Advanced Television

OTT

Online video viewing up 49%

Nielsen Online has released overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for May 2009. Compared to the same month in 2008, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49 per cent growth in time per viewer. YouTube was far and away […]

June 22, 2009

Four new Open IPTV Forum members

The membership of the Open IPTV Forum (OIPF) has been reinforced by the addition of four significant new members. British Telecom, Pirelli, Netgem and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) have joined the effort to develop open, end-to-end specifications for IPTV; based on existing technologies and open standards

June 22, 2009

Oz demands controls on IPTV output

Australia's free-to-air TV networks have called on the federal government to impose tough new regulations on future Internet TV services to prevent them grabbing premium sport and other content. Free TV Australia, representing the Seven, Nine, Ten, ABC and SBS networks, argued the anti-siphoning content rules for pay-TV should include IPTV. In its submission on […]

June 18, 2009

IPTV market up nearly 24m

The Broadband Forum has published the latest broadband and IPTV statistics, which show impressive growth in the face of the global economic downturn. Its report, prepared for the Forum by industry analysts Point Topic, shows that global broadband grew by 16.6 million lines in the first quarter 2009 alone, while IPTV subscribers approach 24 million, […]

June 18, 2009

SPPF sues YouTube

French independent labels collecting society SPPF has filed a lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. The producers’ body said that more than 100 music videos from its catalogue, which had been taken down by YouTube in 2008 following SPPF’s request, were again available on the service in some form. SPPF is now seeking E10 million […]

June 18, 2009

Oz demands controls on IPTV output

Australia's free-to-air TV networks have called on the federal government to impose tough new regulations on future Internet TV services to prevent them grabbing premium sport and other content. Free TV Australia, representing the Seven, Nine, Ten, ABC and SBS networks, argued the anti-siphoning content rules for pay-TV should include IPTV. In its submission on […]

June 16, 2009

BT Vision chief quits

The chief executive of BT Vision, Dan Marks, has quit to pursue his own interests. IPTV service BT Vision is at the heart of the UK telco’s efforts to move beyond traditional phone services. But Marks warned that without an acceleration to Ofcom’s review of the pay-TV sector, enabling BT to access BSkyB’s premium film […]

June 12, 2009

Kudelski not interested in selling OpenTV stake

The 'round robin' on the OpenTV non-takeover by its biggest shareholder continues. The Kudelski Group, has commented on Discovery Group's recommendation that OpenTV buys out Kudelski Group's stake in OpenTV: "The Kudelski Group confirms that it is not interested in selling its shares of OpenTV…Kudelski Group reiterates its commitment to remain OpenTV's controlling shareholder and […]

June 12, 2009

Italy: 600,000 IPTV users

From Branislav Pekic in Rome The “New Media: Challenges and Opportunities of Development for the Italian Market” study from Ernst & Young has revealed that IPTV penetration remains low, with only 600.000 users in Italy, compared to the estimated 5 million for DTH platform Sky Italian and DTT pay-TV operator Mediaset Premium. According to Ernst […]

June 12, 2009

U-Verse deployment in decline

According to UBS Research, AT&T is slowing the deployment of their “next-generation” VDSL IPTV service, U-Verse. UBS initially expected AT&T to pass 11 million homes in 2009, but has 're-guesstimated' that AT&T will pass just 4-5 million homes this year. That would be down from 9 million in 2008. AT&T admits there’s been a recession-related […]

June 10, 2009