Digital Radio | Iran Festival Boosts Radio Programs: ABU

You're reading this story on Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia: From the Tehran Times Art Desk:

TEHRAN -- The Secretary-General of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), David Astley is convinced that the annual festival of radio in Iran helps develop radio programs in the region. Participating in the press conference held at the venue of Tehran’s Radio building, IRIB Deputy Director Hassan Khojasteh, and Alireza Nuri, the secretary of the festival, elaborated on the programs of the 9th International Radio Festival of Iran running from May 20 to 22, 2008. Astley: “This is the third time I am in Iran and I am happy to see great progress in radio programs each time. This festival indicates a good progress and I think Iran’s great endeavor will help develop radio programs in the region.” He also appreciated Khojasteh for holding such programs, saying, “The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) is one of most active members of ABU and it plays a major role in the Middle East. Events like this will help study world radio programs from various points of view.” Astley also announced that they will try to cover the news of this year’s festival through ABU website. Khojasteh was the next who made a speech and said, “IRIB believes enhancing activities of international organizations like ABU will benefit all members and each member must try to boots its programs. Iran is also planning to hold several other conferences this year.” With reference to the increase in the number of radio channels across the country, he said, “I believe the older the radio gets, the younger its programs become, and for further freshness, radio requires new theories.” “Radio, the Voice of Cultures” is the motto of the 9th International Radio Festival of Iran. Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia Source: www.tehrantimes.com ---------

Digital Vendor | NDS Opens New Delhi Office

NDS Asia Pacific, owned by NDS Group plc (NASDAQ: NNDS) has informed Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia, that it has opened a sales and support office in New Delhi. A leading provider of technology solutions for digital Pay TV, NDS already has a Mumbai office and a Bangalore Research and Development Center. With 900 staff already working in India, NDS says it is committed to providing continuing support to the Indian PAY TV market and to investing in further expansion. With unprecedented emphasis on technology research and development, NDS says it ensures its customers are market leaders, today and tomorrow. Commenting in Mumbai, Sue Taylor, VP and General Manager of NDS Asia Pacific said, "NDS is very optimistic about the growth of the Indian Pay TV market." Latest research shows that India's digital Pay TV market will lead the Asia-Pacific region in revenue generation by 2015. India's established Pay TV market leaders, Tata Sky, Hathaway Cable and Datacom, as well as new market entrants Bharti and Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), all rely on NDS systems to protect and enable their Pay TV services.

Time Warner Cable | 2008 Cable Show

Fox BusinessNews has a wrap of the 2008 Cable Show in New Orleans on the role of Time Warner Cable (TWC) as the industry moves forward. Rebecca Gomez interviews Peter Stern VP for Strategic Planning at Time Warner Cable. Stern addresses: time shifting consumer options, giving customers greater control to watch what they want, when they want and through what equipment using the innovative "Star Over" product. He also addresses the Verizon Network competition, the Sprint and ClearWire JV with TWC, and the way forward incorporating 4G, the next generation phone interface/wi-fi. Watch the Fox Business News video interview with Peter Stern at the 2008 Cable Show.

Digital Broadcast Asia | SingTel Now Into Mobile TV

In a formal announcement to Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia, Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) said it had launched its Mobile TV service in Singapore today using Nokia Siemens Networks’ Mobile TV streaming solution to become one of the first in Asia-Pacific. This service complements SingTel's mio TV service and adds another dimension to accessing quality pay TV content anytime, anywhere. The new service includes live TV channels with electronic program guide (EPG) information and video-on-demand (VoD) . SingTel is using Version 3.5 of Nokia Siemens Media Delivery Solution (MDS) as its Mobile TV platform while the phone application is based on Adobe’s Flash Lite technology. The MDS can incorporate video streaming (unicast), and future technologies. Respective company executives for this project are: Wong Soon Nam, VP Consumer Marketing, SingTel and Thomas Yeo, Head of SingTel Singapore Customer Team, Nokia Siemens Networks. “This deal demonstrates our ability to partner with forward thinking operators like SingTel to make the most of industry-leading solutions such as Nokia Siemens Networks’ MDS.” Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia regards SingTel as Asia’s largest multi-market mobile operator, serving more than 185 million customers in eight markets including Australia.

