s SFR scrapping it out for the last 15 per cent. Levy said that he was hoping that the complaint would see wholesale and residential prices come down, or even the splitting up the infrastructure and service sections of France Telecom’s network. Levy said, " it is 11 years since the fixed-line business was supposedly open to competition. After 11 years, France Telecom still has an overwhelming position."
Lévy was speaking as Vivendi reported full-year results for 2008 see Advanced TV news March 3rd 2009.
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Ofcom green lights super-fast broadbandUK Media regulator Ofcom has ruled that it will present "no regulatory barriers" to the development of super-fast broadband infrastructure. The ruling will allow BT to proceed with an investment of £1.5 billion (E1.67bn) in the network, giving up to 20 million UK homes access to high-speed Internet.
BT made clear it only wanted to make the move if regulator Ofcom allowed a fair return on that investment, ie it wouldn’t be forced to grant unfettered access to competitors and would control wholesale prices. Ofcom said "Our message is clear: there are no regulatory barriers in the way of investment in super-fast broadband. We want to promote investment but also ensure that there is fair and effective competition for the future."
The network would see the installation of fibre-optic cables to street-side cabinets, offering speeds of between 40 and 60Mbps, with about 1 million homes having fibre to the home and speeds of 100Mbps.
In a statement, Ofcom said that "Recent announcements of investment and planned investment, including Virgin Media's launch of a 50Mbps service, are very positive for consumers. Consumers will benefit even more from increased choice and wider availability."
Revenues in the European cable industry jumped more than 7 per centy last year to E18.2 billion. Demand for digital television, internet broadband and telephony services grew sharply from 41 million subscriptions in 2007 to 51 million in 2008. Including the 43 million customers who watch analogue cable TV, the total number of subscriptions grew to 94 million, according to new figures published by Cable Europe.
The figures, by Screen Digest, showed that total cable industry revenues in Europe rose to E18.2 billion in 2008, compared with E16.96 billion in the previous year and more than double the E8.2 billion total recorded at the start of the decade. Cable now accounts for 58 per cent of all pay-TV homes in Europe.
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Setanta and ITV stall FA paymentsCash-strapped Setanta and ITV are seeking to renegotiate the payment terms of their £425 million (E474m) rights deals with the UK Football Association for coverage of FA Cup and England international football matches.
According to reports, Setanta has delayed making a payment of £10 million on its £150 million contract while ITV has met its payments so far, but is attempting to adjust the schedule so that less money is paid out in the opening years of its £275 million deal.
The two broadcasters signed the four-year deal for the rights to the matches in 2007, now Setanta is reportedly trying to renegotiate the terms of its deal. Last month it came off badly in the bidding for the rights to Premier League games, losing one of its two packages to BSkyB.
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Time Warner is developing an initiative dubbed TV Everywhere that will allow viewers to watch networks such as CNN, Cartoon Network and TNT online - as long as they can prove they subscribe to cable, satellite or a telecom TV service.
"If you want to watch your favourite TV network or shows through broadband on any device - PCs or mobile - you can do it as long as you subscribe to any multichannel provider," said Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes, adding that TV Everywhere could be ready for testing sometime this year. "It's a natural extension of the existing model."
The move comes as Time Warner divests its own cable division.
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Sky is ‘recession resistant’Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch has predicted that the UK trading environment is going to get worse before it gets better. Darroch told a financial conference that Sky’s core product remained relevant to customers during the recessionary period and this was common to pay-TV operators around the world. "By focusing on products like Sky+ and our high definition product we’ve been able to get that to resonate with customers and get the best value out of the subscription."
Reviewing the start of Sky’s recent HD campaign that has seen the price of the Sky+ HD receiver slashed to £49 (E54) (plus an ongoing £10 fee), Darroch said that he was pleased with the progress. "It resonates more with existing customers and takes itself a while to establish with new customers. The nice thing about HD for us is that not only does it help us reach our target of 10 million new customers by 2010, but it is so strong in our existing customer base." He reiterated that the £10 monthly charge to HD customers would be maintained and said Sky would instead put more value into the tier through VOD and other content. The new Freesat platform has many free HD channels.
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UK set-top box maker Pace said strong demand for high-definition pay TV helped it beat market expectations for 2008 and significantly raise expectations for 2009. The company, which makes devices for BSkyB, Canal + and Comcast posted adjusted pretax profit of £28.5 million (E31.7m) on sales of £745.5 million, and said it was paying its first dividend since 2002.
