From Colin Mann in London The digital satellite television service from ITV and the BBC has launched across Britain offering high definition programming and more than 80 channels for no monthly fee. Freesat, will be available in 98 per cent of households, the broadcasters also hope the addition of high definition channels on a free-to-air […]

DirecTV's first-quarter net income rose 10 per cent amid higher net subscriber additions and a lower subscriber cancellation rate. The company reported net income of $371 million, up from $336 million, a year earlier. Revenue rose 17 per cent to $4.59 billion. DirecTV said US net subscriber additions rose 17 per cent to 275,000, putting […]

SES-Astra looks certain to give up on marketing the Entavio 'platform' direct to the German public. Instead it will work more closely with Premiere. “The offer was not attractive enough, there is too much overlap with Premiere Star,” said CFO Mark Rigolle. The introduction of the Entavio platform has always been controversial, politicians and consumer […]

Harmonic has confirmed that that Sun Direct TV has deployed Harmonic’s digital video solutions for India’s first MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) direct-to-home (DTH) broadcast service. Harmonic has enabled Sun Direct TV to offer its new DTH service to 40 million homes in southern India by providing an end-to-end solution encompassing the latest generation DiviCom Electra encoders, […]

The European Commission has formalised its adoption of DVB-H and says EU countries will 'be required' to promote it. The Commission said setting the Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld as the preferred European Union standard would give the industry a boost. “For mobile TV to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the […]

Astra says it has added 1.72 million households in Germany to bring the total number of DTH homes reached to 9.75 million. In total, Germany had 36.98 million analogue and digital TV homes last year. The number of satellite households remains stable at 16.7 million or 45 per cent of all TV households while cable […]

SIDSA has launched “EnterTV” a DVB-H one-stop-shop for manufacturers of Portable and Mobile TV devices. The company says it integrates its own IC with the best-in-class third party solutions to provide Portable and Mobile TV device manufacturers with fast time to market. Enter TV modules and reference designs include silicon tuners from Microtune and NXP […]

Modern Times Group (MTG) has confirmed that Viasat Broadcasting has signed an agreement with Canal Digital in Sweden to include the Kanal 5 channel on Viasat's DTH satellite and IPTV platforms, and for TV3 to be made available on the Canal Digital satellite and IPTV platforms. The channels will be included in Viasat's and Canal […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid Sogecable has acquired the exclusive rights to broadcast the Euro 2008 football tournament in Spain. The pay-TV group will broadcast all 31 matches on its digital DTH platform Digital Plus, with all games featuring the Spanish national team being available on its free-to-air channel Cuatro, with a nation wide […]

IPTV Corporation has choosen Arqiva for DTH distribution giving IPTV Transatlantic fibre connectivity, uplinking to the UK, and access to the British Sky Broadcasting digital platform allowing the Company to operate as if it were a UK broadcaster. Arqiva is positioned as the major gateway to Europe for American broadcasters and allows IPTV to distribute […]