Inside Digital TV articles from May 2001

Inside Digital TV archives from May 2001

BT VDSL TRIAL SET FOR LAUNCH IN LONDON.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... Ailing UK telco BT is close to securing its first partners for its planned VDSL (very-high data rate DSL) trial in Greenwich, London later this year, writes Barry Flynn It is being suggested that BT is talking to both Granada Television...

TELE+ AND STREAM MERGER CONFIRMED.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... French media giant Vivendi Universal and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp have confirmed that they will merge their respective Italian pay-TV units, Tele+ and Stream into a single digital platform. Vivendi CEO Pierre Lescure announced the news...

ZDF AND FANTASTIC DEVELOP MOBILE ITV.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... German public broadcaster ZDF and Swiss-based multimedia company Fantastic Corporation have agreed to collaborate on the development and introduction of mobile interactive digital TV applications. According to Fantastic, ZDF will combine TV...

DISCOVERY STARTS ENHANCED TV SERVICE IN UK.
May 4, 2001... Discovery Networks Europe (DNE) has launched enhanced television programmes in the UK on Sky Digital, claiming to be the first "factual entertainment broadcaster in the UK to launch enhanced and interactive programming" After an initial...

FINNISH MHP PLANS PROCEED.
May 4, 2001... Despite the fact that the third and final profile of the DVB MHP platform is now likely not to be specified until June, PlatCo Oy, the joint corporation that will administer Finland's digital terrestrial TV multiplexes, has signed a...

QUIERO TARGETS E-COMMERCE.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... Spain's digital terrestrial platform, Quiero, is banking on e-commerce revenues as a principal income stream in the future. Eduardo Liberos, director of Quiero's e-commerce division, said, "[E- commerce] revenues will be very important,...

OPENTV MHP SOLUTION INVOLVES LINUX.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... OpenTV will use the open-source Linux operating system as the foundation for its MHP solution, according to Regis St Girons, OpenTV's managing director for Europe. In remarks made to Inside Digital TV in the wake of the release of...

TELE+ READY FOR SINGLE DECODER, STREAM STILL NOT.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... Tele+ is officially ready for the introduction of the single decoder, while rival Stream will probably be ready by June. These appear to be the conclusions, which flow from a demonstration conducted by Tele+ at its Milan headquarters on...

SPAIN EYES ITALIAN SINGLE-PLATFORM OPTION.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... Following the announcement about the putative creation of a single digital pay-TV platform in Italy, voices are beginning to be raised that a similar solution would make sense in Spain, and for the same reason: the market is not big enough to...

LESS IS MORE FOR ITV DIGITAL.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... Barry Flynn puts ITV Digital's new penetration forecast under the microscope One of the intriguing aspects of the latest penetration projections from UK DTT operator ITV Digital (formerly ONDigital) is that they have been revised...

CROWN CASTLE GETS 49 PER CENT OF RAIWAY.
May 4, 2001... CCR S.r.l., a subsidiary of Houston-based transmission company Crown Castle International Corp (CCIC), is investing around L800 billion (E409 million) for a 49 per cent interest in RaiWay, a division of Italy's public broadcaster RAI. The...

CANAL+ SEALS MIDDLEWARE DEAL.
May 4, 2001... Canal+ technology subsidiary Canal+ Technologies has secured an agreement with Denver-based WINfirst, a fibre-to-the-home provider, to deploy its proprietary MediaGuard conditional access system and MediaHighway interactive TV middleware on...

XCOM'S MEDIACAST SHOW.(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... Xcom Multimedia Communications, which is part of the Pace Micro Technology Group, is to demonstrate its latest digital set-top (home gateway) technology at the forthcoming Mediacast exhibition in London, as part of its new Xsat range of...

BRIEFLY...(Brief Article)
May 4, 2001... * Spain's administration is in talks with Spanish broadcasters with a view to securing an orderly migration to digital TV before the scheduled analogue switch-off in 2012. The Government wants all TV channels - including local ones - to...

OPEN NOW FULLY UNDER SKY INTERACTIVE BANNER.(British Interactive Broadcasting Holdings Limited )
May 21, 2001... BT sold its 19.9 per cent interest in British Interactive Broadcasting Holdings Limited (BiB) on May 14, leaving BSkyB in sole control of the interactive TV operation, writes Barry Flynn. BSkyB had acquired HSBC and Matsushita's stakes in...

