Satellite news 11.11.07

News

New look Sky Guide launching next year

BSkyB is understood to be preparing a new EPG that will be made available to subscribers with new Sky+ and Sky HD boxes during 2008. The new look and feel, still under development, will be based around the Sky Anytime section of the current Sky Guide. It will offer a preview screen, taking up one-eighth of the picture, which will change as different channels are selected. The number of channels shown per page will also increase from the present 10 to 12 or 24 of the preview screen is switched off. The Search and Scan banner will also be enhanced, allowing the synopsis of other programmes to be displayed, functionality already available on some Freeview boxes. The Sky Guide has remained virtually unchanged, other than some minor cosmetic alterations, for the past 10 years.

Thor 5 set for February launch

Telenor Satellite Broadcast has confirmed February 8, 2008 as the launch date for its new Thor 5 satellite. The launch had been delayed by the September 6 failure of JCSAT II. Thor 5 will be equipped with 24 high-powered capacity transponders, serving Nordic Countries, Europe and the Middle East. Telenor is also investing in the development of new services in the Central and Eastern European market. The satellite will be shipped to Baikonur later this month.

Setanta Sports News sets launch date

Setanta Sports News is to commence broadcasting on November 29. The broadcaster has confirmed the channel will be available on Sky in addition to the Virgin Media cablenet. It will broadcast 24 hours a day with a brief to cover “all relevant sports stories from the UK and abroad, regardless of whether the event is broadcasting on a Setanta channel”. A network of so-called fan correspondents is being recruited, including representatives from each of the Premier League clubs, to add a voice to each of the sports covered. Producers ITN will also be using a team of multiskilled reporters to feed back to the presentation team.

Zattoo gets ABC News Now for Europe

Zattoo, the web TV provider from Switzerland, has entered into an agreement with ABC News and Disney-ABC International Television to distribute the ABC News Now channel in Germany, Spain and Belgium. Zattoo plans to extend the reach of the ABC News Now channel to additional countries, including the UK, in the next six months. ABC News Now is a 24-hour news and information network currently available to nearly 34 million users across cable, broadband and mobile. It delivers live breaking news, headlines every half-hour and original programming. Zattoo is a web TV distribution service that transmits a wide selection of TV channels onto users’ computers. After downloading the Zattoo player from the company website they can watch free TV on their computers within minutes. The Zattoo player is available for all current operating systems – Windows XP and Vista, Mac and Linux. Just recently, the company also announced contracts with German public broadcasters for the distribution of ARD and ZDF. Zattoo is able to geo-block programming for certain territories.

CNN no longer HOT in Israel

Israel’s cable operator HOT has carried out its threat to drop international news channel CNN from its line-up. It had been anticipated the channel would remain on the air through until November 14. The two companies had failed to reach an agreement over a new contract amid a desire by the cablenet to drive down carriage costs. Despite suggestions that HOT was preparing to add Al Jazeera English to its packages the cablenet now says it is not planning any replacement channel. CNN remains available on the DTH platform YES.

Two million cards sold by Mediaset Premium

Mediaset Premium, the PPV service distributed over Italy’s DTT network, has passed the two million card mark for the first time. It follows a successful October for the sports and entertainment service that officially recorded sales of more than 1.8 million smart cards in the first nine months of the year. The cards can be topped up or ‘recharged’ similar to a mobile phone and generated revenues of €142.8 million, double the €61 million figure for the first nine months of 2006. 4.4 million recharges were made up to the end of Q3 and had reached 4.9 million by the end of October.

100,000 registered for BT Vision

BT Vision has tripled the number of customers receiving the IPTV service to 70,000. The UK telco has a further 30,000 customers waiting to be connected and has introduced a self-install option. BT Vision combines a DTT receiver with a series of on demand packages. The most high profile package is BT Vision Sport, which offers delayed coverage of the Premier League, while live games can be viewed through Setanta Sports’ DTT signal. The self-install option is available for £30, saving £60 compared to having a BT engineer do the job. The Self Install option includes a pair of Comtrend Powerline Adaptors, which plug into wall power sockets and carry the video signal from the BT Home Hub to the V-box across the domestic power circuit. Self-install packages can be purchased from a number of electrical retailers including Comet, Currys and John Lewis.

Discounting building Virgin loyalty

Virgin Media has reported an improved third quarter with 13,000 customer additions compared to the 70,300 loss in the previous period. There was also a dramatic improvement in the number of RGUs, the so-called revenue generating units, which increased to 172,900 from 40,300 in the second quarter. Some 122,900 of these were broadband internet customers, dwarfing the number of TV additions, standing at just 20,400. Virgin will offer existing subscribers discounted offers on additional services. So it is possible for the customer to receive two additional services and the cablenet to receive just £2 additional revenues. Consequently Q3 consumer revenue fell to £607.7 million (€802.95m) from £619.3m in the second. Net losses narrowed to £61.0 million from £96.1 million one year ago.

Premiere reports 90,000 HD customers

Premiere reports it has reached 90,000 HD customers by September 30. During the last month about 5,000 people signed up for the high def service, which consists of two premium channels, Premiere HD and Discovery HD. At the moment there are about 400,000 HD receivers in the German market place and around 3 million HD ready TV sets. The total number of Premiere subscribers now stands at 4,173,395, which is a record for the operator. This includes 642,229 subs via the Arena platform on Unitymedia and Kabel BW. The number of people subscribing directly to Premiere, via both cable and DTH, is 3,531,166. Premiere reported 105,000 customers for its Premiere Star, which launched last September on the Entavio platform and at the moment offers 14 channels. The company expects to win about 200,000 new subscribers per year.

Record quarter for Sky+

Record growth of 323,000 new Sky+ households to 2.697 million topped Sky’s first quarter financials as the satellite platform added a net 83,000 customers – the highest for four years – to bring its installed base to 8.665 million. The PVR product has added one million households in the past year. Sales to the high definition product also rose, by 66,000, to 323,000. Sky Broadband, already confirmed as passing the one million mark, reached 933,000 in the quarter ending September 30, 2007. The company reported an 11% increase in revenues to £1.18 billion. The £150 million profit was below market expectations resulting from increased programming costs and investment in its broadband service. While churn was reduced from 12.1% in June to 11.3% in September, its lowest level for five quarters, annualised ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit) fell by £1 to £441 as a result of the loss of the Prem Plus PPV football package.

Digiturk, RCS dump IPO plans

Turkish DTH platform Digitürk and its Romanian-based counterpart RCS & RDS SA have dropped plans to list themselves on the London Stock Exchange. Both companies have put the blame on market conditions as banks reassess credit conditions amid huge losses. Digitürk’s last minute decision – the listing was scheduled for November 9 – had planned to sell 25% of the platform for around $550 million (€380m). It said in a statement there was no time pressure and it would continue to invest in its operations in favour of selling a part of the company below value. In its statement RCS said it had decided, “not to proceed at this time”. The second largest cablenet in Romania and operator of Digi TV was looking to raise $390-540 million (€273.8-379.1m) to expand the satellite platform overseas.

RAI to expand DTT offering

Italian public broadcaster RAI wants to increase its DTT offer by two more channels; one will be youth oriented, the other a general entertainment channel. No exact launch dates have been announced, but a start sometime next year is envisaged. RAI currently has two multiplexes. One houses the three main television channels (Rai Uno, Rai Due and Rai Tre, and the regional information channel Rai Utile) as well as two test channels; the other transmits Rai Sport Sat, RaiNews 24, Rai Edu 1 and Rai Gulp, as well as radio services.

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