From Branislav Pekic in Rome Slovenia's National Assembly has passed the digital broadcasting act that sets the deadline of 2010 for the switchover from analogue to digital. Economy Minister Andrej Vizjak admitted that the changeover will be costly both for the broadcasters and the consumers, who will have to buy new equipment. Howeverthe law already […]
The US House of Representatives has voted unanimously to extend a tax moratorium that was first adopted to promote US Internet access in the early days. The ban prevents local authorities from levying a number of potential Internet taxes, and is a victory for technology and telecommunications companies. While short of the permanent ban they […]
IAC reported a 4.2 per cent drop in third-quarter net income amid higher costs as home-shopping channel HSN showed signs of a turnaround. IAC reported net income of $71.8 million, compared with $74.9 million, a year earlier. The latest quarter’s results included a $5.9 million gain related to the sale of Home Shopping Network Europe […]
Alcatel-Lucent has posted Q3 net losses of E258m on revenue down 7.8 per cent year-on-year at E4.35 billion. The group says the integration plan has seen 5,000 jobs cut in the year so far, with the company on track to achieve synergy-related pre-tax savings of E600m this year. It is to cut a further 4,000 […]
Harmonic announced that TVN Entertainment Corporation, the world’s largest television on demand company, has deployed Harmonic’s CLEARcut offline content preparation software for creation of TVN’s HD on-demand assets. Video is digitally compressed with Harmonic’s DiviCom MV 500 MPEG-2 HD encoders and then formatted using the CLEARcut software for storage on video servers. CLEARcut is a […]
From Sotires Eleftheriou in Paris The AB group is to launch a new digital satellite platform, called Bis Television, to be available simultaneously from the Hotbird and Atlantic Bird 3 satellites. The platform will consist of all (except for the time being M6 and W9 and i-Television) of the free DTT channels, plus a number […]
Ashley Highfield, head of the BBC’s Future Media and Technology unit, defended the iPlayer in an interview with silicon.com. Asked: “Has criticism of the iPlayer, both around non-PC versions and DRM, been fair?” Highfield replied: “No. It’s understandable if we’d only ever intended to launch an XP-only iPlayer but that was never the plan. When […]
Sirius Satellite Radio reported a narrower third-quarter loss and recorded a 50 per cent increase in new subscribers ahead of its planned combination with larger rival XM Satellite Radio. Sirius reported a loss of $120.1 million (E83.2m) for the three months ended September 30, compared with a loss of $162.9 million in the year-ago period. […]
NDS has announced its results for the first quarter ended September 30, 2007. Revenue for first quarter was up 25 per cent to $204.9 million (E142m) and operating income for first quarter was up 31 per cent to $58.3 million Commenting, Dr. Abe Peled, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NDS said, “Our business has […]
ITV DVD has signed an agreement to make more than 300 features from its movie library available for download to own and download to rent via the British online retailer Coolroom. Films from ITV DVD's library will be available to consumers from £0.99 (E1.4) both on Coolroom's download store on www.coolroom.com and on Coolroom's IPTV […]