Gemstar, the News Corp controlled TV listings company, has initiated patent litigation proceedings against Virgin Media in the English High Court. Gemstar allege that the Virgin companies infringe three of Gemstar's European patents, including techniques for providing certain interactive programme guides (IPGs), and for handling recordings from IPGs. We have worked diligently to license Virgin […]
Satellite TV contributed to video customer gains for AT&T in the fourth quarter. The telco giant’s IPTV platform also gained a significant number of new subscribers during the three-month period. On satellite TV, AT&T said it was serving 2.116 million bundled dish customers at the end of December. That’s up from the 1.986 million customers […]
Thanks largely to stronger-than-expected global PC sales, Microsoft reported $6.48 billion in profit for the holiday quarter on sales of $16.37 billion, beating analyst estimates. Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell raised the company's sales and profit targets for the next two quarters — a sign that unlike Wall Street, Microsoft expects a comfortable start to […]
BBC Worldwide is in talks with international broadcasters in relation to launching local on-demand media players, similar to its Kangaroo joint venture with ITV and Channel 4. The US, Australia and Germany are likely targets. A BBC Worldwide spokeswoman insisted any international venture would be separate to the Kangaroo system, but added the BBC would […]
France’s three mobile network operators; Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, have told president Nicolas Sarkozy that they would back his concept of eliminating advertising on public TV by levying a tax on mobile TV operators (and ISPs) in return for a guarantee there will be no more 3G operators. This would leave Iliad’s Free subsidiary […]
The Nielsen Company has confirmed the commercial launch of Nielsen On Demand Reporting & Analytics, (NORA), a measurement service that aggregates and anonymously reports on video-on-demand (VOD) usage based on real time transactions collected at the set-top box level. At launch, Comcast will be providing VOD data for the NORA service, covering January 1, 2007 […]
Months of tension between Barry Diller (IAC) and his long time backer, John Malone, (Liberty) boiled over into a two-way legal battle that could determine the future control of major parts of IAC. Malone’s Liberty Media which owns a majority voting stake in IAC, has filed suit in Delaware Chancery Court accusing Mr. Diller of […]
Latens and TelCo Group, systems integrator in the Russian TV and telecommunications market, have signed a partnership agreement, and TelCo Group has integrated Latens CAS, with its eScentra middleware platform. The focus of this partnership will be on the sales and marketing of Latens and TelCo Group integrated solutions for Russia's IPTV, digital cable, satellite […]
The first day’s bidding of the Federal Communications Commission auction of 700 MHz spectrum attracted $2.8 billion in prospective bids, according to the agency. The majority of the money was committed by bidders in the first round with only $353 million being raised in the second round. The day one total was about a quarter […]
PT Multimedia has acquired a 20 per cent stake in Potugese cable TV company TVTEL and will acquire the remaining 80 per cent from investment bank Caixa BI, subject to the approval of competition authorities.