Latest SATELLITE NEWS/TV LISTING SECTION

[mike566]

ARD to scrap digital channel(s)?

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

The German public broadcaster ARD is considering scrapping one or all three of its digital thematic channels, according to a report in Die Zeit as part of cost controlling measures.
At the moment, ARD operates three digital channels, Eins Festival, Eins Plus and Eins Extra. The total costs of these channels, that mainly spe----------------e in repeats of programming from ARD Das Erste, are believed to be between €3-4 million per year.

However, the broadcaster is not free to just stop a digital channel, as they operate under a licence from the German Laender (states), which have just issued the broadcaster with a three- year programme plan in which they outline the type of content they are supposed to broadcast.

[mike566]

Warner to premiere US shows on iTunes

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

Warner Bros has announced it will premiere a number of its US shows in the UK on the iTunes store.
Episodes from three US shows, Nikita, The Vampire Diaries: Season Two, and Gossip Girl: Season 4 will be made available the day after each show airs in the US.

Every Friday for Nikita and The Vampire Diaries, and every Tuesday for Gossip Girl, viewers will be able to download new episodes from iTunes.

The move to offer these episodes immediately after airing in the US seems to be a counter measure against the practice that US shows become immediately available illegally on the internet.

[mike566]

MTV sues Turkish distributor after non-payment

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

MTV Networks has filed a London High Court suit claiming that its Turkish distributor has failed to pay it for the transmission of both MTV and sister channel Nickelodeon.
The Viacom-owned company says that Multi Channel Developers (MCD), which also represents the BBC, Eurosport and Euronews, has reneged on its agreement and is seeking a court order that would take the local versions of the channels off the air along with unspecified damages.

MCD has represented MTV in the Turkish market since 2005. The channel launched in November 2006, but in May 2010 it abruptly left the digit*rk platform, though remaining on cable and free-to-air satellite. A month later it was reported locally that MTV had cancelled the contract with its distributor.

[mike566]

UPC Romania ups the ante

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

UPC Romania has revamped its offer in order to compete more effectively with its rivals RCS/RDS and Romtelecom.
It is now allowing its subscribers to create their own double or triple play packages, allowing for maximum flexibility. In practice, this means that they can opt for internet access at speeds of 3, 15 or 25 Mbps, with subscription fees reduced by 30%.

They are also being offered digital TV for the same price as analogue TV, with one package – Optim – costing RON20 (€4.70) a month, excluding VAT, to receive.

Although UPC has been gaining digital cable subscribers (it claimed 254,000 as of the end of Q2), its overall TV subscriber total has been falling.

RCS/RDS is Romania’s leading cable operator, while Romtelecom has a fast-growing cable arm named NextGen.

[mike566]

Volia improves internet offer

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

The leading Ukrainian cable operator Volia has introduced new DOCSIS 3.0-based internet offer for its subscribers.
Available in all parts of the capital, Kiev, it allows for access speeds of up to 150 Mbps and costs UAH199.90 (€19) a month, including usage of reception equipment, to receive. However, subscribers to the Volia Premium TV package are being offered the service for a reduced monthly fee of UAH169.90 a month.

Volia began using DOCSIS 3.0 this March. A triple play company, it currently has around 1.7 million subscribers, of who over 400,000 opt for its high-speed internet access services.

[mike566]

SVT plans second HD channel

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

Swedish public broadcaster SVT is to rebrand its high definition channel SVT HD as SVT1 HD. The move will take place on Monday, September 20 ahead of the November launch of SVT2 HD.
SVT1 HD will be available from the start to viewers of the existing channel that includes distribution via Comhem, Viasat, Canal Digital, Telia, and Tele2. It is planned that SVT1 HD will be made available on the Boxer DTT network from the autumn, as will the new channel.

The broadcaster says that an increasing number of programmes are being produced in the HD format. SVT1 HD will have the same schedule as its standard definition counterpart with the exception of regional programming.