Chief Executive Neil Gaydon said the results reflected new customer wins and higher box sales, with 13 million shipped, including 6 million by Pace France, acquired from Philips Electronics in April 2008.
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TiVo narrows losses, new partnershipsDigital video recorder maker TiVo has reported a narrower quarterly loss than a year ago as cost cuts helped offset a 20 per cent decline in revenue.
Although subscriber growth slowed, the company cut subscriber acquisition costs. TiVo said it is focused on having plenty of cash to weather the challenging economy. TiVo's net loss in its fiscal fourth quarter ended January 31st was $3.6 million compared to a loss of $6.4 million in the same period last year.Meanwhile, TiVo has announced that Seachange, a global provider of VOD and IPTV software, systems and services, has joined forces with the company to integrate cable VOD services into the TiVo HD DVR. Furthermore, Alticast, maker of MHP and tru2way embedded software, has entered into an agreement intended to reduce the time-to-market for pay television operators seeking to harness TiVo’s differentiated consumer experience in conjunction with the flexibility of Alticast embedded software.
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Reuters online video serviceReuters is preparing to launch a multi-million-dollar online video platform, in an attempt to differentiate its multimedia offering to professional traders and investors by integrating it with the group’s existing editorial output and financial data. The service will both showcase an expanded video offering from Reuters News and provide a platform for partners such as research providers and other media groups.
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C4 green button remindermirada, the audiovisual content interaction specialist, along with Channel 4, have unveiled of an interactive service available on the Sky platform that will help Sky viewers catch all Channel 4 programmes whether on C4, More4, E4 or Film4.
Viewers will now see a green button appear in the top-right of screens during trailers for all Channel 4 programmes. Those that would like to watch that programme can then select the green button on their remote control to trigger a visual prompt that will appear when the programme is about to start, reminding the viewer to switch to a different channel. Similarly if the viewer is using a personal video recorder (PVR), the box will record the selected programme meaning fewer viewers will accidentally miss the programmes they wanted to watch.
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MoCA reaches 20m nodesThe Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) has achieved another milestone with the official recognition that more than 20 million MoCA nodes have been shipped. The total number of nodes addresses multimedia and entertainment applications only.
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GlobeCast launches African DTH platformGlobeCast’s African DTH platform has successfully started transmissions on SES Astra’s Astra 4A (Sirius 4) satellite. African broadcaster VoxAfrica is one of the first channels to sign up for the new platform. It is the first Ku-band DTH platform with coverage over sub-Saharan Africa, providing broadcasters with the opportunity to reach households across the continent.
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Romania gets E!Comcast International Media Group (CIMG) has further expanded its presence in Southeastern Europe with the signing of a channel deal for the E! International Network on Romtelecom's Dolce platform in Romania.
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Arris and Verivue deliver video solutionsArris and Verivue have signed a global strategic agreement centred around Verivue’s new MDX 9000 Series Media Distribution Switch. The MDX 9000 Series offers Telcos, Cable Operators, and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) an innovative, network-centric approach to video service delivery. It is the first media storage and delivery system built on a network platform, designed to deliver content anywhere, anytime, on any device.
Under the multi-year agreement, Arris will market and distribute the MDX 9000 Series as part of their ConvergeMedia family of products, a suite of media application and distribution platforms designed to help operators address the unique challenges of media service delivery.
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Tuesday 3rd March
Telenor rejects demands to block Pirate Bay
Vivendi posts Q4 loss, C+ steady
BT for C4?
Dish Network Q4 profit rises, subs fall
Premier League targets pirate sites
Digital Plus Mobile joins Movistar
Deutsche Telekom narrows losses
Ofcom awards spectrum licence to Cube
GlobeCast distributes AXN HD
Digital TV Labs for CI Plus spec
Telenor rejects demands to block Pirate BayTelenor has rejected the demand from the IFPI to block access to the Swedish website The Pirate Bay, and says there is no legal basis for the demand for ISPs to control or assess the content users download. Telenor says it does not condone pirating of material and illegal file sharing.
In Telenor's opinion, expressed in a reply to the IFPI, ISPs are not complicit in the actions of its customers on the Internet. "We comply with all relevant laws and regulations and can see no legal basis for any ISP to act in the interests of digital intellectual property rights holders by blocking individual websites," says Ragnar Karhus, head of Telenor Norway. "Asking an ISP to control and assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should and should not be delivered."
"This is by no means a new issue, and it applies to the entire Western knowledge-based economy. Telenor sympathises with intellectual property rights holders whose content has been illegally distributed, but in our opinion, it is wrong to claim an ISP is liable for any illegal activity by its users on the Internet," says Ragnar Kårhus.
