Category: Software

The size and configuration of Hot Bird 8 enables Eutelsat to increase in-orbit redundancy at its premium video neighbourhood and releases Hot Bird 3 for its new mission at 10 degrees East, informs an official release.

Built by EADS Astrium and launched on 5 August from the Baikonour Cosmodrome, Hot Bird 8‘s scheduled in-orbit life is expected to exceed 15 years. Following launch and manoeuvres to bring the satellite into geostationary orbit, HOT BIRD(TM) 8 completed an exhaustive round of in-orbit tests at 1.7 degrees East.

Now released from its mission at 13 degrees East, Hot Bird 3 will begin transfer operations for its relocation to its new position at 10 degrees East where it is scheduled to begin service later in October under the name of Eurobird 10, the release adds.

The flat panel display industry, in particular, has recorded huge revenue growth since the launch of DTV and HDTV services. Moreover, emerging display technologies such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) and field emission displays (FED) are being seen as a challenge to the market dominance of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and with the recent advances in manufacturing techniques, the future for both OLED and FED look promising.

With regard to the set-top box (STB) technology, new STB chipsets are steered toward the direction of providing a single-chip solution. The introduction of advanced compression standards such as Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG)-4 AVC has highly enhanced the video streaming capability of the high-end STBs, and future STBs will have more programmability and advanced functions such as a personal digital recorder. Future chipset designs are likely to focus on the convergence of TV and computer networks and the concept of a multimedia home platform (MHP).

“Determined to lead the broadcast technologies, the Information Society Technologies (IST) and European Union (EU) have been funding numerous projects in the field of digital and high-definition television, driving the European companies and universities in this area,” notes technical insights (www.technicalinsights.frost.com) research analyst Dr. Jayson Koh.

“While countries such as Greece are laying infrastructures for the digital switch over, terrestrial DTV services are already well developed in Germany and France, and Britain has also recently introduced many DTV and IPTV services.”

In Asia, South Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese companies are leading the flat panel display industries, catering to the increasing demands for LCD and plasma discharge panel (PDP) TV from Europe, North America, and notably, China. Also there have been a significant number of IPTV and DTV deployments in Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore and South Korea.

Amidst these positive trends, the high entry barrier and the lack of cost-effective techniques for mass production are the most critical issues that the new companies and technologies in the flat panel display industry face. Other obstacles that add to the entry barrier include competing with the low average selling price of LCD, high cost of investment, lack of customer awareness, availability of raw materials and components suppliers, and the distribution networks, the study notes.

“The prolonged format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray is expected to delay the integration of new DVD standard in high-end STBs and manufacturers would prefer to wait till a common format arises,” says Koh. “In the case of new video compression standard, the H.264 would slowly take over the MPEG-2 market but face competition from both AVS and VC-1.”

In the near term, STB manufacturers have to decide whether to support a certain new generation DVD format or to provide a multiple format drive. Although chipset companies are providing more multiple video compression supports in their products, the high licensing fee arises from this kind of chipsets may not be encouraging.

Global Advances in Digital TV and HDTV Chipsets, a part of the Electronics Device Subscription, provides informative insights on the progress and development of flat panel display, chipsets, compression and broadband television technologies. In this research service, Frost & Sullivan‘s analysts thoroughly examine the following technologies: flat panel display, set-top box and its chipsets, compression coding and broadband television technologies. Analyst interviews are available to the press.

Technical Insights is an international technology analysis business that produces a variety of technical news alerts, newsletters, and research services. Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years.

BBC World claims to reach around 15 million homes across India via cable TV and this new deal brings the channel’s total distribution to 16.5 million Indian homes.

BBC World, South Asia head of distribution and business development Amit Upadhyay says, “India is a fast-growing market for multi-channel television and a key market for BBC World. We are delighted to be part of this Dish TV offer as it brings BBC World to a new and dynamic audience.

“The channel is highly regarded in India and has a loyal following. We are pleased to be providing new viewers with our award-winning journalism and news reporting.”

