Astro, Malaysia’s largest pay-TV operator, aims to complete the conversion of its customers’ legacy set-top boxes to the B.yond HD platform by the year-end, said chief executive officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan. “We saw over 64 per cent of customers during the first quarter subscribing to HD and other value-added services, which in turn drove up […]
The Indian press is reporting that Reliance Digital TV, an Indian DTH player with 6 million subs, might be selling out to one of India’s regional DTH players, Sun Direct. Discussions are said to be at an advanced stage. Sun Direct has more than 8 million subscribers. If the deal goes through it will leapfrog […]
Belarus has banned satellite dishes on apartment blocks and city buildings. A letter was sent out last week to citizens of its capital city Minsk, reminding them that in accordance with a ruling of May 16th and adopted by the Council of Ministers individual are forbidden to install satellite equipment. A fine of up to […]
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has taken the step of putting Greek broadcaster ERT’s news coverage back on air, allowing Greek satellite subscribers to watch NET, the station’s news channel, on television. Until the afternoon of June 13, ERT’s output was only available via a live stream on the EBU website, redirected from ERT’s signal, […]
In an unexpected turn on June 12th, Clearwire declined the rival bid from existing majority owner Sprint Nextel and instead selected the rival Charlie Ergen bid via his Dish Network pay-TV operation. Late on June 12th in a regulatory filing Clearwire urged its stockholders to accept the Dish bid which is worth $4.40 a share, […]
India is a land of broadcasting superlatives where millions are signing up to pay-TV each year, but a survey by SNL Kagan says that of the six major DTH broadcasters Videocon DTH is not just the nation’s fastest growing, but is the world’s leader in terms of net new subscribers. According to SNL Kagan Videocon […]
Global pay-tv households will reach nearly 1 billion by 2018, up from 772 million in 2012 and 814 million in 2013. According to the Digital TV World Household Forecasts report, the Asia Pacific region will contribute 59 per cent (587 million) of the global total by 2018. Based on forecasts for 97 countries by Digital […]
GlobeCast and SES are providing services to Orange Romania for the launch of a high-quality direct-to-home satellite TV package this month. The package will use multiple transponders on Astra’s 31.5 degrees East orbital position and will be broadcast in the DVB-S2 and MPEG4 technical standards. GlobeCast will provide contribution, encryption, and encoding for SD and […]
In its Q1 Cross Platform Report Nielsen says that, despite a small dip on last year, traditional live TV remains dominant while streaming and mobile video use is growing but still small in comparison. “Still vibrant, traditional TV is thriving as viewers continue to go to their sets for entertainment and information that appeals to […]
Brazilian telco giant Oi has leased a large per centage of Ku-band capacity on board SES-6, which successfully launched on June 3. Oi explained that the new capacity will allow it to expand its pay-TV line-up and in particular give additional emphasis to HDTV. Oi’s director of operations James Meaney says that the extra capacity […]