Advanced Television

Broadcast

Digital TV for £10

UK supermarket chain Tesco has launched what it claims is the UK’s cheapest digital set-top box with a £10 (E14.7) price tag. Manufactured by Techwood, the digital TV box offers the standard 40 Freeview digital terrestrial TV channels and numerous radio stations.

August 30, 2007

Astra launches entavio

SES Astra will officially launch its new digital platform entavio at the international consumer show IFA in Berlin on 1st September. The service to digital satellite households in Germany comprises about 500 digital TV and radio channels, which continue to be distributed for free, and the technical access to pay-TV for a monthly flat rate […]

August 30, 2007

Portugal approves DTT

The Portuguese government has approved a draft bill to launch a tender for terrestrial digital TV, an official at the public works ministry said. They official said the government will now launch two tenders by the end of the year, one to manage digital free-to-air channels and one to manage digital pay-TV stations.

August 30, 2007

ONO reshuffles pay-TV and offers 25MB

From David Del Valle in Madrid Spain’s ONO has reshuffled its pay-TV offer with the addition of new pay-TV packages and broadband Internet access with a speed of up to 25 Megabytes, being the first company in the country with such a capacity. Its three new pay-TV packages are Esencial (Essential), with more than 40 […]

August 29, 2007

RTL upbeat on UK ads

The UK television advertising market will grow by up to 2 per cent this year, Channel Five owner RTL predicted as it said Five’s new digital spin-off channels boosted its audience share. Five’s family of channels recorded an audience share of 6.3 per cent in the first half of the year to June, with 5.5 […]

August 29, 2007

Nielsen no longer dividing audience

The Hispanic audience's growing power in US television was confirmed when Nielsen, the ratings group, said it would scrap a segregated system for measuring viewers and include Latinos in its main tally. The decision is a victory for Univision, the US's largest Spanish-language broadcaster, and Telemundo, a rival network owned by NBC Universal, which had […]

August 29, 2007

Brazil to use WiMax for DTT

From Branislav Pekic in Rome The Brazilian Government is planning to test the WiMax broadband wireless system as a return channel for interactive digital terrestrial television applications. The Communications Ministry, together with the Center for Research in Telecommunications (CPqD), will initiate interactive DTT trials in Hortolândia near Sao Paulo with set-top boxes provided by Brazil's […]

August 29, 2007

Sky Italia aims for 0.5m new subscribers per year

Branislav Pekic from Rome With 4.2 million subscribers, equal to a potential audience of 14 million TV viewers, Sky Italia is now aiming to grow at a rate of 500,000 new subscribers a year. Speaking on the margins of the presentation of the 2007-2008programme schedule in Milan, Sky Italia CEO Tom Mockridge said that there […]

August 27, 2007

Scopus for Max TV

The Romanian MSO Digital Cable System (DCS) has selected Scopus' digital broadcast platform for its DTH service Max TV. Scopus will deploy a fourth transponder system in DCS' Bucharest headends. DCS groups together around 40 cable companies and launched Max TV, one of five DTH platforms serving the Romanian market, in July 2005.

August 27, 2007

Altech for Showtime

With the launch of the Show On Demand service Showtime customers with will be among the first in the world to access a video on demand service via satellite, with the Showbox (DSR3000 digital video recorder) developed and manufactured by Altech UEC. The complete Show On Demand application, head-end utility and network integration services were […]

August 27, 2007