Dish TV business head Jawahar Goel says, “In the last year and a half, Dish TV has emerged as one of the fastest growing digital platforms in the country. Our association with BCC World is in line with our commitment to provide the best of infotainmentnews and information programming available, in India or abroad, to our subscribers. We are sure that Dish TV subscribers would be happy to access BCC World in India shortly”.

MUMBAI: In a further attempt to connect with a younger demographic, US media conglomerate News Corp will buy a UK jobs recruitment site Milkround Online.

Media reports state that the site which was launched in 1997 targets new students and graduates with job advertisements.

A Reuters report points out that earlier this year News Corp had bought a stake in Simply Hired, a US-based job search engine.

ViTrue will create an online community, Funny or Not? This will enable TBS viewers and enthusiasts to create, produce and upload their own funny videos using ViTrue’s platform and tools. Funny or Not? will be available to viewers at tbs.com from next month.

TBS says that it is embracing the digital world by bringing its ‘very funny‘ programming to the internet in unique ways and providing viewers with comedy content in many forms. Funny or Not? is TBS’s first entrance into the user-generated content space. ViTrue’s technology will allow the TBS audience to fully become part of the TBS experience and engage with TBS at a previously unimagined level, through full-featured user-generated content creation that respects—and is truly a part of—the TBS brand.

TBS and TNT senior VP branding and network strategy Jennifer Dorian says, “As TBS continues to build its online presence, especially in terms of broadband entertainment, we are focusing on ways to engage our audience of comedy lovers in new and exciting ways.

“ViTrue provides us with an engaging technology platform that enables viewers to interact with our brand in a compelling way, while also being in line with TBS’s views regarding the protection of copyrighted material online.”

TBS says that it has a strong, loyal television audience and its website is attracting a growing following, as evident by the recent response to veryfunnyads.com, which is receiving an overwhelming response from TBS viewers. TBS’s contemporary attitude and funny programming has made it a leading cable network brand that has both benefited from and continues to drive innovative and out-of-the box marketing.

ViTrue founder and CEO Reggie Bradford says, “ViTrue provides TBS with a one stop shop for user created video, through which the network can connect directly with its audience and have them participate in creating the next generation of original comedic content.

“Our ready-made platform will allow TBS’s Funny or Not? plans to be realized quickly and efficiently, while also ensuring the protection of copyright owners.”

This will serve as the core of a new production system capable of handling 2,000 hours of media at 50 MB/s. The storage and server implementation, which is being designed and supplied by UK-based systems integrator TSL, will support a new file-based environment and a much more flexible and collaborative production workflow for the network’s live sports and sports news coverage.

Combining grid storage and grid computing through the use of multiple intelligent, interconnected-yet-independent storage servers, the Omneon MediaGrid system dramatically enhances the efficiency of digital media access for users and applications across the entire broadcast workflow. The MediaGrid system provides centralized shared storage that is scalable in capacity, bandwidth, and media processing power.

The modular MediaGrid system uses industry-standard components and connectivity to create a highly configurable, reliable, and cost-effective system. Components of the system communicate over standard Ethernet networks and generate massive aggregate bandwidth that is available to external clients of the system, eliminating bottlenecks associated with traditional shared-storage environments. Each storage component is also a media-processing engine, making computational resources available to applications for media-processing functions while content resides within the storage system.

The Omneon-based storage system will be managed by an OmniBus OPUS News & Sports Logging system and deliver archive content to a new Front Porch Digital DIVArchive system. The initial system build and test of the overall production system at ESS is scheduled for January 2007.

ESS senior VP, operations and technology Tom McVeigh says, “In the fast-moving world of multiregion, multilanguage live sports, we need technology that allows us to enhance the offerings we provide to our viewers. Omneon’s storage solutions are flexible, scalable, and future-proof systems we can rely on to deliver cost-effective storage for our production environment.

