Thread: Satellite News February, 2010

Written by Chris Forrester
Monday, 08 February 2010 20:36
A month ago (on Jan 3) we reported on a US Congressional report that sought to see satellite operators Arabsat and Nilesat banned as ?terrorist organisations? (under House Law 2278). The Congressional report blamed Arabsat and Nilesat for carrying channels which were properly licensed or authorised by their home states. Rapid TV News said at the time the US report was crazy.
Indeed, the Congressional Report has already been condemned by most Arab media and governments. Yesterday in Beirut, the Arabsat 5th Broadcasters Forum saw some heavyweight news and political figures express their opinion of the US comments.


Prime Minister Hariri?s representative to the assembly, His Excellency Tarek Mitri, Lebanon?s Minister of Information, bluntly told delegates that Lebanon was no stranger to having to cope with many different voices and opinions. ?Arabsat is not responsible for the conduct of its clients and contract holders. Lebanon is very attached to freedom of expression. Our position is clear, and our national laws are designed to protect us against external threats or the use of sanctions. Such threats do nothing to help a normal dialogue between different nations. We ask that [the Arab world?s] peculiarities be respected.?


Ghazi al Aridi, Lebanon?s Minister of Public Works and Transportation, told delegates that satellites exist for enlightenment as well as entertainment. ?The recent US report wants to prohibit our creativity, our voices. The US Congress scheme violates our independence. We want to be free to express ourselves. Our voices deserve to be heard.?


Ambassador Mohamed Al-Khamlichi, deputy Secretary General at the Le ague of Arab States, was highly critical of the US report. ?This is a direct interference in the affairs of the Arab world. Our firm recommendation is to deal with this problem and see the threat to our independence removed.?


Hamdi Kandil, an extremely well-known face on Arab television, opened his speech by saying ?Greetings brother terrorists!? which gained much laughter, but his comments wrapped a tough and uncompromising message, saying he was against terrorism of any sort, but also firmly in favour of free speech. ?If this US policy [happens] then we admit we are against the US infrastructure. This Congressional action threatens the very freedoms that the US always supported itself.?

Written by Rose Major
Monday, 08 February 2010 10:46
KDDI Corp is reportedly in talks to reduce the stake it will buy in Liberty Global-backed Japanese MSO Jupiter Communications (J:Com).

The telco has run into regulatory problems, with the Financial Services Agency saying its original deal, under which Liberty would sell all of its 37.8% stake to KDDI, violated a ?33%? law. Under that law, a public offering open to all shareholders must be opened when a company tries to buy over a third of another company.


KDDI?s opinion was that the deal did not fall under these rules as it would be buying three unlisted Liberty units which together hold the 37.8% stake.


But with regulators reportedly adamant that the rule still applies, KDDI may have to lower its offer to purchase less than 33% of J:Com or pay more for a larger proportion of the company.

Written by Chris Forrester
Monday, 08 February 2010 10:44
Rapid TV News? latest Round Table examined how much R&D work was needed to keep smaller pay-TV broadcasters up to speed.

NDS? Howard Silverman, speaking at Rapid?s Round Table on Conditional Access/DRM, admitted that smaller players often needed even more work than their larger cousins. ?The large operators, because of their size and sophistication, often kind of tell us what they want and then we implement,? said Silverman. ?I would say that while you would think that the smaller operators might need to keep things simpler and cheaper, but from our point of view we often engage them in a more fundamental way than we necessarily do with the large operators, where we incidentally use dedicated teams just to work on those larger accounts.?


Silverman added that he saw the challenge as ?how [we] productise our technologies. The market leaders who drive the leading technologies are typically the larger operators that have the buying power. If [a service] were to come to market first, the followers need to compete and they need to introduce those services as well. Our challenge is to provide a productised version of these leading edge technologies and solutions in a very easy to deploy and fundamentally cheaper way. So, we do split our R&D effort. On one hand, obviously, we try and make sure that everything is generic but we also work very hard in productisation.?


Graham Turner, of Nagra Kudelski, said that in his view the R&D that is being done is fundamental to delivering service to both the larger operators and what the smaller ones need. ?But one thing that we do see is that there is a difference in business models. Traditionally, the larger operators - and both Nagra and NDS have a number of larger operators who can very easily operate a traditional vertical business model - they can go out, they can fund, putting set-top boxes into the market, they can also subsidise other things. A new start-up does not have that sort of financial luxury normally. We found a lot of interest in ways to support horizontal market and going beyond, say, what the operator will actually do in order to persuade someone else to buy the boxes.?


Turner explained that there were many innovative tricks that were extremely useful for smaller pay-TV operators, not least pre-pay cards, not dissimilar to those used in the cellular phone industry. ?We have found that it [this technique] has been very successful in Italy, but also we are seeing it in a place like Mexico as well, particularly in digital-terrestrial TV where there is an interesting interplay between what might otherwise be a pure free-to-view service together with some elements of pay TV. People can make quite a respectable business there and grow it into a very large mass market even though it is not the old style traditional DTH or cable business.?


Alex Borland, from software CA specialists Latens, added that they take big and small alike. ?Some of our customers are, let us say, pushing the boundaries further than others, big and small alike. Some of our smaller operators? customers absolutely want to push their boundaries quite substantially. They have new business models and they are in a very competitive market place, so it is important for them to make sure that they can leverage and build that position out in their own markets. Ultimately, for us as a business, because we are also a fairly new arrival in the market place, we took a very fresh look from an architectural point of view of their business right from the ground up. We have leveraged a lot of technology from some of the recent innovations both in the set-top box side of the business and also the head-end transmission facilities.?

