Hallmark Channel is to introduce a video on demand service on the HOT cable network in Israel. Commencing in April, subscribers will be able to choose from a library that includes mini-series Alice in Wonderland, Larry Mcmurtry’s – Dead Man’s Walk and A Girl Thing; series McLeod’s Daughters and movies Hound of the Baskervilles, Nowhere […]
US CableLabs plans hybrid boxes
US CableLabs, the cable television industry’s technology development consortium, announced that it is working on hybrid cable boxes, which will receive both off-air digital broadcasts as well as tune in to digital cable. Such hybrid boxes would help solve a major problem for US cablers, who are faced with carriage bills from broadcasters. By combining […]
US Cable loses out to competition
Although cable television remains the dominant means of distribution for television in the United States penetration is slowly decreasing because of increasing competition. More American households are receiving video programming via an alternate delivery system (ADS) than ever before while MSOs lost 2.3 million subscribers and wired cable’s penetration percentage hit a 17-year low, according […]
Liberty seeks Irish DTT assurances
Liberty Global has approached the Irish government to seek assurances that RTE will not be allowed to carry commercial digital television services as part of the analogue switch off process. Liberty, which as UPC Ireland is the country’s principal cable operator, says that it will level a complaint with the European Commission should the public […]
Cablecom CA reported hacked
The conditional access system used by the Swiss cablenet Cablecom has reportedly been hacked by smart card pirates. The Sonntagszeitung newspaper said that hackers had cracked the encryption codes used by Cablecom, which operates with the Nagara Kudelski CA system, and published them on the Internet. It is then possible to enter the codes into […]
HD for Dutch regional broadcaster RNN7
Dutch regional commercial broadcaster RNN7 in the city of Rotterdam plans to launch an HD version of its on May 1. An investment of €700,000 has been made to make the upgrade to HD possible, according to managing director Leo Houkamp, who hopes that broadcasting in a higher definition will make his channel more attractive […]
Record revenue growth for OpenTV
OpenTV has reported a record growth in revenues driven by a 30% increase in revenues from its applications business. The middleware company has already seen benefits from last year’s acquisition by Kudelski, a recent deal with the French cablenet Numericable, seeing OpenTV middleware sit alongside the Kudelski conditional access technology. Significant deals have also been […]
Iliad to free Club following soaring profits
Iliad SA, the owner of France’s largest alternative broadband provider Free, says it has made an offer for Deutsche Telekom’s French internet business Club Internet. Serving 600,000 ADSL and 400,000 narrowband subscribers, the company has been valued at €340 million by the French bank Exane BNP Paribas. It seems that everyone is interested in buying […]
Spanish ONO goes into profit
Spanish cable operator ONO ended 2006 with over one million residential broadband subscribers. The cablenet, which also added 140,000 net new cable subscribers, increased the number of revenue generating units – the average amount of services taken by subscribers to 1.97 from 1.88. Net profitability was finally reached in the fourth quarter of 2006 recording […]
Turner in KabelKiosk
Turner Broadcasting System’s Boomerang, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies (TCM), channels will be distributed to cable networks in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg through Eutelsat’s KabelKiosk platform. Signals are taken from the TBS playout centre in London and delivered by fibre to Eutelsat’s Rambouillet teleport via a PoP in Telehouse N, London. At Rambouillet, […]