Advanced Television

STB

India MSOs furious over STB tax

India’s cable and DTH operators have reacted furiously to the news that India’s finance minister has levied a 5 per cent extra import tax on set-top boxes – raising the overall tax to 10 per cent. They are complaining that the tax hike could not have come at a worse time. Almost all STBs are […]

March 1, 2013By Chris Forrester

India doubles STB import duties

India’s New Delhi government is to double customs duties on imported set-top boxes in an attempt to promote local production and sales of digital converter boxes. The new tax is set at 10 per cent, and was outlined by India’s finance minister in his budget speech. The problem, however, is that India’s local manufacturing scene […]

February 28, 2013By Chris Forrester

CryptoFirewall for EchoStar

Cryptography Research, a division of Rambus, has signed a licence agreement with EchoStar Technologies to adopt the Cryptography Research CryptoFirewall security core for use with EchoStar set-top-box technologies to protect against TV signal theft. “We are committed to the strongest and most advanced security solutions and pleased to be integrating the CryptoFirewall core into our […]

February 27, 2013

Chennai needs 3m STBs

One giant Indian MSO, Tamul Nadu Cable Comms (TCCL), says it needs the best part of 3 million new digital set-top boxes for its own analogue-to-digital conversion plan. Currently TCCL has only some 200,000 set-top boxes deployed, and is looking to supply 500,000-750,000 new boxes by the end of April, and expects to install close […]

February 25, 2013By Chris Forrester

STBs: Cisco wins in India, Chinese makers surge

Cisco won significant standard definition set-top box business in India in the quarter ending January 26th 2013. Cisco shipped 1.3 million boxes in the fourth quarter compared with 850K in the third quarter, with a large portion of the increase coming from India. Cisco CEO John Chambers remarked that the company has “been more selective […]

February 20, 2013

Cisco clarifies STB commitment

Cisco executives have taken steps to clarify the company’s commitment to its set-top box business in the wake of comments made in an analyst call by Chairman and CEO John Chambers that that it was “walking away” from low-margin STB business. Writing in a Cisco blog posted by Senior Vice President and General Manager Service […]

February 19, 2013By Colin Mann

Verimatrix secures Com Hem advanced multi-screen services

Verimatrix, the specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network, multi-screen digital TV services around the globe, and Swedish triple-play operator Com Hem, have confirmed that the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS) has been selected to secure Com Hem’s advanced multi-screen TV services scheduled to launch Spring 2013. The new service will be delivered […]

February 19, 2013

Tata Sky and Technicolor extend contracts

Technicolor has won two extension contracts from Tata Sky, India’s leading satellite operator with over 8 million subscribers. Tata Sky has granted Technicolor an extension until mid 2015 of the initial contracts for the STBs already delivered over the past years: “Technicolor’s solutions have met our expectations in terms of reliability because we want to […]

February 19, 2013

Cisco ‘walking away from low-margin STB business’

Cisco is pressing ahead with the reshaping of its Service Provider Video Business from a low-margin set-top box business to what Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers described as a “profitable and strategic Videoscape architecture in the cloud,” building on the company’s integration of NDS. Chambers made his comments during an analyst call discussing […]

February 14, 2013By Colin Mann

Humax new-look YouView STB

A new-look set-top box for YouView, the subscription-free TV service, is now available to buy from retailers across the UK. The YouView Humax DTR-T1010 set-top box is black with a silver finish on the front. It offers all the features currently available from YouView and will receive new software updates as they are made available […]

February 14, 2013