Disney-ABC Television Group has launched an experimental new media content studio Stage 9 Digital Media. Stage 9 was designed to “bridge the gap between user-generated content and traditional production,” said Ann Sweeney, co-chair, Disney Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC Television Group, in a release. It will premiere with a comedy series “Squeegees”, that is […]

The UK Premier League has won High Court injunctions against three websites accused of illegally streaming its live football matches over the net. The sites had been re-distributing signals from rightsholders like Sky Sports. It's been a growing problem for the league over the last few years as the global audience grows for the English […]

The Belgian incumbent has claimed 305,319 year end subs for its Belgacom TV IPTV service, adding 165,654 new homes in 2007. ARPU vice was E16.10 a month. The digital subs total puts it not far behind main cable operator Telenet with about 400,000 digital homes. Total digital penetration now stands at 22 per cent.

From Branislav Pekic in Rome Portugal Telecom has signed up 21,000 so far for its IPTV service, 15,000 of which were added in the last three months of 2007. According to PT vice president, Zeinal Bava, the expansion of the IPTV service will be one of the priorities during 2008, together with the launch of […]

Manchester United football club is to roll out a free, desktop news service for fans that will offer video, match results and news in real time. Users will be able to download the tool from the Manchester United site from the end of March, and it will automatically update with the latest news and multimedia […]

The Pakistani government has lifted a national ban on visiting YouTube. Late last week, the country ordered Pakistani ISPs to block the video-sharing website because of content deemed offensive to Islam. But now the restrictions have been lifted after a national outcry. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has told ISPs to allow access to the site; […]

Star and GekTV will launch three Mandarin language Star channels on the US-based GekTV IPTV platform on 15 March 2008. The three channels are Star Chinese Channel – an entertainment channel in Taiwan, Channel V Taiwan – a music channel and Star Chinese Movies – dedicated to Hong Kong films. Star, a wholly owned subsidiary […]

The highly touted web-based drama series “quarterlife” proved a network television flop in its NBC debut, drawing the network’s worst ratings for its time slot in at least 20 years, Nielsen Media Research reported. NBC had high hopes for the made-for-Internet series, a show about young adults designed to appeal to the very audience group […]

BBC iPlayer is already looking dominant in the UK download market. Traffic for ITV’s broadband TV service has remained flat over the past two months, while the BBC’s rival iPlayer offering has seen massive growth following a major marketing push. ITV.com’s video traffic hit a peak in November but has dropped off slightly since then. […]

NDS has announced the deployment of a new version of MediaHighway middleware that allows subscribers to upgrade standard HD boxes into digital video recorders. Subscribers to Canal+ and CanalSat in France can attach an external hard drive via USB on their existing HD set-top box to have a fully functional DVR facility. The MediaHighway middleware […]