One aspect of the IPTV World Forum which was perhaps surprising and completely unsurprising at the same time is how little of the event was developed to pure IPTV. Sky, Opera and UK online video start-up Blinkbox are just three of the names on the agenda who have relatively little to do with IPTV as it has historically (can the word historic be used for a technology that has been comercailly available for under ten years) been known.
Quarterly net additions to IPTV services hit an all time high in the last quarter of 2009, although just four countries are accounting for the bulk of this growth.
The doors opened Tuesday morning on the 2010 IPTV World Forum, with keynotes from Richard Halton, director of Project Canvas at the BBC, and Richard Young, director of business development at BT Vision.
Ex-Estonian Prime Minister and historian Mart Laar once wrote a book entitled Estonia: little country that could. And it seems that his countrymen have taken this to heart when it comes to adopting IPTV. While one almost feels sorry for the technology in other Eastern European markets – it has a paltry 2 per cent share of multichannel TV in Hungary and a pitiful 1 per cent in Poland – in Estonia, incumbent Elion’s rollout already has 23 per cent of the market. The question is: why this discrepancy?
With the “over the top”-content game attracting IT giants, such as Apple and You Tube, huge regional players, like Tudou and Yukou in China, and many other global media brands, it’s not hard to imagine that the world’s pay-TV operators could get pushed aside in the battle for consumers’ wallets.
Not long after ITV announced that former Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier would be its new chief executive – and with variations on the “now he’s got the post, can he deliver?” joke beginning to run thin – ideas about what Crozier needs to do to turn around the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster are starting to be fine-tuned.
Early adopters put up with a lot. They risked crippling back injuries to tote the first portable laptop computers. They paid over the odds for broadband for the pleasure of being “always on,” albeit at 512Kbps. They overlooked the many failings of numerous generations of smartphones to access the Internet on the move. So it should come as no surprise that the latest trend to sweep the telecoms and media markets should prove to be a bit of a disappointment.
Pay-TV operators and broadcasters have long been concerned that far too many consumers do not realise that there is more to receiving high-definition television programmes than simply buying an HD-capable television set.
UK consumers rank their communications services among the most important elements of their lives, refusing to sacrifice them during times of economic constraint, according to a new report from UK watchdog Ofcom.
Disney’s entrance last month into the Hulu fold marked another milestone in the young online-video service’s short history. The implications of the deal, which will see Disney TV shows and movies appear on Hulu for the first time, are serious and far-reaching. But the most obvious is that three of the four major US networks are now part of the service. If there were any lingering doubts that Hulu deserves its seat at the head table of US TV, they are now gone.
Norway’s three biggest broadcasters announced the successful launch of six free to air TV channels via DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) on Monday.
Disagreements over standards adoption and the lack of a proven business model remain the principle-and considerable-obstacles to widespread adoption of Mobile TV. Mobile operators are wary of deploying Mobile TV services because the return on investment does not seem good enough. Some exceptions include Japan and South Korea, but the consumer behaviour in these markets […]
Mobile TV services are forecast to generate $1.5bn in revenues in 2008, rising to over $10bn in 2013, when nearly half the revenues will come from advertising. The figures were released Wednesday by industry analyst and telecoms.com parent Informa Telecoms & Media, which said that while the bulk of mobile TV revenues presently come from […]
Digital TV is set to reach over 100 million homes in Western Europe by the end of the year, according to research released today. Industry analyst and telecoms.com parent Informa Telecoms & Media said that the number of digital homes in the region is set to rise from 104 million by the end of 2008, […]
UK communications regulator Ofcom has set out detailed proposals for how it plans to release the valuable spectrum that will be freed up as a result of the switchover to digital television. The spectrum, known as the ‘digital dividend’, resides in the UHF band and is currently used for the delivery of analogue TV channels. […]
UK broadcaster BSkyB has been told to offload the majority of its holding in rival ITV, on recommendation from the Competition Commission. John Hutton, secretary of state for business and enterprise, said Sky must reduce its stake in ITV from 17.9 per cent to less than 7.5 per cent, and must not sell the shares […]
UK incumbent carrier BT has started its first deployment of fibre-optic cable, in the Ebbsfleet Valley in Kent. From August, around 10,000 homes on Land Securities’ 1,000 acre new build project and a number of commercial spaces in the area will have access to blistering 100Mbps broadband speeds. BT said that the service would allow […]
Microsoft teamed up with UK incumbent telco BT on Monday, announcing a plan to deliver IPTV and HD movie services to Xbox 360 users. The partnership will enable BT Broadband customers to use an Xbox 360 to access the BT Vision IPTV service and its library of on demand content. The service will be made […]
Austrian viewers are, for the first time, watching TV on a mobile as Telekom Austria rolls-out a DVB-H pilot in association with its mobile arm, mobilkom Austria. The pilot, which started September 1 and runs till June 2007, will be viewed by 1000 users over the ‘mobile tv austria’ platform which covers central parts of […]
The GSM Association (GSMA) on Wednesday announced a partnership with the independent filmmakers group, Sundance Institute, to put short films on mobile devices. Sundance Institute – founded by Robert Redford – has been working for and with independent filmmakers for over 25 years and have set up a dedicated unit, Sundance Film Festival: Global Short […]