Readers can view the Round Table discussion by clicking [here]

Written by Chris Forrester
Monday, 08 February 2010 20:38
Eutelsat and Georgian public TV channel Pervyy Kavkazskiy (First Caucasus) have been arguing in a Paris court over whether Eutelsat has denied the TV channel access to its satellites.
Observers to the action expected a decision yesterday (Monday), but the court says there will be no verdict in the argument until at least Feb 22, which means the best part of 3 more weeks of possible bickering between the two parties.


The Parisian commercial court?s judge said he was not competent to rule in this instance, and sent the summary of the proceedings to a higher authority, and that action will commence on Feb 22. Last Friday, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged both protagonists to find an agreement so as to allow the Georgian TV project to flourish. Attached to pluralism, the French State owns 25 % of Paris-based Eutelsat.

The Pervyy Kavkazskiy?s lawyer in the action told Agence France Presse that he remained confident and happy with the merits of the case.


Eutelsat, it seems, is of the opinion that the case should never have reached court, and is keen to see a commercial solution emerge that is acceptable to both parties. With this in mind perhaps an agreement will emerge ahead of Feb 22.

Written by Rose Major
Monday, 08 February 2010 20:39
BSkyB has given up its fight against the partial sale of its ITV stake. Morgan Stanley will place a 10.4% stake, reportedly at 48.5p-49.5p per share, a few pence down on ITV?s closing price at 51p prior to the announcement.

On the up side, the sale will raise around ?200 million for BSkyB, but reduce its stake to below 7.5%, the level set by the courts.


The London Court of Appeal ruled on Jan 21 that the stake bought expensively for ?940m back in November 2006, must be sold down to 7.5%, as Sky?s holdings in ITV were not in the public interest. The potential ?500m loss has already been written down by Sky.


Sky decided not to mount a further appeal to the UK?s Supreme Court.

Colombia ends 2009 with 3.2 million pay TV subscribers



Colombia’s Comisi?n Nacional de Televisi?n (CNTV) has published pay TV subscriber figures for the country for 2009. In the fourth quarter both UNE-EPM Telecomunicaciones and DIRECTV Colombia increased their market share.

Pay TV subscribers in Colombia:

September 2009 December 2009
-------------------- --------------------
Operator Subscribers Share Subscribers Share

1 Telmex Hogar 1,704,886 54.64% 1,693,714 52.89%
2 UNE-EPM Telecomunicaciones S.A. 739,260 23.69% 802,408 25.06%
3 DIRECTV Colombia (DTH) 214,830 6.89% 248,080 7.75%
4 Cable Uni?n de occidente S.A. 149,033 4.78% 151,141 4.72%
5 Colombia Telecomunicaciones (DTH) 132,808 4.26% 123,957 3.87%
6 Cable Bello Televisi?n Ltda. 39,241 1.26% 36,318 1.13%
7 Cablevista S.A. 24,992 0.80% 28,321 0.88%
8 HV Televisi?n Ltda. 18,493 0.59% 18,833 0.59%
9 Supercable Telecomunicaciones S.A. 19,558 0.63% 17,581 0.55%
10 Codisert Ltda. 8,881 0.28% 9,836 0.31%
Others 68,001 2.18% 72.154 2.25%

TOTAL 3,119,983 100.00% 3,202,343 100.00%

Digital Set-Top Boxes Designed by Promwad Announced

MINSK, Belarus, Russia — Promwad electronics design center announces a number of custom designed STB solutions at the 12th International CSTB-2010 Expo

The event is dedicated to digital free-to-air TV, Cable & Satellite TV, IPTV, HDTV etc.

Among new products there is a DVB-T SD / HD set-top box reference design based on STi7167 from STMicroelectronics. The reference design was developed by Promwad in cooperation with STMicroelectronics Russia. The platform is accompanied with a middleware package making it suitable for quick adaptation and customization. This solution can be used in hybrid content delivery systems (DVB-C + IP, DVB-T + IP) and thus may dramatically reduce time-to-market for many companies from digital TV market.

To know more about the product, please, visit Booth #793 at CSTB-2010.

At the same time, one more custom designed STB DVB-T solution developed by Promwad in cooperation with Locus, a leading Russian manufacturer of terrestrial TV antennas, is shown at CSTB-2010. The product is based on STi5205 chip from STMicroelectronics and is focused on the low-end and middle-end market. It has the following useful features:

Electronic programme guide (EPG)
Scheduler
Channel Editor
Photos Viewer
Music playback from an external USB stick or HDD drive.

1.2 million 3D sets shipped this year

By Robert Briel
February 8, 2010 12.56 UK

3D-Capable TVs will reach 1.2 million shipments in 2010, according to research by DisplaySearch. In 2013, aotal of 15.6 million will be reached.

In the newly launched Quarterly TV Design and Features Report, DisplaySearch research indicates that LED backlighting and 240 Hz LCDs will serve as enabling technologies for new feature developments in TVs in 2010, specifically for 3D TVs, an area of intense interest to TV manufacturers. DisplaySearch forecasts 3D-ready TVs will grow from 0.2 million units in 2009 to 64 million units in 2018.

“We have passed the first hurdle,” said Paul Gray, DisplaySearch Director of TV Electronics Research, in a statement. “The critical Blu-ray 3D specification is written, but now comes the hard work of securing interoperability. Consumers will want reassurance that such things as 3D glasses will interoperate between brands. Retailers will also have the same demand to allow a thriving accessory market to develop. The next stage is less glamorous but vital to secure 3D’s long-term value. We have seen 3D crazes before, and sustained attention to detail is important to prevent disillusionment from starting.”