Digital+ boosts margins
October 29, 2008 by Julian Clover
Digital+ increased its EBITDA margins by 10.4% to €275.33 million in the first nine months of 2008. The Spanish DTH platform also upped its margins by 1.6% to 24% on 2007, while subscriber revenues increased by 1.4% to €859.08 million. Read the Story »
Flanders maintains Belgian digital lead
October 29, 2008 by Robert Briel
Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, will switch off all analogue terrestrial broadcasts in the night of November 2/3. From then onwards, all three channels operated by the public broadcaster VRT, along with its radio stations, will only be available on a single DVB-T. Read the Story »
Polish cable rises to the challenge
October 29, 2008 by Chris Dziadul
Poland’s cable industry, though one of the largest and most developed in CEE, faces a number of challenges as the country moves to digitalisation. These certainly came to the fore at the Polish Chamber of Electronic Communications (PIKE) conference, held earlier this month in Zakopane. Read the Story »
NDS battered by currency changes
October 27, 2008 by Julian Clover
NDS has unveiled first quarter financials that show its income tumbling by 56% to $25.9 million (€20.4 million). However, while the management of new conditional access contracts by operators was a factor, the greatest problem for the News Corp technology company emerged as currency fluctuations rather than any immediate fault lines in its business. Read the Story »
MTG succeeds in CEE expansion
October 27, 2008 by Chris Dziadul
This year will be remembered as one of significant expansion for MTG in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Besides launching a DTH platform in Ukraine, the company acquired the Bulgarian national commercial broadcaster Nova Televizija. Read the Story »
Viasat DTH sales remain on track
October 27, 2008 by Julian Clover
MTG President and CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht says the Viasat DTH business remains on track, despite softness in the satellite market that saw premium subscriber levels fall to 679,000 from 688,000 at the end of the second quarter. Read the Story »
Spanish quarterly market overview
October 15, 2008 by Julian Clover
The uncertainty surrounding football rights has had a disastrous effect on the number of pay-per-view buys in the last quarter. Article contains sports and movie PPV figures and platform take-up over the last 12 months.
Mixed signals in Hungary
October 14, 2008 by Chris Dziadul
The overriding impression left by last month’s Hungarian HCA/HCTA cable conference and exhibition in Tihany was that of a TV market in the throes of transition. However, the greatest changes are, perhaps surprisingly, being seen not in the cable but DTH sector. What is more, there are still huge problems to be overcome ahead of the launch of a DTT platform, due to take place before the end of this year. Read the Story »
Ofcom consults on DTT simulcrypt
October 13, 2008 by Julian Clover
The possibility of Sky being required to wholesale its premium channels to all comers has led Ofcom to consider the use of simulcrypt on the DTT platform. Simulcrypt uses multiple conditional access systems on a single programme stream. However, the suggestion may be at odds with Sky and its preferred conditional access provider NDS, which has separately refused to have its CA system carried on external conditional access modules. Read the Story »
FTA satellite homes grow as UK approaches digital saturation
October 7, 2008 by Julian Clover
Ofcom has highlighted the growth FTA satellite homes following the launch of the BBC-ITV platform Freesat. Half of the 120,000 increase in Ofcom’s Quarterly Digital Progress Report comes from Freesat, which finally went live in May this year. Read the Story »