[mike566]

Swiss confirm free choice of set-tops

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

The Federal Council of Switzerland has confirmed plans to allow subscribers of digital television services a free reign in their choice of set-top box. It is now proposing that that Parliament revises the Radio and Television Act.

The move follows a consultation by the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC/UVEK) into the opening of a horizontal market for digital television receivers, criticised as unnecessary by operators including the Liberty Global-owned Cablecom, already in the process of offering CI Plus modules to its subscribers.

It is unlikely that the ruling will become law before 2012.

[mike566]

Portuguese pay-TV market grows

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

Portugal ended the second quarter with 4,043,000 cable homes, according to data produced by the regulator ANACOM.
Although the figure was 0.8% up on the previous quarter, it was a surprising 5.1% lower than 12 months earlier.

The latter was due to the elimination of duplicate reporting of cable homes following the take-over of Bragatel, Pluricanal Leiria and TVTel by Zon TV Cabo, the country’s leading cable operator.

As of the end of Q2, the Lisbon are had the greatest concentration of cable homes, accounting for 45% of the total.

Meanwhile in the DTH sector, the total number of homes receiving service at the end of Q2 stood at 657,000, or 0.5% more than three months earlier and 10% higher than at the end of Q2 2009.

Strong growth was seen in the take-up of FTTH/FTTB, with the number of subscribers at the end of Q2 being 84,000, as opposed to only 6,000 a year earlier. The vast majority of these (86%) were found in Lisbon and the north of the country.

In total, cable accounted for 54.3% of total TV subscribers, followed by DTH (24.8%), FTTH/FTTB (3.2%) and other technologies (17.7%). Grupo ZON/TV Cabo accounted for 60.8% of all subscribers.

[mike566]

YouView leaves payment mechanism to content partners

Published: September 17, 2010 Europe/London

EXCLUSIVE: YouView will let content providers decide on how they manage the payment mechanisms on the connected TV platform. In a Broadband TV News interview, Richard Halton, the newly appointed CEO of the former Project Canvas said the platform would also be opened to developers to create their own apps.
“The consumer logic says have a single payment gateway, it’s easier for people to use, you centralise all the billing, etc,” said Halton. “I think the problem is with the philosophy behind YouView you’re trying to keep control of the payment mechanism with the content provider. YouView is not for profit, it’s not going to own content, it’s not going to sell content for itself. So for us it doesn’t seem appropriate that it then controls the payment gateway.”

Subscriber management company MGt recently launched PayWizard, a pre-paid e-wallet that securely supports micropayment transactions in multiple currencies. The company has made no secret of it ambitions to run a payment system on Canvas, but if it does so it will now need to do so through individual contracts.

Halton explained that YouView devices – the first DTT box is due out in the first half of 2011 – would be capable of supporting a variety of different payment methods and in his explanation used the example of one of the platform’s fiercest critics. “That would allow Sky to authenticate the device so if you’ve got a Sky Player subscription on your YouView box gives you instant access to everything without any additional payment because it knows you’re a subscriber, through to making sure that the technical requirements for making a micropayment service or offering Paypal are all there. It will then be up to content providers to decide who they use as a payment gateway.”

With over 40 manufacturers now committed to YouView, Halton said that the announcement of the first content providers would be made in the next four to six weeks. There will also be details of ISPs in addition to shareholders BT and TalkTalk. YouView’s other shareholders are the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel Five and Arqiva.

The platform will also be ‘opened up’ to content creators large and small with more than a nod to the Apple App Store. “The idea is to have a full blown developer community,” explained Halton. “Even the guys on our team who are developing the core services they can come in on the Monday having played around with things that we could launch on the platform. I can see it already amongst the team and I think that will be a big part of it”.

A certification system will ensure that everything is tested before it goes onto the platform.

[mike566]

Ukrainian ICTV will encode broadcasts of football matches

In mid-September 2010 Ukrainian commercial television ICTV, broadcasting in FTA satellite Amos 2 @ 4 ° W, has surprisingly been encoded in Viaccess PC2.6. ICTV due to limitations of broadcasting rights will encode broadcasts of football matches.