Kabel Deutschland has has confirmed that it is to acquire fellow German cable MSO Tele Columbus. The purchase price amounts to €603 million plus accrued interest. As of December 31, 2011, this would have been equivalent to €618 million. The purchase price will provide for repayment in full of the financial debt of Tele Columbus. Tele Columbus, headquartered in Berlin, [...]

Jeremy Hunt, the UK culture secretary, is to be investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner on claims he failed to register donations from media companies while in opposition. John Lyon, the parliamentary standards commissioner, announced the inquiry on Monday in response to a complaint earlier in May from Labour MP Stephen McCabe. McCabe says a series of “networking events” involving [...]

Intelsat’s giant $1.75 billion IPO news was somewhat dwarfed by Facebook’s somewhat larger announcement on May 18th. Nevertheless the IPO filing, made with the SEC on May 18th, says that investment bankers Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan and Morgan Stanley were the offering’s bookrunners and underwriters. The satellite operator, one of the two largest on the planet, will use some [...]

Sales of 3D TVs are on the rise in the US as first quarter volumes grew nearly 74 per cent in units and 64 per cent in revenue over last year, according to market research company The NPD Group. 3D TVs accounted for 11 per cent of all flat-panel TV sales in Q1, nearly double that of last year, and [...]

YouTube has revealed that 72 hours of film are now being uploaded to its servers every minute as it marks seven years since going live to the public. User uploads – which include home videos, music and TV clips – have more than doubled in the last two years, helping the site attract four billion clicks a day. ‘It’s not [...]

Chinese regulators have approved Google’s $12.5 billion purchase of US phone maker Motorola Mobility, the final hurdle for the deal to go through. It has already won clearance from US and European regulators. The acquisition would be Google’s biggest ever. Chinese authorities said Google must keep its mobile software, Android, free for other device makers for up to five years. [...]

Chris Dodd, the Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association (MPAA), has reiterated his line that parties in both the creative and technology communities must work together to move forward on legislation preventing theft of intellectual property. Speaking to trade magazine Variety at the Cannes Film Festival, Dodd alluded to efforts to pass anti-piracy measures Protect I.P. Act (PIPA) [...]

An EMS survey has revealed continued growth in reach, loyalty, and frequency of viewing for BBC World News. BBC World News continues to grow its audience with a 5 per cent increase in weekly audiences and 14 per cent in daily viewers year on year. Meanwhile, BBC.com has delivered a strong Q1, with Comscore showing 15 million unique users across [...]

Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable will enable each other’s high-speed Internet customers to access their metro WiFi networks, totaling over 50,000 hotspots. To simplify access, a new network name, “CableWiFi”, has been created for subscribers to use when accessing the WiFi hotspots outside their home market. The first implementation is already complete as Bright [...]

Somebody is deliberately jamming the satellite signals from the controversial Press TV channel transmitting from Eutelsat’s Hotbird. Press TV is already in trouble from the UK’s breoadcasting regulator Ofcom, but now it seems somebody else has taken a dislike to the Iranian focussed channel. Press TV says “it has learned that the cause of the problem is a clean carrier [...]

The BBC has signed a deal to save The Football League Show, which had faced the axe after “budget decisions” forced several Christmas editions to be dropped. BBC Sport has struck a three-year deal with the Football League to keep the Saturday night highlights show on BBC1 for three seasons starting this summer. The BBC will also continue to provide [...]

twofour54, the media & creative industries hub and the Abu Dhabi Film Commission (part of twofour54), have launched the region’s first incentive scheme as it looks to accelerate Abu Dhabi as the first choice for international and regional TV producers needing location, production and post-production services. The scheme will be operational from September 1st. The incentive, in the form of [...]

At The Cable Show, TiVo has announced two major enhancements to its whole-home viewing solution. Its IP set-top box, delivers the TiVo experience on secondary televisions throughout the home. TiVo Stream, provides transcoding to enable content viewing on mobile devices. Through these new products, operators working with TiVo can give their subscribers the content they want on any screen within [...]

Arris Group and NDS have announced their collaboration on a tightly-integrated solution that will offer service providers greater choice and customisation in the way they deliver seamless whole home triple-play media experiences to their subscribers. The joint integration will provide a comprehensive architecture to accelerate the pace of innovation and the convergence of traditional pay-TV with Interactive IP Multi-Media Services. [...]

Irdeto announced at the 2012 Cable Show that GlobeCast  has selected its Irdeto Broadband and Irdeto Customer Central solutions for its newest venture in North America, MyGlobeTV.  Announced in April and scheduled for a July commercial launch, MyGlobeTV is an over-the-top (OTT) platform for broadcasters to offer international and genre-based content directly to subscribers. North America is widely considered the [...]

Multiscreen content delivery solutions specialist Elemental Technologies is launching Elemental Stream, a video processing system designed to segment, package and secure live and on-demand content for multiscreen delivery at The Cable Show 2012 in Boston Elemental Stream can be positioned at the core encoding location or as an integral part of the content delivery infrastructure, making it well-suited for pay-TV [...]

RGB Networks, the provider of scalable multiscreen IP video delivery solutions announced a new partnership for targeted ad delivery with BlackArrow, a worldwide provider of advanced advertising solutions for New Television platforms. Together, the companies have created a standards-based TV Everywhere advertising solution that enables video service providers (VSP) to deliver specific ads to individual viewers watching live or on-demand [...]

Rovi Corporation and Nuance Communications  are collaborating to further accelerate voice activated discovery and guidance applications for cable service providers and consumer electronics manufacturers. Nuance has licensed and will be integrating Rovi’s rich entertainment data with Dragon TV to provide TV manufacturers and cable service providers the ability to access the wide variety of Rovi-indexed content for TV shows, movies [...]

Motorola Mobility’s SecureMedia content protection unit has won a major content delivery deal with confirmation that Time Warner Cable selected the SecureMedia Encryptonite ONE HLS+ solution to streamline its video distribution across a variety of devices and avoid the cost and complication of operating multiple streaming platforms and security systems to reach multiple device types. SecureMedia Encryptonite ONE HLS+ is [...]

Video delivery specialist Azuki Systems has formed a go-to-market and technology partnership with networking connectivity firm D-Link with the aim of allowing TV cable operators to offer customers affordable access to over-the-top content in their living rooms via multi-screens and home TV sets. D-Link’s companion set-top-box (STB) embedded with the Azuki Media Client is designed to help TV cable operators [...]