Sky’s response to the BBC Trust on the syndication guidelines for BBC on-demand television content heavily criticises the decision to limit the content to BBC “aggregation products”, i.e. YouView / iPlayer. Sky says “[we] support the wide distribution of BBC public service content, including BBC on-demand content” but added “the fundamental principle of broad distribution […]
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 […]
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 […]
The US House of Representatives has voted to overturn the FCC’s proposed rules barring ISPs from blocking legal content but do allow certain rationing of downloading. The vote would block funds to implement rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission in December. The measure had been added as an amendment to a sweeping spending bill […]
The European Court of Justice has ruled that the UK government does have the right to reserve for Free To Air TV major international football games including all the group matches the World Cup. The Court has rejected a complaint from FIFA and UEFA regarding a decision of the European Commission to approve the UK’s […]
Seven companies from the electronics and IP industries have announced the formation of the AllVid Tech Company Alliance. The organisation was formed to lobby on public policy in the Federal Communications Commission’s “AllVid” rulemaking. Founding members of AllVid include Best Buy, Google, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics, Nagravision, SageTV, Sony Electronics and TiVo. All are said to […]
A reduction in the time allowed for advertisements on commercial broadcasting channels has been called for by the House of Lords Communications Committee, who report that existing regulation of the market is no longer relevant in the digital age and doesn’t serve the best interests of viewers. The Committee – part of the UK parliament’s […]
The Plenary session at Cable Congress is always a good place to judge the current ‘group think’ of the European cable sector. For a few years now, the big question has been about the ‘opportunity’ and/or ‘threat’ of OTT services and this year’s Plenary again updated us on the latest take. In recent years, OTT […]
The Spanish Government has approved a new piece of legislation to regulate HDTV content and the use of the multiplex capacity on DTT. The new rule obliges broadcasters to inform viewers about HDTV broadcasts that must meet at least 720 active lines under 16:9 format in the production process. The new rule aims to avoid […]
The HQME Steering Committee, a newly-formed group of mobile and content industry leaders that includes SanDisk Corporation, SoftBank Mobile, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Orange, has announced a proposed industry standard aimed at addressing the current and growing challenges of efficiently managing and delivering data from mobile networks to mobile devices. HQME (High Quality Mobile Experience) […]