Inside Digital TV articles from May 2003

Inside Digital TV archives from May 2003

Box Shortage Holds Up Dutch DTT Rollout.
May 14, 2003... Barry Flynn Editor Barely three weeks after its official launch on April 23, the Dutch digital terrestrial television (DTT) project is already suffering from a shortage of available receivers. Lex Nicolai, CEO of Digitenne, the...

Conditional Access Market To Pick Up.
May 14, 2003... Mark Holmes Senior Editor With a slew of new deals, and with its litigation woes easing at the same time, the future looks bright for conditional access (CA) vendor NDS. It has recently won contracts in Europe, India and Australia, and...

Rimmel Scores With 2nd i-ad Campaign.
May 14, 2003... Barry Flynn Editor The second interactive TV advertising campaign for Coty UK's Rimmel brand has out-performed the first, according to David Allan, the company's head of marketing. The campaign, which took place on UK digital satellite...

Comcast Blazes On-Demand Trail In The US.
May 14, 2003... Mark Holmes Senior Editor US cable operator Comcast believes the US consumer would rather have ondemand technology than interactive-type applications. As of March 31, Comcast had over 6.78 million digital subscribers (including AT&T...

Is Microsoft's WM9 Really Better Than H.264?
May 14, 2003... Barry Flynn Editor Software giant Microsoft is claiming that the latest codecs it has developed for its Windows Media 9 (WM9) series have made its video compression technology at least equal to if not better than the recently-finalized...

Interactive TV: The Story So Far in 2003.
May 14, 2003... Krishna Rao of Datamonitor reviews the key events in the interactive TV sector in the past quarter, and makes some predictions about what will happen next. Approximately 500,000 DTT sales since Freeview's launch in October There are...

Briefly.
May 14, 2003... * Thomson, the new owner of former Vivendi technology unit Canal+ Technologies, claims that three pay-TV operators using its MediaGuard conditional access technology have all reported huge jumps in subscriber numbers and pay-per-view buy rates...

Freeview EPG Stalled By Standards Wrangle.(DTV Services Ltd. electronic program (programme) guide introduction stalled)
May 28, 2003... Barry Flynn Editor The eagerly-anticipated seven-day electronic programme guide (EPG) for the UK DTT service, Freeview, is unlikely to be available until Q1 2004, and even that schedule is dependent on the use of a technical standard that...

ITV Deal To Take Interactivity To New Dimension.(Two Way TV and Independent Television contract)
May 28, 2003... Mark Holmes Senior Editor Two Way TV's deal with the UK's commercial TV network ITV to build interactive services around its programming could take interactivity in the UK to a new level, according to Guy Templer, Two Way TV's head of...

Pace Mark 1 Bounces Back With New Model.(Pace Micro Technology agreement with Viasat Broadcasting for supply of digital satellite receiver; also wants to target German digital television retail market with Globo Electronic contract)
May 28, 2003... Barry Flynn Editor It was somewhat ironic that, just as Barry Rubery was making it clear just how low he thought his old alma mater, Pace, had fallen, the object of his scorn was announcing its second big set-top box order in as many...

Tandberg Adjudicates WM9/H.264 Clash.(with compressed video transmission demonstration)
May 28, 2003... Barry Flynn Editor Encoder company Tandberg chose Mediacast for the world's first live demonstration of compressed video transmission at low bit-rates over IP through the DOCSIS channel of a cable modem. This would enable, for instance,...

Norway DTT: Ready To Roll.(Norwegian Television Ltd Director General Tor Fuglevik discusses digital terrestrial television)(Interview)
May 28, 2003... Mark Holmes Senior Editor Digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasting continues to gain momentum across Europe. In Norway, plans are underway for a DTT service to be offered to the population in 2005-2007. While there have been...

Manufacturers Explore Enhanced VCR Options.
May 28, 2003... Barry Flynn ponders the future of the EPG-programmable VCR As anyone who has ever used a personal or digital video recorder (PVR/DVR) will testify, the experience revolutionizes the way you watch television. Once exposed to the benefits of...

Briefly.(BBC Vecta, BSkyB, RealNetworks Inc., 4Ventures, Irdeto Access, NORTV Telecommunicoes Ltda., DiBcom, UDcast, NDS Group plc)
May 28, 2003... * A new BBC business unit could soon be on the way to creating cuttingedge interactive TV (iTV) solutions for the wider iTV community. BBC Vecta, a new unit launched by the BBC's commercial business-to-business division, BBC Ventures Group, is...

Correction.(Dutch DTT)(Correction Notice)
May 28, 2003... A gremlin got into our story about Dutch DTT in the last issue. Lex Nicolai, CEO of Digitenne, is forecasting tens of thousands of subscribers by year-end, not just "thousands." And the DTT standard his company will be deploying is 64-QAM 1/2,...