News and Analysis

Belgium on must-carry final warning

The European Commission has issued a final warning to Belgium over the application of must carry rules imposed on cable companies in the capital, Brussels. The action comes as the EC begins a new round of infringement proceeding for EU Telecoms Rules. Read the story »

US cable operators to supply digital to analogue boxes

With increasing demand for bandwidth on cable networks, there will come a time when operators will want to switch off analogue distribution. What is more, with HD channels and broadband access needing more capacity, it will probably be sooner than later. Read the story »

NorDig publishes HD specs

NorDig, the technical grouping that oversees digital broadcast standards in the Nordic market, has published the first edition of its HD specifications. Requirements to NorDig compliant IRDs for reception of HDTV builds on the existing set of specifications known as the NorDig Unified Requirements for Integrated Receiver Decoders. Read the story »

Canal Digital faces subscriber squeeze

Heavy competition from rival platforms put further pressure on Canal Digital in the first quarter. Although Telenor Satellite Broadcasting describes subscriber numbers as “stable”, the number watching services on the One West slot fell by 18,000 to 1,124,000 in the three months to March 31, 2008. Read the story »

French TV platforms – an overview of DTT and DTH

France has an interesting digital TV market with DTT, DTH, cable and IPTV all present. According to the most recent Digital Barometer from TDF, DTT is the most widely available service, with 22.9% of all homes having at least one digital terrestrial tuner. Digital DTH with a subscription is meanwhile the choice of 14.9% of homes, IPTV 8.6%, digital cable 5.7% and FTA DTH 4.1%. Read the story »

UPC claims success with day and date VOD titles

UPC Nederland has been very successful with the first trial of day & date VOD titles, which include recent blockbusters such as Harry Potter, Ocean’s 13 and 300 from Warner Home Video. Made available at the same time as their DVD release, the movies generated sales up to three times regular VOD buys for similar titles. Read the story »

BBC iPlayer not the only girl in town

For all the talk of the iPlayer, it might be thought that the BBC’s internet-based on demand service was the only such product available. From the CTO panel at the Cable Congress (Madrid, April 23-25) it became clear that European cablenets are all grappling with the problem of how to handle these so-called Over the Top services and at the same time managing the upgrade of their networks to handle these and other upgrades including the provision of VOD. Read the story »

Marketing cable, the local way

There is certainly no one size fits marketing strategy cable operators can adopt in tempting their subscribers to switch from analogue to digital offers. Read the story »