EchoStar Communications has agreed to acquire Sling Media in a deal that values the maker of the Slingbox device at $380 million (E279m). The price is payable in cash and EchoStar options. Slingbox devices allow users to watch their home TV signals on any Internet-connected computer.”As an early investor in Sling Media, EchoStar has been […]
From Sotires Eleftheriou in Paris The French Government has signed the decree for the technical standard for mobile television, known as TMP (television mobile personnelle) using the DVB-H standard, with complementary coverage via satellite using DVB-SH. The way is now open for a call for candidates to be issued by the end of October. The […]
The wholesale division of BT Group is to provide landline services for Orange customers as part of Orange’s push to offer mobile, fixed line, broadband and TV services. The agreement will allow Orange to offer a fixed-line telephony service under its own brand but managed and maintained by BT Wholesale. Orange customers will need to […]
As 'Best Buy' gears up for its important high-definition TV sales months, a new survey from the No. 1 electronics retailer reveals that almost 90 per cent of Americans still don’t understand HDTVs – and close to 50 per cent underestimate the cost of buying one. “We were getting a lot of anecdotal evidence that […]
Europeans’ interest in watching mobile television is tiny, a new study shows. Mobile operators hope that mobile TV could encourage users to spend an extra E5 to 10 a month, compensating for declining revenues from voice calls, but mobile television and video downloads ranked close to the bottom of consumer interest in a Gartner study […]
Facebook has overtaken News Corp’s MySpace site as the highest-traffic UK social networking site with 6.5m unique users last month, according to data published by Nielsen//NetRatings. Since October 2006, Facebook has rocketed from 448,000 unique users in the UK to 6,506,000 during August 2007. Meanwhile, it is being reported that Microsoft is poised to buy […]
UK Television could soon have longer advertising breaks under proposals being considered by Ofcom. ITV1, Channel 4 and Five are currently not allowed to show more than an average of seven minutes of advertising an hour. But Ofcom is discussing raising the limit. The watchdog said it was reviewing the rules at a time when […]
Fox and Apple have reached an agreement to offer free downloads of the shows Fox is trying to promote for the widely covered US sweeps season. Episodes of five new shows including Back To You, Til’ Death and K-Ville, are currently available for free at the iTunes Store. The FOX shows are commercial-free, unlike the […]
AETN International, a division of A&E Television Networks (AETN), has launched a broadband video player for overseas channel services of The History Channel, The Biography Channel, and Crime & Investigation Network. The broadband player is avaialble in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. AETN and its partners will launch additional players in Europe, Asia and Latin America […]
MGM Networks, has signed an agreement with Warburg Pincus-backed Eurocom, the largest cable operator in Bulgaria's capital, to launch a local language version of The MGM Channel beginning in October. The deal marks the MGM Channel's debut in Bulgaria.