“The MediaGrid will integrate well with our existing systems and with other new gear to enable a complete overhaul of our production workflows. It is one of the more critical pieces in this puzzle, and it will play a key role in enabling us to achieve our overall project objectives.

ESS is moving from a totally tape-based production environment to a fully server-based environment, which will allow the network to establish far more rapid turnaround of sports content to its 13 television networks. The project, dubbed Home Run will incorporate the Omneon MediaGrid system and four Omneon Spectrum media servers equipped with 50 I/O ports and linked directly to 25 Apple Creative Studio systems, equipped with Final Cut Pro® nonlinear edit systems, to enable immediate edit-in-place capability at multiple workstations simultaneously. Within this collaborative workflow, production staff will not only gain faster access to media, but also gain the ability to view and work with other packages under production.

TSL head of sales Russell Grute says, “The timely and accurate production of sports content for 13 channels broadcast in four languages to 26 countries presents an enormous technical challenge. Omneon’s storage systems in conjunction with OmniBus’ Opus will greatly enhance the capacity, flexibility, and speed of operations at ESS, enabling the new Home Run system to offer a faster and more collaborative workflow. A whole new approach to production and media lifecycle management for a busy sports and news broadcaster like ESS.”

MUMBAI: Mobile firm Orange has entered into a multi-year video-on-demand agreement with Fox in France

This agreement will provide Orange access to over 75 new release and library feature films each year.

With this agreement between Fox and France Telecom’s Orange service, subscribers to Orange’s digital television by DSL or broadband internet services in France will be able to access new films distributed by Twentieth Century Fox such as In Her Shoes, New York Taxi and The Family Stone plus classic library films such as Alien, Chariots of Fire, Ice Age and Moulin Rouge.

Subscribers to 24/ 24 vidéo will be able to watch films on either their TV or PC. For between EUR2 and EUR5, a film can be rented for unlimited viewing within a 24 hour period, with the ability to pause, rewind and fast-forward in dubbed or subtitled versions.

Twentieth Century Fox is the latest partner for 24/ 24 vidéo, a growing video-on-demand offering in the French market. 24/ 24 vidéo now offers a variety of films making over 2200 titles of all genres available from major studios and independent producers and distributors.

24/ 24 vidéo is able to respond to the expectations of a broad audience by providing diversified and quality programming

The afternoon session has Siticable head JS Kohli, Tata Sky boss Vikram Kaushik, Ortel Communications Jagi Mangat Panda, HSBC Securities MD and global media investment banking head Sandeep Pahwa, Comverse CBO Raghav Sahgal, NDS Asiapac operations director David Godfrey, Scientific Atlanta VP and international business GM Ken Klaer. Their focus will be to come to an understanding on why strategically digital is the way to go forward, and how each of them is dealing with this imperative to consolidate and converge.

The last session has got Zee TV vice chairman Jawahar Goel, Star India‘s revenue director Paritosh Joshi, Hathway boss K Jayaraman, HFCL Infotel CEO Surendra Lunia, Bharati Televentures technology Veep TV Sriram, HomeCable CEO Vikki Choudhry, Tandberg Television IPTV business development director Alan Delaney, Indusind Media executive director Ashok Mansukhani. The goal: to get a reality check on whether that strategic imperative is going to be achieved, what is hampering the move and how the impediments will be cleared.

Says Indiantelevision.com CEO Anil Wanvari: “Cable TV, satellite TV, broadband, and telco operators are all keen to understand what the lay of the land will be like, how each of them can work together or independently, the business models which will be successful. We hope through this seminar to get to some of those answers.”

The India Broadband Digital Networks Forum has Tandberg Televison, NDS, Scientific Atlanta, NDS and Comverse as the industry sponsors, with CNN IBN being the Support Sponsor, NDTV the telecast partner, CMCG as the PR partner and Cable Quest, Satellite@ Internet India and Satellite & Cable TV as the print partners

MUMBAI: User-Generated Content (UGC), such as that found on YouTube and MySpace, will continue to grow significantly in popularity and generate increasing revenue over the next several years, reports In-Stat.

