A US appeals court said that new FCC rules brought in to stop cable operators enforcing exclusive deals with apartment blocks and other multi-dwelling units will stand, despite a challenge from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. This has global implications as cable operators have this type of contract throughout the world, and the changes will gradually spread. In the US the cable operators are using existing MDU contracts to stop Verizon and AT&T being able to supply IPTV into apartment blocks.
Widevine Technologies said this week that TEO LT, AB has selected Widevine Cypher to secure its Gala IPTV service in Lithuania. TEO is the largest Lithuanian broadband Internet access operator, in quite a crowed and competitive, though tiny market. Ericsson was the systems integrator on the IPTV deployment.
Wegener Corporation said this week it has an order for $1.6 million from Conklin-Intracom for its SMD 515 IPTV set tops to support IPTV services it is selling to local incumbent US telcos. The set tops support HD programming, VoD and DVR services.
YouTube has introduced new APIs allowing developers to drop videos from the site into other applications, and has shown them off with demonstrations from TiVo, Electronic Arts, Animoto and the University of California. The new API services will allow external developers and partners to create applications that upload videos and video responses to YouTube; edit user and video metadata; perform custom queries and fetch localized standard feeds, such as Most Viewed, as well as customize the look of the YouTube player.
DivX says that it has certified six new Blu-ray DVD players from Panasonic, Philips, and Denon. This means the devices will play back DivX encoded video and we believe can be used to decode encrypted content using the DivX DRM system. These new DVD players join the Sony PS3, which has been capable of DivX playback since December, 2007.
Netherlands conditional access provider Irdeto, said this week that TrueVisions UBC, a Thailand pay-TV operator, will use Irdeto technology to secure its new DVR. TrueVisions UBC is the largest subscription-based television provider in Thailand, offering over 80 channels covering infotainment, news, entertainment and sports programs such as English Premiership matches. Irdeto provided the conditional access on Humax hardware running OpenTV set top software.
In the US, two cable operators Cox and Charter have teamed up to link their two networks with direct fiber links between metropolitan areas outside of their traditional service footprints. The idea is for businesses that want to link offices which are in each other’s territories, using Sonet, Ethernet or IP transport systems, can now do it without involving an RBOC. If all of the cable operators did this, they become more and more like a single telco acting in concert. So far the connections are just between Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada and Orange County, California and Charter in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
US encoder specialist Harmonic has deployed H.264 encoders for India’s Sun Direct TV, a new satellite DTH service which will reach 40 million homes in southern India. The system is based around Harmonic’s DiviCom Electra encoders, DiviTrackIP statistical multiplexors, ProStream 8000 digital mosaic solution and NMX Digital Service Manager. The system went live earlier this year and offers 120 SD channels with HD coming later.
A recent report from Impulsa in Spain says that 29.2% of Spanish homes (there are 15 million TV households in the country) already have access to digital terrestrial TV using DVB-T. There were 1.37 million tuners sold at Christmas, taking the total to 8.8million since March 2003. Similarly impressive figures have been reported recently in the UK and Germany.