Focus: Broadcasting

Canal Plus Overseas has begun a migration to Thomson Video Networks (TVN) technology for its digital head-end serving Indian Ocean territories, Canal Plus announced Sept. 8.    Canal said the newly equipped platform will be located in Boulogne, France and rolled out by November 2011. The platform will transmit 90 SD and HD channels encoded...

Harmonic has introduced the Electra 9000 – a multi-codec, multi-format video encoder for broadcast, satellite, telco and cable operators, the company announced Sept. 7.    The Electra 9000 encoder delivers HD and SD video services using Harmonic’s MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) and MPEG-2 compression algorithms. The unit simultaneously supports broadcast, mobile, and Web formats in a...

[Satellite TODAY 09-12-11] Intelsat has contracted Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) to build and deliver two high-power satellites that will provide DTH television service in Latin America, the FSS operator announced Sept. 9.    Intelsat said that it would operate the DLA-1 and DLA-2 satellites and provide them to regional DTH digital television services operator DirecTV Latin...

While the satellite industry is in many ways ‘a good news’ industry with stories of growth and opportunity in difficult economic times, this growth can also lead to problems. RF interference is becoming an increasing problem for the industry and one that has been a keen topic of debate at IBC. A lot of this...

Pace is confident that it will have a major DTH customer for its new range of advanced set-top boxes in the near future. It has already signed its first cable customer for these new boxes.  Darren Fawcett, Pace’s chief technical engineer, told the IBC E-Daily, “We signed a first client device deal with Get in...

Intelsat has signed two contracts with SkyStream, a Dubai-based provider of connectivity and satellite services solutions, for nearly 40 MHz of new C-band capacity on Intelsat 17, the operator announced Sept. 10.    The Intelsat 17 satellite, located at 66 degrees East, will allow SkyStream to offer GSM backhaul, Internet access and On-Demand video service...

[Satellite News 09-12-11] Spacecom will return from the 2011 IBC convention in Amsterdam with a longer Eastern Europe customer list for capacity on its Amos satellite fleet. The operator signed a long-term contract with Hungary’s Magyar Telekom Sept. 12 to supply its DTH service, branded T-Home SatTV, with more bandwidth via the Amos satellite fleet...

Scalable transport solutions provider Net Insight has partnered with Skyline Communications to allow Skyline’s DataMiner network management system to integrate with Net Insight’s Nimbra platform.    Scalable from small to large deployments, the DataMiner network management platform aims to deliver an end-to-end integration of complex technical ecosystems. Skyline said the integrated system would work to...

Bridge Technologies has launched a first complete solution for monitoring and analyzing DVB-T2 transmissions, with comprehensive support for the T2-MI stream format, the company announced Sept. 9.    The Bridge Technologies system provides visibility and packet analysis of both outer and T2-MI inner streams together with accurate drift monitoring for SFN networks, impulse response analysis,...

The opportunities in Latin America are proving to be a hot talking point among the satellite community at IBC. The economic growth in countries like Brazil is at odds with what is going on in the rest of the world, where growth is pretty much at a standstill. Romain Bausch, CEO, SES, once again highlighted...