Digital Vendor | Jampro Antennas in New Delhi Move

Digital Broadcast Vendor News Asia :: Aditya Jain has joined Jampro Antennas as Regional Sales Manager for South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Mr Jain will operate from New Delhi. In his position of Regional Sales Manager, he will serve existing clients and work with Jampro US headquarters in Sacramento, California to develop strategies to target emerging markets. Jain joins Jampro following a tenure as Sales/ Marketing Manager for QuantM Net Technologies in New Delhi, India, an IT Systems Integrator and IBM partner. He was previously Accounts Manager of Horizon Broadcast Electronics (HBE) in Gurgaon, India. Jain holds an EE (Electrical engineering degree) from the Birla Institute of Technology / Science. Jampro, the antenna specialist supplying RF systems worldwide for TV/DTV/FM/DVB-T and DVB-H has been providing antenna systems to the Asia-Pacific region since the early 1960's and says it today leads the way with new technologies. Digital Broadcast Vendor News Asia understands that a major Jampro recent regional project was a complete upgrade of the TV antenna system for the state broadcaster - Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC) providing multi-frequency, full coverage of the island nation. Jampro is in a major expansion phase, having enhanced production facilities in Sacremento in January 2008. Jampro is attending Singapore's BroadcastAsia2008: Stand # 7G1-08.

Digital Vendors | Singapore Digital New To Mobile TV

Photo: Broadcast Australia Managing Director International Business Group, Chris Jaeger (left), with Singapore Digital Chief Executive Officer, Giulio Dorrucci. Digital Broadcast Vendor News :: Broadcast Australia, a Macquarie Group Company (ASX code: MCG) has launched a joint venture in Singapore, Singapore Digital with local technology company PGK Media to tackle the emerging mobile TV sector in the city state. The joint venture, Singapore Digital, is majority-owned by Broadcast Australia, which itself wishes to position itself as central to digitisation of the broadcast media across Asia. Broadcast Australia's experience cross Australia with digital broadcast infrastructure, network management experience and substantial financial strength gives the company strategic advantages with its presence in Singapore. In fact, Singapore Digital’s core mission parallels that outlined by the Government policy through the Media Development Authority (MDA) and its Media 21 Blueprint document, to see Singapore evolve as a media city with clout and influence in the role of digital TV services. The significance of the setting up of the joint venture can be seen through Broadcast Australia's central role at Singapore Digital which takes over the operation and management of TV2GO, Singapore’s nationwide mobile TV trial initiated by PGK Media in 2006. Following a six-month technical trial, the operational phase of the TV2GO trial was officially launched in June 2007. It is Singapore’s first nationwide mobile TV trial, and delivers a rich mix of premium content to around 100 Singaporean trialists. Broadcast Australia and Singapore Digital are attending the BroadcastAsia exhibition (Singapore Expo Halls 7 and 8, June 17-20, 2008 : Broadcast Australia—Stand 7N3-06; Singapore Digital—Stand 8H4-03A. Broadcast Australia has over 75 years experience as the owner and operator of one of the most extensive terrestrial broadcast transmission networks in the world. The broadcast technology company informed Digital Broadcast Vendor News it is working with strategic partners throughout the Asia Pacific region. Subsidiary companies include Hong Kong-based confined space coverage group, Radio Frequency Engineering Limited (RFE), systems integration and product supply specialist, The Bridge Networks, and critical application and hosting provider, Hostworks.