"The problem is that the business model for selling digital content is in many ways old-fashioned and has not adapted to the reality of the Internet. The problem is not the ISPs, rather the rights holders themselves. Telenor is of the opinion it is the rights holder's job to develop sustainable business models for content delivery over the Internet. It is possible to do this effectively, as proven by global successes in this area including iTunes and Telenor's own music downloading service. The enormous market for downloading ringtones and games to mobile telephones are other examples of people's willingness to pay for digital content if the business model is right."
Pirate Bay is currently before the courts in Sweden charged with distributing copyright material in breech of its copyright.
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Vivendi posts Q4 loss, C+ steadyFrench media giant Vivendi posted a loss in the fourth quarter as falling stock markets forced it to write down the value of its stake in film and television powerhouse NBC Universal. Vivendi reported a net loss of E1.38 billion in the fourth quarter after writing down its 20 per cent stake in the joint venture with General Electric by E1.5 billion. Vivendi's fourth-quarter loss compares with a profit of E521 million a year earlier and left its annual profit nearly flat at E2.6 billion.
Canal+ converted 350,000 analogue subscribers to its digital offer in the year while transferring close to one million former TPS subscribers to its platform. Revenues were E4.55 billion, an increase of 4.4 per cent on 2007, as revenues from the group’s French pay-TV operations increased by 2.8 per cent on increased subscription revenues.
At December 31, 2008 total subscriptions stood at 10.6 million of which 5.3 million is attributable to Canal+ and 5.3 million to CanalSat. Digital subscribers passed 80 per cent of the total base, up from 71 per cent at the end of 2007. The churn rate on both Canal+ and CanalSat was 14.7 per cent.
Vivendi operates the world's largest music company, Universal Music Group, as well as Canal+. It also owns France's second-largest mobile phone network, SFR, and controls Activision Blizzard, one of the world's largest videogame publishers.
The credibility of a deal between BT and Channel 4 has a gained a little
after the broadcaster's chairman said he would welcome talks that could offer a solution to its £150 million (E169m) funding shortfall.Luke Johnson, Channel 4's chairman, is reported to have said that a tie-up with BT's television subsidiary BT Vision is "worth exploring", after holding preliminary talks with the group. The need for a partner for Channel 4 is becoming more apparent, with the Government keen for a solution to what will become a £150 million annual funding shortfall by 2012.
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Dish Network Q4 profit rises, subs fallDish Network has reported its fourth-quarter profit rose 24 per cent, but the second placed US DTH provider lost more than 100,000 subscribers.
Dish Network earned $217 million for the three months ended December 31st, up from $175 million a year earlier. Sales rose 1 per cent to $2.92 billion from $2.89 billion.During the quarter, the company says it lost 102,000 subscribers, leaving the company with 13.68 million subscribers at December 31st. This is a drop of almost 1 per cent from the 13.78 million customers it had at the end of 2007.
Dish Network cited a number of factors for the drop, including the economy, aggressive promotional moves by competitors to get and keep subscribers, competitive marketing and the rise of fibre-based and Internet-based video companies.
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Premier League targets pirate sitesThe English Premier League has called for tighter laws against IT theft to stop the unauthorised online broadcasting of football matches. One website which links to unauthorised live broadcasts of Premier League and other matches now attracts more traffic than the sites of broadcasters such as ITV, according to a report by a BBC programme.
The consumer watchdog programme claimed the site, based in the Netherlands, receives funding from online bookmaker bwin, which sponsors Real Madrid and AC Milan. The Premier League said it was actively engaged in combating abuses of its rights, with legal notices sent to those found broadcasting matches to which they did not own the rights.Bwin said it was not breaking any laws, it said: "Our commercial partner is the site that's the TV listing. The (sites being linked to) are not our commercial partners. There is no relationship between bwin and any streamer of content whether or not they hold the rights to it."
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Digital Plus Mobile joins Movistar
From David Del Valle in MadridSogecable's mobile pay-TV offer Digital Plus Mobile is now available on Telefonica's mobile phone network Movistar, following a distribution agreement.
Telefonica's 6.2 million 3G clients can have access to the Digital Plus Mobile's 21 TV channels package, covering cinema, entertainment, sports, music, children programming, news and X cinema. The service will be under promotion, free of charge, over the next two months, with a monthly fee of E5 from May.
This is the third deal for Sogecable with mobile operators, its pay-TV offer is already available on Orange and Vodafone. Currently, Telefonica's Movistar offers more than 80 TV channels through the mobile phone with more than 130,000 clients.
