Satellite News

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Owing to the current judicial procedures launched by Canal+ Group and competing telcos, France Télécom’s commercial brand Orange announced that it could suspend the sale of its new channel Orange Sport.

This option follows the decision in February of the Paris Court of Commerce asking France Télécom to stop tying the subscription of Orange Sport to the sale of a triple-play offer before March 24. The action was initiated by competitors Free and SFR.
Orange has appealed the judgement but needs to make a choice before next Tuesday, March 24.

Two other options are being studied by Orange : to pay the €50,000 daily fee or broadcast Orange Sport via satellite.

Should the company decide to expand distribution, while Orange may lose out in terms of exclusivity, it could sign up more subs to the channel, which as with all sports channels, is expensive to run.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Global satellite provider Intelsat reported an impressive set of revenue numbers for its Q4 and full-year (to Dec 31 2008) results.

Intelsat reported revenue of $608.8m ($575m in same period last year) and a net loss of $524.2m (loss of $2.57m) for its Q4 ended December 31, 2008. The net loss includes non-cash charges of $326.8m for orbital location impairments and $186.6m for a loss on undesignated interest rate swaps. The company’s EBITDA was a loss of $71.1m

Intelsat’s full-year revenues were $2,364.9m ($2,174m for 2008), which translated into a net loss of $1,198.2m (loss of $886m for 2008).

Making financial sense of Intelsat’s year-on-year position is not easy given that it has gone through a complex financial restructuring over the past two years, and also absorbed PanAmSat during the same period.

Intelsat’s system average fill rate on its approximately 2,125 station-kept transponders remained at 83% at December 31, 2008, the same rate as at September 30, 2008. In Q4, 19 net new transponders were put into service.

Intelsat announced several new launch contracts and its intent to accelerate the build and launch of 3 satellites, increasing the current number of satellites in development to 10, including the New Dawn satellite announced in December 2008.

Included in the 2009 launch program is the Intelsat 14 satellite that will feature a government-related hosted payload known as the Internet Router in Space, or IRIS. The Intelsat 15 satellite is also expected to launch in 2009.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Eutelsat is helping promote 3D at an upcoming Italian conference. The complete end-to-end 3D broadcasting chain will be showcased at the Sat Expo Europe show in Rome from March 19-21 using capacity on Eutelsat's Eurobird 3 satellite.

For the broadcast, a live 3D music performance is being filmed, transmitted and projected in stereo 3D-HD onto a cinema screen and prototype 3D-HD television sets.

Organised by Eutelsat, OpenSky and dBW, the demonstration is reproducing in full the conditions of a live 3D event. The three-dimensional shooting and production is managed by dBW, a Rome-based production company, while OpenSky, which specialises in transmitting digital content via satellite is managing the encoding, decoding and projection.

The three companies have also agreed to combine their resources and expertise in order to be able to provide end-to-end 3D services in Europe, from filming to playout.

The full-scale Rome 3D demo is, says Eutelsat, “a prelude to a radically new way of experiencing cinema and television content. In addition to enabling an audience to share the same level of sensation as in a theatre for a live performance, stereo 3D-HD has the potential to enrich the entertainment offer in cinemas and theatres and transform them into innovative multimedia entertainment centres delivering premium content.”

Eurobird 9A satellite has been transmitting a test 3D channel over the last three months as a test-bed to analyse the performance of screens, encoders and decoders, and to gather experience on the use of 3D content in the home and public locations.

Giuliano Berretta, Eutelsat CEO said: "This new step towards 3D broadcasting continues Eutelsat's longstanding commitment to innovation that opens satellites to a new generation of applications. Early and close collaboration between all actors in the broadcasting chain will be a key success factor for this new broadcasting revolution and we are very pleased to be taking part in the first tests and end-to-end demonstrations in Europe".

© Rapid TV News 2009

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US internet television platform Joost has launched a German-language offer. Thirteen media partners such as Suddeutsche Zeitung TV and Welt der Wunder will deliver several hundred hours of German-language content for the service’s debut.
Feature films such as Rush Hour, American History X, Blade and Mr Nice Guy will also be available free of charge in the dubbed German version at www.joost.com.

“We are speaking with all large media companies in the world. Germany is no exception,” Joost CEO Mike Volpi told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “We’re starting with smaller content providers and have to thereby prove to the big ones that we are a valuable partner. I hope that we can then also get their content.”

Joost plans to finance through advertising screened before the videos are played. The advertising revenue is shared between Joost and content providers. The web portal, which was launched in May 2007, is backed by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of internet telephony service Skype and peer-to-peer file sharing platform KaZaA.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Strenghtening its presence in South East Asia, European news channel Euronews has launched in Indonesia and in the Philippines, where it is respectively carried on Telkomvision and digital cable network Skycable.

Available in English in both countries, Euronews was added to the Indonesian offer in Bali and Jakarta, before further development. Broadcast through the basic offer in the Philippines, the channel is now received into 170,000 new homes including Manila. This agreement with Skycable is the first in this country, which has a potential of more than 9 million TV homes.

In Oceania, Euronews is also broadcast now in Papua New Guinea through the Hitron network digital package.

With the new carriage agreements in the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, Euronews now reaches nearly four million homes in Asia and Oceania.

© Rapid TV News 2009