Advanced Television

Regulation

Mid East TV told: “Uphold media ethics”

The past few weeks have been testing for Arabic broadcasters. Now Jordan’s Audiovisual Media Commission (AMC) has stepped in, urging those broadcasters operating in Jordan to abide by media ethical standards. AMC’s director general Amjad al-Qadi stressed that the TV stations should steer away from all forms of abuse or insult through the talk shows, […]

February 23, 2011By Chris Forrester

ivi streaming ‘illegal’

A US District judge has ruled that Internet TV service ivi is breaking the law by offering live streams of network and cable television. ivi, which offers online broadcasts of 55 stations in the Los Angeles, Chicago and New York area for under $5 a month, was ordered to cease operations immediately as a result […]

February 23, 2011By Colin Mann

Sky denounces BBC on-demand distribution

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 […]

February 21, 2011

DVB 3DTV standard official

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 […]

February 21, 2011

Pub pair stung with football streaming fines

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 […]

February 21, 2011By Colin Mann

US lawmakers defy FCC Internet rules

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 […]

February 18, 2011

EU: UK can enforce FTA football

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 […]

February 17, 2011

‘AllVid’ home net alliance underway

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 […]

February 17, 2011

Lords call for fewer TV ads

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 […]

February 17, 2011

Embracing OTT and a plea to regulators

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 […]

February 15, 2011Nick Snow@Cable Congress