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Deutsche Telekom narrows lossesDeutsche Telekom, Europe’s biggest telco, reported a fourth-quarter loss on an impairment charge and announced an overhaul of management and its structure to cut costs and increase market share. The loss narrowed to E730 million from E750 million a year earlier.
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Ofcom awards spectrum licence to CubeCube Interactive Limited, which provides content across different media platforms, has been awarded a spectrum licence which it plans to use to provide new digital services in the Cardiff area. The award is a small part of the UK's digital dividend - the prime spectrum that will be freed-up as a result of the switch to digital television. It covers 8 MHz of interleaved spectrum in the Cardiff area.
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GlobeCast distributes AXN HDGlobeCast and Measat Satellite Systems have confirmed signing of an agreement to distribute the AXN HD channel in the Asia-Pacific Region, starting with the Korean market as of this week. AXN HD, first launched in Spain in late 2008, delivers 24 hours a day of action TV series, movies, adventure, reality and lifestyle sports programmes.
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Digital TV Labs for CI Plus spec
Digital TV Labs, which provides independent, specialised conformance products and services for DVB-based markets, has won the contract as the world’s first approved test centre for the newly-agreed CI Plus (Common Interface Plus) Specification.
CI Plus is an extension to DVB Common Interface, the technology introduced to allow a CAM (conditional access module) to be connected to TV reception devices to facilitate secure pay-TV services over third party networks. CI Plus is a major technological step forwards and provides a higher level of security than DVB-CI with continuous encryption as well as an enhanced graphical user interface based on the CI Plus browser.
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Monday 2nd March
Premiere raises E412m in face of critics
Nagra OpenTV offer
IPTV growth slows, needs innovation
Cable should charge for TV on PCs
German IPTV market to see growth
Alice TV adds new channels
Stringer takes all Sony top slots
Yahoo executive joins BBC
Antenna Hungária and TechniSat partner
Anevia, Selevision lead Middle East HD IPTV Project
Premiere raises E412m in face of critics
German pay-TV operator Premiere’s shareholders have approved an E412 million capital increase despite minority shareholders’ reluctance and dissatisfaction with the company’s previous management.Premiere, where News Corp is the largest shareholder, held an extraordinary general meeting on February 25th and small shareholders complained that previous management had wrongly inflated subscriber numbers the discovery of which had started Premiere’s price fall.
The company’s CEO Mark Williams said the money would enable it to make necessary investments in programming, sales and marketing, customer services and technology which would help it to increase subscriber numbers.
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Nagra OpenTV offerThe Kudelski Group, owner of Nagravision, has announced its 2008 annual results. It says the introduction of new generation security solutions at several Digital TV accounts together with the migration of some of the Group’s largest accounts to the service model had a strong effect upon the Group 2008 results. In 2008, the Group delivered over 25 million smart cards for customers migrated to the service model.
As anticipated, this change in model affected the profitability of the Digital TV business. On the other hand, both the Public Access and the Middleware and Advertising segments continued to deliver on their positive momentum maintaining a healthy contribution margin in a challenging economic environment. Total revenues reached CHF 1.037 billion (E0.69bn).
Meanwhile, Kudelski Group has made a non-binding offer of E100m to buy the share of Open TV it doesn’t own and make it a subsidiary. It says
this transaction would provide better integrated industry-leading end-to-end solutions and services to the customers.
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IPTV growth slows, needs innovationExperts predict a weak economic atmosphere through 2010. With this in mind, Frost & Sullivan revised the previous year's growth forecast of a 3-year CAGR 29 per cent downwards to less than 15 per cent.
"A disappointing IPTV performance is not the end of the road for Telecom incumbents but it has spurred new service creation and more innovative business models across the value chain. As end user media consumption patterns change, both telcos and broadcasters face a window of opportunity to invest and/or collaborate to meet the evolving user demand," states Yiru Zhong, an analyst for Frost & Sullivan's Information & Communication Technologies group.Once operators and media providers are able to deliver and customise the video content to end users' expectations, the TV revenue potential could add between 15-22 per cent of telecom operators' retail revenue in the top 5 Western European markets. In the UK alone, it is expected that TV revenues could grow at an 8 per cent 5-year CAGR, which is a more robust rate than both the fixed and mobile communications sectors. However, the current lack of momentum is not sufficient to rejuvenate overall revenue growth in telecommunication services yet. Operators will need to continue to improve QoS, extend coverage and distribution, form more alliances and create more innovative services.
