A new agreement means Astra’s HD+ signals will be offered to DT’s IPTV clients. ‘Entertain Sat’ is Deutsche Telekom’s (DT) service which takes satellite signals from Astra, in particular HDTV transmissions from some of Germany’s leading broadcasters which are encoded in HD Plus. Satellite viewers to HD+ have to buy a special HD+ decoder and pay a modest fee to [...]
To date there has been something of a battle taking place amongst TV manufacturers as to whether to back ‘active’ or ‘passive’ 3D systems. Most users agree that ‘active’ glasses work best, but they’re not cheap. Now a French company is claiming the ‘world’s first’ all-technology 3D solution. Volfoni’s ActiveEyes units will be showcased at the giant Hanover CeBIT show [...]
Penthouse has confirmed the launch of Penthouse 3D – the first Pan European 3D formatted adult channel. Highlights include 100 per cent Full 3D Native HD, 30 hours of new programmes a month and programming that includes distinctive hardcore and softcore feeds. Penthouse 3D will be available on a daily basis from 11:00 pm until 5:00 am (GMT +1) on [...]
Italian pay-DTT broadcaster Dahlia TV is off-air as new investors failed to materialise a month after it entered liquidation. A statement on the company’s website announced: “Dahlia TV and his team are sorry to report that, despite all the efforts made in recent months to offer the best service and repay the trust its own customers, they are forced to [...]
The Virgin Media Entertainment Index reveals 2010 was a record breaking year for On Demand viewing, with just under 900 million programmes watched in total – a 10 per cent increase on the previous record, set in 2009. Virgin Media’s On Demand service is the third most watched ‘channel’ on the platform with customers, on average, each watching for almost [...]
Sky Deutschland has claimed over one million HD subscribers. The figure includes customers that have STBs to receive HD channels in the operator’s basic package, rather than those who subscribe to a specific HD service. Earlier this month, Sky said it ended December with 593,000 HD subscribers. Sky’s entry level TV package includes Discovery HD, National Geographic HD, History HD [...]
IE Market Research Corporation (IEMR) has published its Q1 2011 Global Mobile Entertainment Forecast, 2008 – 2015. “We think that the global mobile entertainment market will see significant growth over the next five years. Globally, we are expecting mobile multimedia revenue to rise from $32 billion in 2009 to $52.8 billion in 2015. Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2011 [...]
The project to create a national IPTV platform in China is going “smoothly,” according to Zhang Haitao, deputy chief of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), at a press conference held in Beijing. All 12 pilot cities, chosen by the SARFT to build local IPTV platforms, had finished the construction and linked their platforms to the central-level [...]
Motorola Mobility Holdings has filed a suit against TiVo claiming infringement of its patents for digital video recorders. In the complaint, filed in Texas, Motorola contends that it owns multiple patents related to DVRs, including some from the mid-1990s by a group of engineers whose company was later purchased by a Motorola subsidiary. It suggests TiVo wilfully infringed those patents, [...]
Broadcasting is changing, especially in the Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) and Outside Broadcast arena. TV technology specialists Ericsson has also taken a fresh look at its DSNG kit, and “thrown everything out and started again,” in the words of Fabio Murra (Product Manager/Solution Area TV). The dilemma facing any DSNG crew is serving the client, of course, in the [...]
