Last week Sky announced that in 2018 it would introduce an OTT broadband service which would include its SkyQ set-top box, and targeting the 2 million homes in the UK (and 6 million in Europe) which had no possibility of satellite dish reception. The news went down very badly with investors holding stock in Luxembourg-based […]
Satellite operator SES has released figures to reinforce its claim that it continues to lead HDTV development, representing the largest HD and Ultra HD platform. In 2016, the number of HD channels on the SES fleet grew by 7 per cent to 2,495 channels. Today, 33 per cent of all the 7,538 channels on the […]
EchoStar (which is listed as SATS) has swapped certain assets with its pay-TV sister company, Dish Network (which trades as DISH). EchoStar takes care of the portfolio of satellites in orbit as well as the supply and management of its set-top box division. However, the key assets closely involve another Charlie Ergen-backed operation, Hughes Retail […]
The BBC has appointed Matt Grest to be the corporation’s new Director of Platform. Grest will join from Sky where he was most recently Sky’s director of digital platforms, with responsibility for web and mobile across Sports, News, Sky.com and Intranet. He has also led on the creation and expansion of Sky’s new Digital Hub […]
The growing momentum of Discovery Communications’ Olympic Games preparations has been marked by seven new partnerships including with Poland’s leading national broadcaster. The Home of the Olympic Games in Europe has agreed a new collaboration with Telewizja Polska, alongside a range of sublicense agreements with national broadcasters and a National Olympic Committee body in other […]
Ooyala, a Telstra subsidiary and specialist in video monetisation, has introduced its Ooyala Solutions Partner Programme, through which technology and reseller partners can access and deploy a full set of technologies to modernise any video business at any stage, from a single partner. Providing everything from video production workflow technology, data-driven OTT solutions, robust monetisation […]
The battle of on-demand streaming television services continues to intensify. In the past couple of weeks, Netflix announced a big increase in subscribers and the BBC has unveiled ambitious plans for iPlayer in a bid to make sure it doesn’t fall behind its commercial rivals. Premium on-demand services are making inroads into the BBC’s territory. […]
French pay-TV broadcaster AB Groupe has been bought by Mediawan. Mediawan is the media investment consortium set up by production producer Pierre-Antoine Capton, Iliad Telecom founder Xavier Niel and Lazard France head Matthieu Pigasse. Mediawan is paying €270 million for AB Groupe, which is owned by Claude Berda and French commercial network TF1 (33.5 per […]
Sky and Discovery are said to be close to agreeing a last-gasp deal to keep the likes of Eurosport and Animal Planet on Sky’s pay-TV platform and NOW TV OTT service – following their well-publicised spat. Both companies are said to have agreed to halt publicly confrontational messages, and there is renewed hope a deal […]
Telefónica’s IPTV platform Movistar Plus is offering free iPlus set-top-boxes in an attempt to boost subscriptions to the pay-TV platform by satellite, which currently has 800,000 subscribers (versus 3.7 million via IP). The device will allow new and current subscribers to have access to HD channels, VoD and online box office content. Recording services are […]