Advanced Television

Articles

Rapture appeals Ofcom’s EPG ruling

Digital channel Rapture TV has claimed that Ofcom did not fully investigate its complaint that BSkyB overcharged for its electronic programme guide listing in an appeal against the regulator’s ruling. Rapture, which airs a mix of entertainment and extreme sports programming, originally complained to Ofcom that its annual EPG bill of £76,500 from Sky was […]

December 21, 2007

Ericsson acquires HyC

Ericsson has acquired HyC Group, a leading Spanish company in TV consultancy and systems integration. The acquisition further strengthens Ericsson’s position in the services and multimedia domains as a systems integrator of IPTV solutions. The HyC acquisition follows Ericsson’s acquisition of Tandberg Television, provider of advanced video compression technologies, at the beginning of the year. […]

December 21, 2007

Channel 4 fined by Ofcom

Channel Four has been fined £1.5 million by media watchdog Ofcom for misconduct involving phone-in competitions on popular programmes Richard and Judy and Deal or No Deal. Viewers were urged to call a premium number after contestants had already been chosen on Richard and Judy. Deal or No Deal selected competition finalists in a way […]

December 21, 2007

PBS content alliance with Joost and DirecTV

Media enterprise the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will begin featuring select full-length programming on Joost, the Internet television service. At launch, the PBS offering will include popular series, such as History Detectives and Scientific American Frontiers, as well as specials from PBS' award-winning 'Empires' collection. Separately, satellite operator DirecTV revealed a deal to carry Public […]

December 21, 2007

RingNett expands IPTV reach with Envivio

Envivio, technology provider of IP video convergence encoding solutions, is providing a Convergence Generation video headend to Norwegian ISP RingNett AS to enable the roll out of its Digital-TV IPTV service across its ADSL2+ infrastructure. RingNett's Digital-TV service is already available to test customers subscribing to its optical fibre-based GPON high speed Internet delivery service. […]

December 21, 2007

HD/Blu-Ray price slash

Manufacturers of high-definition DVD players are slashing prices in the US in an urgent pre-Christmas attempt to break the deadlock between two rival formats. The cost of key manufacturing components for the Sony-supported Blu-ray players and Toshiba's rival HD-DVD hardware will fall below $150 early in 2008, according to analysts at Understanding & Solutions entertainment […]

December 21, 2007

Pace acquires Philips STB unit

Philips Electronics has reached an agreement in principle to sell its Set-Top Boxes (STB) and Connectivity Solutions (CS) businesses to UK-based technology provider Pace Micro Technology. Philips will sell the businesses to Pace in exchange for 70 million Pace shares. Philips will retain 22.5 per cent of the enlarged share capital of Pace. The deal […]

December 20, 2007

FCC rules on video programming diversity

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted rules to promote video programming diversity by ensuring new video programmers can enter and compete in the video market. An Order adopted by the Commission sets the number of subscribers a cable operator may serve at 30 per cent nationwide. In a further notice also adopted, the Commission […]

December 20, 2007

Ofcom digital progress report

According to Ofcom figures, Freeview achieved near-record sales of 2.4 million digital television receivers in the third quarter of 2007. The media regulator’s quarterly digital TV progress report, for the three months to the end of September, showed that 361,700 households that had been analogue-only went digital during the period. This was down from 944,200 […]

December 20, 2007

TV over UGC for online viewers

According to ChoiceStream's 2007 Survey of Viewer Trends in TV and Online Video, 65 per cent of consumers who watch video on their computers, mobile devices or digital media players are watching professionally-produced TV programming, including network- and cable-produced shows, news and sports. This number exceeds the39 per cent of consumers watching user-generated video by […]

December 20, 2007