Advanced Television

Broadcast

DivX TV reveals partnerships

DivX, a division of Sonic Solutions, has revealed new partners across content brands and integrated circuit manufacturers for DivX TV, the company’s comprehensive Internet TV service that enables consumer electronics manufacturers to bring a broad range of web-based content to home and mobile devices New DivX TV content sources revealed at CES include: AOL; Amos […]

January 5, 2011

Supreme Court OKs Spain TV tax

Spain’s Supreme Court has come down in favour of the tax imposed on telcos to finance national public broadcaster RTVE a year after it was stopped from selling commercial advertising. Telefónica, Vodafone and Ono had petitioned the Supreme Court to stop the  telco tax – 0.9 per cent of turnover – on the basis it […]

January 4, 2011

2011: Mobile TV ads take off, at last

2011 is the year mobile advertising will finally come of age thanks to smartphones, says  Enders Analysis. “The explosion in smartphone sales and even faster growth in mobile internet usage is driving commensurate growth in advertising inventory,” Enders says. Spending on mobile in the UK will grow from £46 million (€53.3m) in 2009 to £419 […]

January 4, 2011

Russians fire top space officials

On December 5th a Russian Proton rocket flight was catastrophically aborted when its Block DM-3 upper stage failed. The rocket was carrying 3 sat-nav satellites. The problem caused an immediate knock-on delay for other scheduled users of Proton, including Eutelsat’s massively important KaSat craft. A Board of Enquiry found that the upper stage had been over-filled […]

January 4, 2011By Chris Forrester

Francisco Partners completes on Grass Valley buy

Broadcast and professional solutions supplier Grass Valley has confirmed that Francisco Partners, a leading technology-focused investment company, has completed the closing process with Technicolor and finalised the acquisition of the Grass Valley Broadcast and Professional business. As of January 1, 2011 Grass Valley began doing business as an independent company, under the trade name ‘Grass […]

January 3, 2011by Colin Mann

Netflix dominating iTunes Rental Service

According to analysts Gleacher & Co, Netflix service is about 10 times larger than Apple’s iTunes video rental service at the time. Apple reportedly makes about 475,000 rentals a day whilst Netflix sell over five million rentals daily. As far as what Apple is renting, about 150,000 a day are movies and 400,000 are TV […]

December 31, 2010

Research: Connected TV satisfies

Consumers are using the connected features of their connected TVs and say that they are pleased with the results, according to The NPD Group. The research firm’s Connected TV Owner Study reveals that nearly half of US consumers (45 per cent) who say they have an Internet-connected TV, access Internet features. Of those who have […]

December 30, 2010

ART joins OSN for united pay-TV service

Once there were three fierce rivals competing for pay-TV loyalty in the Middle East. In July 2009 Showtime and Orbit merged their competing services into the Orbit-Showtime Network (OSN).  Now Arab Radio & Television (ART) has placed its five leading entertainment channels onto the OSN system. ART Aflam 1 and 2 plus ART Hikayat 1 […]

December 29, 2010Chris Forrester

Du eyes 3DTV service

UAE-based telco du is planning­­ to be among the first companies in the Middle East to provide its customers a 3D TV viewing experience. The company has confirmed that its video-on-demand service is now 3D-capable and has started airing its first 3D content. Du has struck a deal with the UK’s On Demand Group to […]

December 29, 2010

Technicolor in Grass Valley transmission disposal

French technology and media services company Technicolor has received a binding offer from Parter Capital Group, a private equity investment consultancy firm based in Germany, to acquire its transmission business, operating under the Thomson Broadcast brand. The offer values the Transmission business for a non-material amount. As announced early 2010, a range of former Grass […]

December 26, 2010