VOD operators must pay more to be regulated because the new co-regulatory body got its budgeting wrong. The Association for Television On-Demand (ATVOD) estimated running costs for its first year (2010-2011) would be £426,388, (€505,000) covered by charging fees to VOD operators. But now it says there is “uncertainty” over how many VOD operators will […]
DVB announced that at the 67th Meeting of the Steering Board, the DVB-3DTV specification was approved. The specification will be submitted immediately to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for formal standardisation. BlueBook A154 ‘Frame Compatible Plano-Stereoscopic 3DTV’, (DVB-3DTV) has been published and is available for downloading from the DVB website. The Commercial Requirements for […]
On Demand Group, the global VOD aggregator and subsidiary of SeaChange, and Inview Technology (Inview), have announced an agreement to launch both transactional VOD and subscription VOD services on millions of connected TV sets in major European countries, starting in Italy in the second quarter of this year. Inview’s NEELiX platform is incorporated in millions […]
A father and son who run a number of pubs in the northern UK city of Kingston upon Hull are liable to fines and costs of some £116,000 (€138,000) for allowing streaming of Premier League football over the Internet in 11 of their establishments. Alister Darroch and his son Charles (who coincidentally share the same […]
Broadcasting analogue TV signals to Germany since 1990 has been the financial bedrock for SES. German viewers have enjoyed some 40 free-to-air channels over most of those years, and SES Astra has enjoyed the income, amongst the highest paid anywhere on the globe for transponder capacity. Now the glory days are coming to an end. […]
TopTV is the Johannesburg-based DTH rival to Multichoice’s DStv digital TV system. SES Astra currently owns 20 per cent of the enterprise, but SES Chairman & CEO Romain Bausch says it will not be holding onto its TopTV stake. While no sell date was announced, Bausch, speaking during the SES year-end results call on February […]
Middle East pay-TV operator Arab Radio & Television (ART) has just added Bahrain to its anti-piracy crack-down. ART’s Pehla bouquet of Asian channels introduced the Viaccess encryption system on Saturday, in place of Irdeto. The change means the widespread usage of Dreambox set-top boxes can no longer use the internet to exchange codes which in […]
In 2010, there was a rapid shift toward consumer electronics (CE) devices with networking and web content capabilities. Connected devices are expected to grow exponentially over the next five years. By 2015, In-Stat predicts there will be 1 billion web-enabled, stationary CE devices in operation worldwide. “Smart TVs and Blu-ray players (that support online apps) […]
Portugal Telecom has launched pre-pay cards as a new way for subscribers of its Meo IPTV service to pay for VOD rentals. The cards are available to buy from Portugal Telecom’s website, its retail stores and authorised resellers, with values of €5 or €10, valid for a three-month period. Once purchased they can be loaded […]
Canadian Broadcast industry groups have met in Ottawa to plan strategy for dealing with online content providers such as Netflix. Cable companies, broadcasters and union representatives were all represented, said Norm Bolen, the president of the Canadian Media Production Association, which arranged the meeting. The session was about understanding the impact of online services “competing […]