Digital Vendor Pharos.tv | New Singapore Regional Office

Photo: Patrick Keys
Pharos.tv is to open a Singapore Office. Pharos.tv the Reading, UK-based, automation specialist that provides broadcast management solutions has informed Digital Broadcast Vendor News that it is setting up a Singapore regional office for sales and support activities. The announcement, timed to coincide with the Broadcast Asia 2008 trade show this month in the Lion City says that the new Pharos facility will be situated initially at the New Tech Park in Lorong Chuan. In other words, close to key international broadcasters and playout service providers located in the specialized industrial park. Heading up the operation will be Patrick Keys, who has been with Pharos since its inception. Patrick initially worked as part of the Pharos Playtime automation software development team and is a veteran of many international Pharos projects including CNN Headline News in Atlanta and Network 7 in Australia. He also established the international support operation at Pharos' Reading UK headquarters and has developed customer training programs for Pharos installations including Technicolor, Viasat and Globecast. Of the Singapore move, Russell Grute, director of marketing for Pharos said: "To succeed and grow in South East Asia, many broadcasters and service providers need to work more efficiently. They face unique content management and distribution challenges to localize and promote content for their viewers across a complex region." Pharos sees itself as able to assist broadcasters achieve success in these niche areas with its solid project engineering and technical backup. Backgrounder: Pharos delivers better workflow management to broadcasters and service-providers in television, radio, IPTV and telecommunications. For 10 years Pharos has continually developed the unique Mediator, Playtime and Pilot desktop broadcast management solutions. Pharos workflow offers greater efficiency for library management, ingest, quality control, storage management, archival, transcoding, post-production and playout. Pharos solutions offer a next-generation platform to better manage multiformat content and enable rapid expansion in playout, presentation and publishing. Digital Broadcast Vendor News Asia says the salient point is that Pharos software architecture, integration and support services enable disparate broadcast and IT processes to be unified across the enterprise.

Australia Digital | ACMA Reviews IPTV Growth

Digital Broadcast Vendor News is pleased to know that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has at last published its investigative report on IPTV and multimedia and Internet video. The report is most welcome for the fact Australia is behind in IPTV and Internet Video applications as cited by just five IPTV providers and fifteen internet video providers whose services provide full-length professional content directly to consumers. Digital Broadcasters Vendors News first glimpse of the report, which is to be found at the ACMA web site is that the contents are well researched, comprehensive and useful. The date of the report is May 2008.

Digital Vendor | Simon Tsang New Asia Sales Head for Strategy & Technology

Digital Broadcast Vendor News Asia has been advised that Strategy & Technology Limited (S&T) specialist in interactive TV playout systems and MHEG-5** middleware, has appointed Simon Tsang as Regional Sales Manager – Asia Pacific, based in Hong Kong. Tsang (pronounced Chung - as in hung, or Chang) is based in S&T’s recently expanded Asia Pacific regional office. He reports to Colin Prior, Director of International Sales, Tsang's main role is to support S&T’s broadcast customers and resellers as well as S&T’s numerous MHEG-5 middleware licensees throughout the region. Previously, Tsang was with Syno Systems, a telecoms system integrator. Other jobs included Tut Systems, an IPTV headend provider (acquired by Motorola) and publicly-listed, DVN a conditional access and head-end system provider. Tsang is an Associate in Electrical Engineering from Hong Kong Polytechnic and an MBA from the University of Hong Kong. Strategy & Technology Ltd, headquartered in the UK, regards itself as the leading independent company in the industry sector that supports the MHEG interactive TV standard and provides complete interactive applications and systems for broadcasters and manufacturers worldwide. S&T's TSBroadcaster and TSPlayer systems are used for the creation of MHP, MHEG and OCAP interactive TV transmissions. Its RedKey MHEG engine is licensed to digital receiver and set top box manufacturers worldwide. S & I made a name for itself originally as a provider of carousel creation and play-out systems for digital terrestrial television.

Digital Broadcast Vendor News Asia Note: **MHEG-5, or ISO/IEC 13522-5, is part of a set of international standards relating to the presentation of multimedia information, standardized by the Multimedia and Hypermedia Experts Group (MHEG). It is most commonly used as a language to describe interactive television services.

Digital Teleprompters | UK | Autocue Adds Support Staff

Digital Broadcast Vendor News Asia can advise you of two new sales and marketing appointments in system installation, training and customer support at Autocue, the newsroom automation and teleprompting solutions provider. Simeon Pearl as International Sales Associate and Edward Lynch-Bell as Technical Support Representative have joined Autocue in London from another UK digital manufacturer, ON-AIR Systems. Autocue, a name synonymous with teleprompting, have unbridled prompting from a fixed/static studio position with the innovative QNxt prompting system which goes wherever the TV program presenters go. Digital Broadcast Vendor News Asia understands that the next major trade show Autocue will attend is BIRTV, Beijing August 22-25 which is around the time of the Summer Olympic Games.