Advanced Television

Inside Satellite

Chris Forrester

Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.

3DTV: Passive vs Active battle gets legal

Korean electronics giant LG recently carried out a comparison test of its passive 3DTV technology with that of its 3D rivals’ ‘Active Shutter’ methods. LG used 4,000 ordinary Australian shoppers in a number of Westfield shopping malls to compare and contrast the technologies, and their ‘votes’ massively favoured LG’s Cinema 3DTV system over that of […]

November 24, 2011

Inmarsat suffers meltdown

Inmarsat had three catastrophic days last week if investor sentiment is any guide. Inmarsat, which supplies satellite-based services and communications mainly to the maritime and aircraft industries, was within the past year trading at a buoyant 724p per share. Last Monday (November 14) its price stood at 470p, already massively depressed. But from Wednesday to […]

November 20, 2011

Shock report delivered on Portugal’s TV status

The economic downturn has led an influential working group to advise Portugal’s government that the number of publicly financed TV and radio channels should be dramatically cut back. The suggestion is that RTP (Portugal’s public broadcaster) should transmit just one general interest channel and no longer carry advertising.  Its “international” channel should be managed by […]

November 17, 2011

Loral buys back own shares

Loral Space & Communications says it may be buying back up to 800,000 of its own NASDAQ shares for cancellation. There’s no set timetable for the purchase, and the buy-back will depend on the market price and availability of stock. Loral has 21.2 million voting common shares outstanding and 9.5 million non-voting shares outstanding as […]

November 15, 2011

O3b gets $137m in financing

Jersey-based O3b is a would-be satellite operator looking to serve the ‘other 3 billion’, that is the millions who live either side of the Equator and are unserved by broadband availability. O3b’s largest investor is SES, but other investors include Google, Liberty Global, HSBC and others O3b has now raised another $137 million to pay […]

November 10, 2011

Major satellite squabble escalates

A dispute over satellite frequencies between Eutelsat and Arabsat over Iranian–claimed broadcasting rights has not been settled by the ITU, and is now to be presented to the global ITU conference of telecom authorities in January. The argument also concerns the wealthy Gulf state of Qatar. The argument concerns the so-called Zohreh-2 ‘satellite’ which never […]

November 7, 2011

Sony: What a mess!

Sony Corp is likely to lose a staggering $1 billion this year, which will maintain a terrible four-year record of losses under CEO Sir Howard Stringer. A Tokyo press conference outlined how the giant electronics-to-movies plans to trim some 125 billion Yen ($1.6bn) from annual costs over the next few years. This further bad news […]

November 3, 2011

Ofcom tightening up ‘ownership’ rules?

On October 24, UK media regulator Ofcom cancelled the licences of three channels (Babeworld, House of Fun and The Other Side). These channels are perhaps not the most important UK broadcasters, but now Ofcom is looking at the licensing of channels that do have a somewhat higher profile. Ofcom’s concerns revolve around who actually controls […]

October 30, 2011

Japan cuts licence fee

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK is cutting its annual licence fee by 120 Yen (about $1.60) a month. This is the first such cut since 1968 when the nation’s radio licence was terminated. The monthly fee is currently 1345 Yen (about $17.74). Viewers who want the additional free-to-air satellite services pay an extra 945 Yen ($12.40). […]

October 28, 2011By Chris Forrester

Telenor’s satellite revenues flat

Giant Norwegian telco has unveiled its Q3 results, and most of its various broadcasting-related divisions reported fairly flat revenues. For example, Canal Digital, Telenor’s pay-TV arm, saw overall revenues drop by NOK12 million (1 per cent), to NOK1,047 million (from NOK 1,059m) although total EBITDA improved by 9 per cent.  Canal Digital’s DTH subs numbers […]

October 26, 2011