Advanced Television

Hylas-1 ready for business

Hylas-1, the UK’s latest satellite, is ready to do business. Astrium, which built the ‘highly adaptable satellite’ says it will hand over the orbiting satellite to Avanti Communications next week having completed its in-orbit testing of the craft. Hylas-1 was launched back in November. “In recent months HYLAS 1 has undergone a series of tests […]

March 17, 2011By Chris Forrester

Cord cutting is all about tipping points

We have a widget on the advanced-television.com news service that calculates the most read story over the last five days. It is clear that if the words connected TV feature in the story it will rank high and if the name Google TV is included it will shoot to the top. This fascination is divided […]

March 15, 2011

Ka-Sat wins first order

Eutelsat used the opening day of Washington Satellite 2011 to confirm a three-year order for capacity on its giant Ka-Sat craft. The deal is with Germany’s Sat Internet Services which has contracted for three-years of capacity on the satellite for Eutelsat’s Tooway broadband-by-satellite product. Eutelsat says there is a significant market opportunity for satellite broadband […]

March 14, 2011From Chris Forrester in Washington

Pace may face FSA on disclosure

Set-top box giant Pace might have to face an official City enquiry into its results statement. Pace’s shares fell back almost 20 per cent yesterday. The problem is CEO Neil Gaydon told analysts and press that one significant US order would be delayed by a year because the customer had decided to adopt new technology. […]

March 9, 2011By Chris Forrester

Sky deal will be slow and expensive

What do you get an octogenarian billionaire for his birthday? How about the share of Sky he doesn’t already own? Well, luckily for him, it seems that for Rupert Murdoch 80 is the new 60, so he doesn’t need to be in a huge hurry to open his present. This is just as well because […]

March 2, 2011

Wanna Roadmap? Get a Brazilian…

Now I’ve got your attention I’ll explain. A session here at Cable Congress posed the question what should operator’s digital home strategies be? No surprise that everybody nodded enthusiastically to enabling the home network, developing the Set Top as the home gateway and delivering ‘blow me away’ user interfaces. But panellists also admitted that this […]

February 15, 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

GlobeCast manages Travel expansion

London-based Travel Channel has changed its Asian signal feed from AsiaSat to Measat-3. It joins a powerful video neighbourhood on Measat-3 handled by GlobeCast including Nat-Geo, History Ch, TV5 Mode, FX and Fox Crime. GlobeCast says Travel will launch an HDTV channel later this year. “This move,” says GlobeCast, “allows Travel Channel to expand to […]

February 10, 2011By Chris Forrester

Orbit-Showtime goes for iPad/iPhones

Middle East pay-TV operator Orbit Showtime Network (OSN) has launched a free app for iPhone, iPad and iPod subscribers to access OSN’s output across its 80-odd channels, as well as free-to-air channels available locally. “The new free OSN application ‘My OSN’ is the latest innovation from OSN to ensure TV viewers never miss a match, […]

February 10, 2011By Chris Forrester

SES-backed O3b links with Etisalat

Satellite operator SES is backing O3b, a new global high-speed Internet network. O3b, which stands for the “other 3 billion” of people with little or no access to the Internet, says it has signed a five-year global framework agreement with Etisalat Group, headquartered in the UAE and with more than 100 million customers across the […]

February 10, 2011By Chris Forrester