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Cable should charge for TV on PCsJust as Comcast and other Pay TV operators have announced plans to push high-value cable network programming to the PC, research from TDG suggests that their intention to not charge for this content could be a major strategic error and leave hundreds of millions in additional fees on the table.
"Cable operators are working aggressively to neutralise the growing threat of online video (both PC-based and Over-the-Top) and the inevitable erosion of traditional Pay TV viewership," noted Michael Greeson, President of TDG and director of TDG's quantitative research initiatives. "Making their best content available for online viewing through their own branded portals instead of online aggregators such as Hulu is the right strategy at the right time. Even incumbent Pay TV operators - the antithesis of fast-movers when it comes to Internet video -understand that very soon their one-stop, one-screen TV services will be challenged by alternative conduits and new screens."
Greeson argues, however, that doing this for free, as an "entitlement" to existing Pay TV subscribers, "undervalues the very content which has for years driven subscriptions and overlooks a sizeable opportunity to grow revenue and profits at a time during which simply avoiding collapse is seen as a major accomplishment for operators."
According to TDG's research, 43 per cent of broadband consumers are interested in viewing their linear Pay TV content on their PCs, two thirds of which (29 per cent) are willing to pay at least $10 per month for the service.
Greeson, using Comcast as an example, added: "Comcast has close to 17 million digital TV subscribers and 15 million broadband Internet subscribers. If 29 per cent of Comcast's broadband Internet subscribers (4.35 million) would spend an extra $10 per month to have their current TV programming delivered to their PCs, that's an additional $43.5 million in gross revenue each month."
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German IPTV market to see growthThe market for IPTV services in Germany will grow more strongly over the next five years than previously predicted, according to a study by consulting company Detecon International, which adds that Germany can expect to cross the 5 million user threshold as early as 2013.
The prediction is based on current analyses of subscriber figures for the largest German and foreign IPTV providers. "It is foreseeable that the market volume for IPTV in Germany will follow the trend of countries such as France and Italy," declares Thomas Grota, Managing Consultant at Detecon.
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Alice TV adds new channelsFrench telco Alice has expanded its AliceBox offering to include 70 new channels for the IPTV service 'Alice TV'. The new channels include a larger number of news, local and foreign channels, and brings the number of channels available on the service to 140. Alice has also started offering 32 channels in MPEG-4 format, allowing almost all new unbundled subscribers equipped with the new AliceBox to access a 32-channel low-speed package.
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Stringer takes all Sony top slotsHoward Stringer, Sony chief executive officer, will replace Ryoji Chubachi as president in a move to give the CEO. a freer hand in restructuring the struggling electronics giant. Stringer, 67, will retain his existing title of chairman and CEO., Sony said in a statement. Chubachi, 61, will become vice chairman responsible for product quality and safety, an assignment that is expected to remove him from the frontlines of decision-making.
Sony also said it will reorganise its electronics and games divisions to better integrate the company’s sprawling business. In one major change, Kazuo Hirai, CEO of Sony’s video games unit, will head a new business group that will bring together the company’s personal computers and mobile electronics.
Stringer last month stressed the need for speedier decision-making, saying the company had been "putting off unpleasant decisions" and that it now had to "move in a hurry."
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Yahoo executive joins BBCJohn Linwood, who left his senior executive role at Yahoo last month, will join the BBC as its new chief technology officer. Linwood will be responsible for maintenance of the corporation's technical infrastructure and new corporate IT requirements. Chief technology officer is a new role at the BBC, created as part of a restructure of the future media & technology department by its director, Erik Huggers.
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Antenna Hungária and TechniSat partner
Antenna Hungária and TechniSat Digital have started a strategic partnership supplying DVB-T MPEG-4 HD digital terrestrial set-top-box from May 2009. The TechniSat box will join the MinDig TV sticker system as well, as the receiver was specially developed according to the technical requirements of Antenna Hungária.
Antenna Hungária has won the tender for both digital
terrestrial television and radio and got the operator licence of 5 TV multiplexes and one radio multiplex from the National Communications Authority (NHH) valid for the next 12 years. MinDig TV service was launched on December 1st, 2008 with 3 transmission sites covering nearly 60 per cent of the population.
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Anevia, Selevision lead Middle East HD IPTV ProjectSelevision, an EMEA IPTV system integrator and Anevia, a video service infrastructure provider, have been selected by Aramco to deploy their state of the art SD/HD video over IP solution in the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). With a 20,000-people-residency capacity, KAUST aims to become one of the most prestigious and innovating EMEA University, putting technology among its priorities.
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