Industry body the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) has applauded a call by regional political leaders for Governments to “effectively address” the issue of satellite and cable TV signal theft. “The new priority given by the APEC ministers to this problem is great news,” said Marcel Fenez, the Chairman of CASBAA. “With […]
The UK regulator’s chief executive Ed Richards said he was not persuaded that TV should be allowed to use the “digital dividend” for high-definition programming. Instead, he spoke of the “golden opportunity” of using more efficient MPEG4 compression and the DVBT2 broadcast standard to squeeze HD channels into the existing Freeview band. Ofcom is consulting […]
From David Del Valle in Madrid The Spanish police has disbanded a network of pay-TV hackers by arresting 27 people across the country who would have defrauded the pay-TV companies of E10 million. Amonsgt the detainees there are 10 distributors of keys and codes through the Internet, nine sellers of manipulated set-top-boxes and eight responsible […]
France Telecom has threatened to lodge a complaint against Vivendi’s Canal+ over its requirement that the operator distributes its CanalSat channels together, while cable operators are able to distribute them individually. “If (the situation) does not change, we will have no choice but to lodge a complaint to seek equitable access to CanalSat channels,” said […]
The head of Ofcom’s independent consumer panel has sent letters to the bosses of the UK’s top six broadband providers asking why customers often fail to get the connection speeds they are promised. The enquiry to BT, Tiscali and TalkTalk “follows increasing consumer concern about broadband speeds”. Broadband providers often say they offer speeds “up […]
Google 'could do a better job' at preventing illegally copied video from appearing on its YouTube site, Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, told the FT. The comments come ahead of News Corp's launch this month of Hulu, a site for professionally produced video with NBC Universal. Chernin said there was […]
Echoing comments from News Corp and Viacom, the chief executive of NBC Universal said piracy of copyright movies, music and other goods is “getting worse, not better” and urged the Justice Department to step up enforcement. “We need … to move intellectual property enforcement up the agenda of the federal government,” Jeff Zucker said in […]
From Branislav Pekic in Rome In order to boost the transition to digital terrestrial, Italy's Communications Ministry passed a new decree linked to the 2008 Budget. It establishes that the last analogue TV set in Italy will be sold in June 2009, although manufacturers will have to stop supplying analogue TV sets to distributers by […]
Ofcom has wasted no time getting out its consultation on Sky's pay-TV on Freeview plans. Ofcom said the Sky proposal would increase choice and availability of pay-TV services on the platform, but it could block other providers of pay-TV from operating on Freeview, which has limited capacity, while strengthening Sky's dominance of the pay-TV market […]
BSkyB could take legal action if it is forced into a loss-making sale of its 17.9 per cent stake in ITV after the Competition Commission said the shareholding was anti-competitive. Although it will be up to the business and regulatory reform minister to decide on what remedy to prescribe when he receives the final report, […]