Advanced Television

File-sharers’ TV tastes revealed

US drama Heroes was the most popular illegally downloaded show this year, according to research firm Big Champagne. About 55 million people downloaded the show, whilst 51 million chose to access Lost, the second most popular show. All of the programmes in the top 10 were American. Visits to leading torrent sites, which index video […]

August 31, 2009

European pay-TV subscribers top 62m

From Branislav Pekic in Rome Pay-TV subscribers in Western Europe grew by almost 13 per cent to more than 62 million during the year ending March 2009, or over 36 per cent of total TV households, according to the latest market research by Milan-based e-Media consultancy. The fastest growing platform was IPTV, which was up […]

August 31, 2009

Kudelski Group reports Q2

The Kudelski Group owner of Nagravision and major shareholder in Open TV, has released its half year 2009 results. During this period, the Group says it started to reap the fruits of the migration of a significant share of its digital TV conditional access deployed base to the service model. In 2008, the Group delivered […]

August 31, 2009

US online video market soars in July

comScore has released July 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, showing that 158 million US Internet users watched online video during the month, the largest audience ever recorded. Online video reached another all-time high in July with a total of 21.4 billion videos viewed during the month. In July, Google Sites continued to […]

August 31, 2009

Tilgin enables remote management of IPTV STBs

Tilgin, supplier of broadband services solutions for operators, has announced a new release of its Service and Device Management software, VCM. Tilgin’s remote management solution enables the operators to expand their service offering of triple play services while keeping operating cost under control. The new VCM 5.6 introduces Remote Management of IPTV Set Top Boxes […]

August 31, 2009

Major studios sign deals for movie burning

Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures and Lionsgate have begun offering the first movie downloads that can be burned to disc using virtually any DVD or Blu-ray Disc burner for playback on a range of devices. The four studios are offering the downloads through online movie service Film Fresh, which made the first US movie […]

August 28, 2009

NBC appoints O’Donoghue

NBC Universal has appointed Denise O’Donoghue, co-founder and former joint managing director of UK-based Hat Trick Productions, as head of its international production division. She has a brief to grow the business aggressively both organically and through acquisition.

August 28, 2009

TiVo files infringement case against AT&T and Verizon

TiVo has filed complaints in the US District Court against AT&T and Verizon Communications for infringement of three TiVo patents – 'Multimedia Time Warping System', 'System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams', and 'Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System'. The complaints seek damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction, similar to that issued by the […]

August 28, 2009

French channels can't agree carriage

Talks between TF1 and M6 and pay-TV platforms about carriage of their respective thematic channels have reached a deadlock say reports. DTH operator Canal Plus currently holds exclusive rights to the channels, including Histoire, TV Breizh, Ushuaia TV, Odyssee, Serie Club and Eurosport, for which it pays approximately E60m. The broadcasters have offered their channels […]

August 28, 2009

BSkyB defends 3DTV initiative

BSkyB has denied claims its 3DTV service will ferment a standards war, instead encouraging broadcasters to launch 3D services using its platform. "We are using one of the most common standards – MPEG-4 – which is the way in which most of the world’s HDTV is delivered. Other broadcasters should join with us. We have […]

August 28, 2009