OZ DITCHES DATACASTING LICENCES.(Australia)
May 21, 2001... The rollout of Australia's ailing DTT platform has been called into question by a government decision to call off the auction of so-called 'datacasting' transmitter licences. In a statement released on May 9, the Minister for Communications,...

NTL BOOSTS ARPU AS DIGITAL SURGES.(Statistical Data Included)
May 21, 2001... UK cable MSO NTL has revealed that its ntl:home consumer division had 757,000 digital cable customers as of the end of March 31, 2001, and around 26,800 standalone cable modem customers (currently being added at the rate of 1,500 a week). ...

AXCENT-GRUNDIG CONCEPT GIVES HOPE FOR PVR.(personal video recorders)(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... Grundig's Personal Video Recorder (PVR) system for the German market has succeeded in signing up 12,000 customers - a record of which the US- PVR system TiVo would be proud. The device, developed by German engineering company Axcent and...

RESOLUTION IN SIGHT FOR ITALY'S SINGLE DECODER.(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... Hot on the heels of rival Tele+ (Inside Digital TV Vol.4 No.9), Italian pay-TV operator Stream has conducted its own public demonstration to demonstrate it is ready for the introduction of the single decoder. The members of Italy's...

DTTS ASK FOR EARLIER SWITCH-OFF.(from analog service)(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... Two new DTT operators, Prensa Espanola-backed Net TV and newspaper El Mundo-controlled Veo TV, have asked the Spanish Government to bring forward the country's analogue switch-off currently scheduled for 2012. Both regard a quick migration as...

FIRST ITALIAN ITV CHANNEL TO LAUNCH THIS AUTUMN.(interactive television)(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... Italy is to get its first interactive TV channel in November, but a test phase will launch in the coming weeks involving 500 households concentrated mostly in Rome. E-Seed is a project created two years ago by two young graduates - William...

TELE+ SWITCHES OFF IRDETO ON PREMIUM CHANNELS.(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... The beginning of May brought bad news to Italian owners of Tele+ Irdeto boxes, with the pay-TV operator closing down all transmissions using this conditional access (CA) system. On May 3, Tele+ first closed down Irdeto transmissions for...

PIRATES CHALLENGE ITALIAN OPERATORS.(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... Italian pay-TV operator Tele+ has recently taken several measures which aim to restrict the reception of its services by pirate card users. Besides dropping the Irdeto encryption system, which it considers "compromised", in the past few...

BBC LAUNCHES INTERACTIVE TENNIS.(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... The BBC's coverage of the 2001 Wimbledon tennis championships 25 June - July 8 on BBC1 and BBC2 via BSkyB's digital satellite platform will have an extra interactive dimension, offering viewers the ability to chose to watch the action from...

FLATRATE SATELLITE INTERNET FOR GERMANY.(to be introduced by freenet.de)(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... German internet service provider freenet.de, a subsidiary of telecommunications company Mobilcom, is planning a flat-rate broadband Internet service via satellite for the consumer market without any time or volume restrictions at a fixed...

THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE.(NTL unpublished press release on 1st Qrt 2001 financials leaked)
May 21, 2001... Barry Flynn has obtained the unpublished, penultimate draft of NTL's official press release about its Q1 2001 financials, and has been pondering on the bits that were left out NTL, as readers may be aware, has recently been the subject of...

BRAZIL OPTS FOR BASIC MICROSOFT.(Global Cabo to use Microsoft TV BAsic set-top boxes)(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... Brazil's Global Cabo looks set to become the world's first cable operator to deploy the Microsoft TV Basic middleware, acquired from NDS, within its current generation set-top boxes. The letter of intent will also see Globo Cabo become the...

NOKIA-COLLABNET WEBSITE.(Brief Article)
May 21, 2001... Nokia has launched an independent website to support open source developers. The Finnish manufacturer has partnered with CollabNet in an attempt to develop ostdev.net as a worldwide development community. The site will support Nokia's OST...

NEW INTERACTIVE EVENT IN AUTUMN.
May 21, 2001... Inside Digital TV has unveiled ambitious plans for a new interactive television conference this autumn. Inside Digital TV's Interactive 2001 will be held at the Hilton Metropole, Edgware Road between November 19 and 21. Interactive 2001 is...

BRIEFLY...
May 21, 2001... * DTT platform, Quiero, has reached an agreement with Servifutbol.com to provide content from the football portal to its digital subscribers through the TV. The service includes results and statistics from the Spanish football league. *...