German Bundesliga to stay free-to-air
Germany’s soccer Bundesliga will remain on free-to-air TV, Tom Bender, managing director of federal soccer league Deutsche Fußball-Liga (DFL) confirmed to newspaper portal DerWesten.de.
The mixture of free-to-air and pay-TV has been tried and tested over previous years, he said, and DFL doesn’t want to give that up. “DFL could have given the Bundesliga almost completely over to pay-TV in 2005, but decided against it and relinquished around €150 million. We do profit from our extensive TV presence and with almost €500 million income from sponsoring we are the number 1 in Europe,” said Bender.
With its planned TV channel, which was licensed in September, DFL does not want to compete with ‘current events’ Bundesliga coverage offered by other channels, stressed Bender. “This channel is only about the past,” he said, adding that DFL had built up the largest digital soccer archive in the world over past years. “By the end of 2010 there will be 40,000 hours of digitalised soccer. It’s clear that we have to think about ways in which to use that, such as a digital channel. It would be a sensible addition to current programmes.”
BBC is hitting road blocks
The BBC is currently up against something of an avalanche of critical press. The newspapers have made hay on the publication of some senior executives’ salaries and perks, while seemingly every BBC plan to expand online activity (Kangaroo, and now Canvas) is being stymied, and the current Tory opposition political party promising further mayhem should it be elected next summer.
However, it has just won a small victory in that the British government, due to outline its planned legislation for the remaining 6 months or so of this administration on Wednesday, has modified plans to use some of the BBC licence fee to improve local TV news coverage. A measure will be introduced in the parliamentary Queen’s Speech to fund local news, but a decision will not be made until 2012, thereby seemingly kicking the idea into the very long grass.
On Sunday, the London ‘Sunday Times’ published a long-form interview with Jeremy Hunt, the shadow (opposition) culture secretary, who would be managing the broadcasting and media portfolio in a new Conservative government, and it could not have made good reading at the BBC.
The BBC is already having to face the problems of having 37 senior managers earning more (and frequently much more) than the Prime Minister. Hunt told the newspaper that the BBC’s bureaucratic waste had become an absolute nightmare, and that it was “obscene” for the BBC to be demanding an uplift to its mandatory licence fee.
The BBC’s licence fee is up for re-examination in 2012. The broadcaster received a £68m rise this year, despite inflation being zero. “If we win the next election we will have to have discussions with the BBC about the appropriate level,” he told the newspaper. “We think in the current climate it would be very hard to argue for any increase in the licence fee.”
The likelihood that the BBC’s wings will be clipped is a possibility. The same might apply to its Project Canvas, which the BBC has said is a ‘game changer’ as regards online activity. Canvas would also have other UK network broadcasters involved as well as British Telecom, but is hitting major objections from pay-TV operators. There’s no guarantee that the BBC’s governors (the BBC Trust) will approve the scheme.
Last Friday BBC future media boss Erik Huggers demonstrated Canvas, showcasing how users would have the ability to watch highlights instantly, send clips to friends, monitor what is being said on Twitter, access archives at the touch of a button and use commercial third-party applications and services.
Huggers said: “Unless we succeed in getting Canvas through, that whole market will be fragmented - you would have multiple ways of achieving the same thing.” If Canvas fails, he stated, broadcasters would shoulder additional costs of reformatting new devices: “There could be a horizontal level playing field for everyone and I think that’s worth fighting for.”
However, the appeal of a Canvas-type proposition – at least in the UK – is summed up by Screen Digest in a recent report on the topic, which said that 3.5m UK homes could be tapping into such a system by 2014.
Dan Cryan, Senior Analyst at Screen Digest says: “The BBC’s track record of building markets with Freeview and the iPlayer has been a well-documented success. There is every reason to think that if a Canvas-type proposition is approved, with the full promotional impetus of the BBC behind it, it will reach at least 3.5m homes by 2014.
“Such a platform is both a threat and an opportunity to pay-TV operators. On the one hand giving them wider distribution potential for their content bouquets, and on the other hand giving content owners a potential route to bypass the operators and go direct to the consumer.”
“A Canvas-type proposition will offer an alternative, neutrally-branded distribution platform offering linear TV channels, video on demand and web-based applications. Ultimately, it will rival IPTV, cable and satellite and will be separate from the existing Freeview, Freesat and BT Vision offerings,” says Screen Digest.
“Despite the support of powerful partners, a Canvas-type proposition has a number of obstacles to address; set top boxes will be expensive and the timing may coincide uncomfortably for consumers with the launch of HD Freeview. Potential bandwidth bottlenecks should be tackled by BT’s 21st Century Network and with the backing of the BBC, consumer take-up should be strong.”
Rapid TV News 2009
Indonesian satellite’s dramatic rescue
A Thales-Alenia satellite, built for Indonesia’s Indosat operator, has been rescued from a useless orbit.
The satellite, Palapa-D1, was launched upon a Chinese Long March 3B rocket on August 31st but the rocket’s third stage failed to operate correctly and the satellite was placed into a useless highly elliptical orbit just 130 miles above the Earth at its nearest, but 13,150 miles at its furthest from the ground.
Thales Alenia Space immediately re-thought the near-catastrophic dilemma and commenced a bold rescue mission.
On September 3 the satellite’s on-board thrusters were fired, starting its realigned route to a correct orbit. Bit by bit it achieved a correct transfer orbit, arriving on station (at 113 deg East) later in September.
Thales Alenia now says that Palapa-D1 has successfully completed its in-orbit testing and is ready for work.
However, there’s a price to pay for the use of the satellite’s on-board thrusters in terms of fuel used. Instead of its planned 15 years of active life the satellite now has enough fuel for some 10.5 years of work. But this is a huge improvement on what had initially looked like a total loss.
Palapa-D1 has 35 C-Band transponders and 5 in Ku-Band. It will serve the Pacific region from Asia to Australia.
Rapid TV News 2009
Educational TVRM menu Digi TV
Educational TVRM menu Digi TV
'' Offer satellite pay-TV Digi TV today, featuring the next program. The Romanian program offer this platform appeared Romanian educational TVRM Educational TV program.
The station was previously available for DTH satellite viewers to receive free satellite Amos 3 (4°W), Boom TV customers at the same position and in the competitive service at Dolce satellite Hellas Sat 2 (39°E).
Educational Channel TVRM free program used to position the satellite transponder Intelsat 10-02. The signal station is provided Nagravision conditional access system 2 and Nagra Media Access.
Technical parameters :
Intelsat 10-02 (1°W), freq 12.531 GHz, pol V, SR 23340, FEC 3/4, DVB-S/QPSK, CA Nagravision 2 / 3 ''
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Russia's first digital chip for TV
Quote:
At the First International Business Conference for the production of microelectronics and nanoelectronics Si-Forum 2011 in the Technopolis Gusev (Kaliningrad region), the General Satellite Corporation, and the RC Module announced the development and manufacture of Russia's first chip for digital TV.
Don't want to paste the whole thing... lol
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