Sony Pictures Television Networks said this week that it had acquired Liberty Global’s premium TV channels group Film1 in the Netherlands. The sale of these channels was mandated by the European Commission in return for allowing the acquisition of Ziggo. This was because Liberty Global had not one, but two premium film groupings after the merger and had to sell the least attractive, deemed to be Film1, the film channels it acquired with Ziggo. There was a condition that it must also carry Film1 for at least another three years, so that it can establish itself. It retained HBO Netherlands. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Under the agreement, SPT will fully own and operate Film1’s five premium movie channels and its Film1 Go service, pending regulatory approval.
Comcast’s thePlatform subsidiary, said this week that its mpx video management system will be used with Canada’s new Netflix rival Shomi.
Shomi came out virtually at the same time as Project Latte, which emerged under the Crave TV branding. This means that Canada has two Netflix rivals which both undercut it on price, Shomi run by Rogers and Shaw, and Crave sold by Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Telus, Eastlink and Northwestel. We’re not sure if thePlatform got a piece of the other consortium, but we think that was led by Quickplay Media, so we suspect not. Mpx provides
workflow management of video ingest; metadata management; subscriber management and viewing rights enforcement; and automated publishing across device and video player profiles.
ThePlatform also announced that it has won a similar deal in Australia with Stan, itself a joint venture between Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media, billing itself as Australia’s premier subscription video-on-demand service – basically launched ahead of Netflix’ arrival there. The offering counts content from Sony Pictures Television, MGM, CBS, Viacom International, BBC, ABC, and SBS. Stan will use thePlatform’s mpx for metadata management, purchasing support through a payment gateway, subscriber management and viewing rights enforcement, and automated publishing across devices and video players.
US encoder specialist Harmonic announced the release of its new MediaGrid ContentStore 5840, which it says has a dual-redundant chassis and allows users to reduce rack space by two-thirds and achieve 30% cost savings on equivalent storage capacity. It supports the compression og compresses 15 rack units’ worth of conventional MediaGrid storage into just 5 RU and supports up to 360 TB of usable storage per chassis.
Germany’s Bertelsmann Group said this week it achieved its highest ever revenues and operating profit in 7 years with revenue up 3.1% to €16.7 billion, and EBITDA up 2.7% to €2.37 billion. During the year it expanded its business with the acquisition of the e-learning provider Relias Learning in the United States and majority stakes in the video marketer SpotXchange and the multichannel network StyleHaul. Key revenue drivers were strategic transactions such as the merger of the Penguin and Random House trade book publishing groups, the full acquisition of the music rights company BMG, and the expansion of financial and e-commerce services at Arvato.
EchoStar and Nagra this week that EchoStar will become a shareholder in SmarDTV, the subsidiary of Kudelski which offers advanced set-top boxes and conditional access modules and as part of that transaction, EchoStar’s operations in the UK and Spain will become part of SmarDTV. This looks like a merger to save overheads, but it is unclear how much of the merged business each one of them owns.
Thomson Video Networks said this week that Bahakel Communications, a TV and radio station group based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has chosen the ViBE EM4000 HD/SD premium encoder to upgrade its digital broadcast TV platform. So far just three of its TV stations have been upgraded, one in Columbia, and two in South Carolina. In a separate statement Thomson also said it will introduce an update of its ViBE EM4000 encoder featuring an all-new, broadcast-grade SD-to-HD conversion capability.
AviWest, a global provider of video contribution systems, this week said it has signed a new partnership with Hughes, a satellite provider, to improve delivery of contribution video signals over satellite networks. The two will combine the DMNG PRO video uplink system with Hughes’ 9211-HDR satellite terminal over Inmarsat’s BGAN service.
US CMOS RF chip maker MaxLinear said this week that its MxL683 has passed the new Brazilian LTE immunity certification test conducted by Mackenzie Presbyterian University’s DTV Laboratory in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This means that it is immune from LTE interference which can be a significant issue in ISDB-T broadcasting markets like Brazil. This is because the LTE uplink band starting at 703MHz is located right next to the ISDB-T frequency band ending at 698MHz.
So much for Apple’s 3 month exclusive on HBO Now. The Wall Street Journal and others are saying that Dish Network’s Sling TV will have Game of Thrones when it premieres in a couple of weeks, but it will not be part of a package called HBO Now, instead it is just the normal HBO channel.
UK company Motive Television which has launched Tablet TV in the US, has just raised another £1 million on the London AIM stock market by placing 6,666,666,667 new Ordinary shares to clients of Beaufort Securities at a price of 0.015 pence per share. The proceeds will be used to fund the roll out of Tablet TV. After the placing Motive will have 16,886,725,153 Ordinary Shares in issue.
French CDN player Broadpeak says its revenue has grown by 55% in 2014, which it claims is its fourth year of profit. Broadpeak is private so doesn’t give out detailed numbers, but says that it was deployed at 15 new telecom and cable customers in 2014 and has opened offices in Brazil and China and will next open a sales office in the US and add further resources in Japan and South Korea
US chip maker Sigma Designs said that net revenue for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 was $54.8 million, up 2% from the immediate past quarter, and up 42% over this time last year. Sigma made a loss of $3.6 million in the quarter compared to a loss in the immediate past quarter of $0.6 million and a profit of $1.3 million for this time last year. In the quarter it launched a High Dynamic Range chipset for TVs, and said that Z-Wave chips were installed in 35 million devices worldwide.