By 2010, the volume of downloads/views on these sites will surpass 65 billion, and revenues tied to UGC video are expected to exceed $850 million by 2010, the high-tech market research firm says.

Revenues are those directly linked to videos in the form of banner/skyscrapers, embedded video, Google Adsense, and/or branded pages/channels.

In-Stat analyst Michael Inouye says, “Democratisation of media affords users the opportunity to express their opinions, rate content, and vote for their favorite videos.”

“In addition, what may currently seem like ‘the Wild West’ is actually an industry that has started to see idiosyncratic ‘judiciary bodies’ and ‘rules of law’ imposed by each player within this market.”

Research by In-Stat found the following:

* The size of downloads/views are estimated to eclipse 1.1 exabytes of data by 2010, with uploads growing to more than 9.1 petabytes.

* 23 per cent of the dozens of UCG sites studied currently support mobile access, with others making announcements for this support in the near future.

* YouTube holds the highest market share for video, but MySpace has the most visitors.

This research is part of In-Stat’s Consumer Media and Content Service, which focuses first on the changing digital content models, and then how this will influence the evolution of equipment, standards, technologies, services and consumer usage models. The service addresses the acquisition, distribution, and use of digital content (audio, imaging, video, and voice) and how it fits into the consumer’s digital entertainment lifestyle. The service explains the opportunities for equipment makers and service providers within the emerging digital home.

In-Stat found that although Online Content Aggregators are in the early experimentation stages of rolling out video services, they will have some dramatic revenue-generating opportunities in the next five years. The worldwide market for online content services is expected to expand by a factor of 10, growing from about 13 million households during 2005 to more than 131 million households by 2010.

MUMBAI: Tandberg Television is looking to build on its business and technology lead in the Asian IPTV video head-end market.

It demonstrated its full suite of live, on-demand and interactive solutions at the recently concluded IPTV World Forum Asia 2006 in Shanghai.

The event gave delegates the chance to see why the annual IPTV leadership report, published earlier this month by the Multimedia Research Group (MRG), ranked TANDBERG Television as the leading IP video head-end supplier in Asia, as well as in EMEA and rest of world.

Worldwide Tandberg Television says that it has been involved in more than 160 xDSL and FTTH deployments and there are over 2 million subscribers currently viewing IPTV thanks to the company’s technology.

Tandberg Television’s executive VP and GM, Asia Pacific Graham Cradock says, “Asia has always been a very important market for us. According to research from In-Stat the Asia-Pacific IP video services market will grow nearly 80 per cent per year between now and 2010, with Asia accounting for half of all worldwide IPTV subscribers by the end of 2009. We’ve been working with IPTV operators in the region for over five years and our market-leading technology is allowing telcos to deploy IPTV services right across the continent, from Dubai to Osaka and from Delhi to Shanghai.”

Tandberg Television will showcase its fully integrated IPTV head-end product line, which provides the industry’s widest selection of encoding and video processing technologies for streaming, transrating, transcoding, ultracompression and high density encoding. The company came to IPTV World Forum Asia following its launch of next-generation high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) MPEG-4 AVC encoding solutions at IBC 2006.

The move continues the firm‘s momentum in the MPEG-4 AVC arena and brings a step change in digital video distribution by combining the broadest choice of density and enhanced features with the industry’s leading ‘picture quality versus performance‘ through bandwidth improvements of up to 50% over currently deployed MPEG-4 AVC units.

The firm adds that uts next-generation encoding solutions enable expanded telco TV business models, including the delivery of 2 full-resolution HDTV channels over ADSL2+@2km. The next-generation compression platform is being launched simultaneously across the Tandberg encoding family with the introduction of the new EN8030 MPEG-4 AVC SD and EN8090 MPEG-4 AVC SD/HD ultracompression broadcast encoders, alongside the introduction of new MPEG-4 AVC HD and SD ultracompression encoding modules for the Plex range of high density, multi-channel encoders