Advanced Television

Broadcast

SES: bank upbeat despite transponder glut

The market’s view of SES’ May 12 results remains positive despite the potential inventory of more than 20 unsold transponders currently used to beam analogue channels to German viewers.  There are also a few slippages in the upcoming six-satellite additions to the SES fleet this year. Indeed, investment bankers Morgan Stanley, in a note to […]

May 13, 2011

Telefonica pay-TV up 9%

Weak first-quarter results at Telefonica showed the damage of the stagnant economy in Spain, with the numbers rescued by strong performance in Latin America. And worldwide the group added 9 per cent to its pay-TV subscriber base – 2.865 million compared to 2.613 million last March. Overall the group had a 2 per cent fall […]

May 13, 2011

Dish ponders premium video

Dish Network, the second- largest US satellite-television provider, is considering a video-on-demand service to offer Hollywood movies about eight weeks after they’re released, said an executive. The service would likely have terms “similar” to those of DirecTV, including a price tag of about $30, according to Tom Cullen, a Dish executive vice president. DirecTV, the […]

May 13, 2011By Colin Mann

DTH to overtake cable by 2015 in Western Europe

Western Europe posted over 182 million TV households at end-2010, 40 per cent of which are watching TV via terrestrial platforms, 27 per cent via cable and about 26 per cent through satellite, either free-to-air or through paid subscription. The IPTV subscriber base represented about 7 per cent of the total base. InfoCom expects that […]

May 13, 2011

Five On Demand on SmartTV

Samsung has partnered with the UK’s Five to put the broadcaster’s catch-up TV app Five On Demand in its app store on Samsung Smart TVs. According to Samsung, Five is the first in a new range of partners including broadcasters, retailers and holiday companies that will be imminently announced for the Smart TV platform. The […]

May 13, 2011

FIFA, UEFA challenge UK FTA rules

World soccer’s governing bodies FIFA and UEFA have appealed against a European ruling that the World Cup and European Championships must be on free-to-air TV in the UK. In February, the European Court ruled the UK could keep the events on a of “a protected list” of events shown for free. It means the two […]

May 12, 2011

Sky Deutschland adds 73,000

The German pay-TV provider added 73,000 new customers in the first three months of 2011, taking its total subs base to 2,726,000 for the end of March, up from 2,471,000 a year earlier and a step on the way to its challenging 3m target by this next year. Q1 revenues grew 15% YonY to €269.6 […]

May 12, 2011

MSO ‘will replace STB with connected devices’

In a filing with the FCC, Ron Wheeler, SVP of Content Protection for Fox Group stated that “in the course of renegotiating a contract with one of Fox’s multichannel video programming distribution (“MVPD”) partners, the MVPD has told Fox that it intends in the near future to make its subscription and on-demand video services available […]

May 12, 2011

HDTV helps SES stay firmly on track

Satellite operator SES, as at March 31st, was fully using 995 transponders out of a fleet total of 1249 (79.7 per cent, and up 32 transponders on the same period last year) with markets like India filling “every available transponder” on its SES-7 craft and is the reason why SES has ordered a new 33-transponder […]

May 12, 2011By Chris Forrester

C4 profits close to £40m

Channel 4 increased its profits from £300,000 (€344,000) to nearly £40 million in 2010 thanks to a big upswing in the advertising market, but warned revenues for the coming year looked flat. Total revenue increased 12.6 per cent to £935.2 million in 2010. Operating profit rose to £49.3 million from £3.9 million the previous year, […]

May 12, 2011