Inside Digital TV articles from October 2001

Inside Digital TV archives from October 2001

CABLELABS TO MANDATE MHP FOR US CABLE.(Cable Television Laboratories Inc., multimedia home platform)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... In a decision which will completely overshadow DVB's defeat in the US DTT market over OFDM, cable research consortium Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs) is poised to mandate DVB's Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) for US digital cable...

SOGECABLE TO RESCUE QUIERO?(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... David del Valle Madrid Spanish pay-TV company Sogecable, owner of Canal+ Espana and digital DTH platform Canal Satelite Digital (CSD), is currently in talks with telco holding AUNA, the main partner in DTT operator Quiero, in a bid to...

VEO AND NET TV REQUEST DELAY.(Spanish television operators ask for delay in legal obligation to start digital transmissions)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 5, 2001... David del Valle Madrid As expected, Spain's newest digital terrestrial operators, El Mundo-led Veo TV and Prensa Espanola-backed Net TV, have asked the Government to lift their legal obligation to commence digital transmissions by June...

OPEN GIVES WAY TO SKY ACTIVE.(branding)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 5, 2001... Barry Flynn Editor As of October 1, 2001, Sky Digital's Open... brand has ceased to exist - to be replaced by its Sky Active branding. The change marks a much-heralded change of focus by BSkyB for its interactive TV services, away...

RUSSIAN DTT TEST NEAR COMPLETION.(digital television)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Evgenia Tirdatova Moscow Russian firm Telemedium, based in St. Petersburg, is nearing completion of the country's first DTT test broadcasts, which began earlier this year, covering the city of St Petersburg and the surrounding region....

CONFUSED SIGNALS FROM ITV DIGITAL.
October 5, 2001... Chris Forrester London Both ITV Digital - the UK commercial network's DTT arm - and its backers have experienced a barrage of negative comment in recent days. First, one of the City's most respected analysts, Neil Blackley of Merrill...

POWERTV DEPLOYS ITV IN CANADA.(interactive television)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Noel Meyer Montreal Quebec-based cable company Videotron has become the first MSO to launch a full suite of interactive services over the PowerTV OS. "Interactive TV is here," said Chuck Kaplan PowerTV's vice-president of marketing....

F.U.N. LOOKS TO CABLE.(German industry alliance Free Universe Network)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Jorn Krieger Munich The German industry alliance Free Universe Network (F.U.N.) has welcomed a radical change in Kirch Group's digital TV strategy (Inside Digital TV Vol.4 No.19), which puts an end to its controversial d-box monopoly,...

ITALIAN DTT RULES BY END OF MONTH?(digital terrestrial television)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Branislav Pekic Rome Italy's Communication Authority is expected to publish the regulations for digital terrestrial TV by the end of this week or, at latest, by next week. Authority sources have told Inside Digital TV that the "last...

E750 MILLION NEEDED FOR ITALIAN DTT COVERAGE.(digital television transmission)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Branislav Pekic Rome Although Italy's national broadcasters are unanimously in favour of the phasing out of analogue in favour of digital transmissions, they are warning that the 2006 deadline is too close and the costs of providing...

MAP-CENTRIC FOR TV?(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Chris Forrester London At last week's M-Commerce World Show in London, Batmap launched their Map-Centric technology which has the ability to display an active map on a PC, on current and next generation smartphones, (GSM, GPRS, UMTS) PDAs...

MORE INTEREST IN NTL BROADCAST.(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... The private equity firms Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst and Apex Partners have joined the banking group West LB in expressing a keen interest in acquiring NTL's transmission unit NTL Broadcast, currently up for sale for a price tag of around...

TELEWEST LAUNCHES BROADBAND PORTAL.(TeleWest Communications PLC)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Barry Flynn has been testing out Telewest's newly-launched broadband portal for its Blueyonder cable modem customers A year and a half after Telewest launched its Blueyonder cable modem service, it has finally unveiled its new broadband...

PACE SUPPLIES FLEDGLING OMNE.(Omne Communications lands contract with Pace Micro Technology)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... Pace Micro Technology has been awarded a contract with fledgling broadband communications company Omne Communications, formerly Eon Communications. Pace will supply Omne with 70,000 digital cable set-top boxes for its new broadband network,...

SCOPUS DEPLOYS UKRANIAN DVB.(Scopus Network Technologies)(digital video broadcasting)(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... The Ukrainian National Government has chosen Scopus Network Technologies, which supplies compression technology to the broadcasting industry, to deploy its first DVB-T project utilizing Scopus platforms. The project is scheduled to begin...

PREMIERE ORDERS DVB STBS.(digital set-top boxes )(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... German pay-TV operator Premiere World has ordered over 80,000 d-box digital set-top boxes from French manufacturer Sagem which supports not only Kirch Group's proprietary Betanova middleware and BetaCrypt encryption system, but also the DVB...

BRIEFLY.(Brief Article)
October 5, 2001... * Italy's Antitrust Authority is continuing its investigation (which it set up on September 12) into the projected merger between pay-TV platforms Stream and Tele+. The government watchdog said that a single pay-TV operation could lead...