Broadcasters| US Radio-TV Tops 175m Weekly Audience Worldwide

United States Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Chairman, James Glassman said in Washington on May 15 that the government funded international broadcasting outlets reached a 175 million audience on a weekly basis. The figure is up from 155 million audience in 2007. Mr Glassman was addressing a meeting of the "Heritage Foundation". BBG's broadcasters include the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí). In his speech, Glassman pointed to recent events in Burma and Tibet. VOA and RFA warned the Burmese people of the potential severity of cyclone Nargis days before official Burmese media, and both broadcasters provided breaking news coverage of pro-democracy protests in Tibet in March and the subsequent Chinese crackdown. The BBG global audience estimate is based on measured audiences from independent surveys conducted worldwide in accordance with industry-standard research methods. Audience gains in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Syria, in particular, helped drive the increase. Weekly audience is one element in a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data scrutinized by BBG to ensure continued delivery of high-quality content. "Our research probes questions such as whether our audiences trust our news and whether our broadcasts are helping to improve their understanding of their world and America," Glassman said. "On those two counts - and on less tangible measures - the BBG is performing well." The BBG website carries the full text of Glassman's speech. Meanwhile BBG, the US government funded broadcasting effort is behind that of its main western rival,the BBC. Latest figures show that the combined global radio and TV audience outside of the United Kingdom reached 233 million, as per a BBC press statement of 21.05.2007.

Digital Broadcasters | Fox Makes 2 in India for Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch's STAR India has the sub continent covered with its STAR-DEN 50:50 joint venture with the Digital Entertainment Network. Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia hears that following re-positioning of the Hong Kong based, Star Group last year, the other Murdoch TV broadcast group, FOX has recently applied to India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for an operator's licence to carry six FOX TV Channels, namely: Baby TV, Fox Crime, FX (Fox extended), National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Music and National Geographic Wild. india

Digital Broadcaster | Kalaignar TV Chooses Harris To Equip

Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia has been informed by the Hong Kong office of Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) that Madras-based, Kalaignar TV has installed a broad based range of Harris automation products for its satellite broadcast operations that officially launched on air in February 2008. Sharad Kumar, company director and shareholder (20 per cent) at Kalaignar TV said of the deal: “Key factors in our decision to select Harris included the reliability, scalability and collaborative, seamless workflow of the NEXIO interoperable broadcast solution". Kalaignar TV's studio and transmission playout installation includes a Harris server solution for playout and editing, including:
- NEXIO servers with 19.2 TB storage,
- the Velocity NX full-featured HD promotions craft editor;
- the NEXIO Ingest Control Manager for managing scheduled line feed recordings;
- and the NEXIO PlayList application for sequencing and playing content to air. The installation also includes a peripheral system, including 6800+ modular core processing products, the SuiteView multi-source display processor, the Panacea Clean/Quiet Switch router, master clocks and sync generators. Local distributor for Harris, Primeasure Technologies Pvt. Ltd facilitated the deal. The value was not specified. Plans are now at an advanced stage for the launch of a 24/7 News Channel in Tamil. It has been a bumpy start to Kalaignar. The station poached a number of staff in front of, and behind the cameras from Tamil language rival, Sun TV Network and it is reported that this became the center of a dispute with Kalanidhi Maran the major shareholder at Sun TV in May 2007 that pushed back the trial launch of the Tamil music channel to September 2007. The formal branding of the channel took place in January 2008 and was packaged into "Isaiyaruvi TV". Kalaignar now forms part of Sun TV's DTH network serving India's southern states and Sri Lanka. Targetting mainly the Tamil speakers in Tamil Nadhu state, Digital Broadcasters Vendor News understands that Kalaignar Television has signed up popular film personalities to provide program content to support the TV broadcast rights to a number of latest movie telecast rights. Tags: Kalaignar TV, Harris, Sun, Tamil, Nexio

Digital Broadcasters | NZ TV Channel 40 Waikato starts

Digital Broadcasters Vendor News has learned from the Asia-Pacific satellite forum Apsattv (at) yahoogroups.com, that a new regional family TV station, starts November 15 to serve the Waikato area of New Zealand. TV Central is using UHF Channel 40 as its frequency. The reason for the forum buzz was that a member in the area complained that the Channel 40 frequency just happened to be the UHF channel output on his SKY TV decoder. This was causing interference with a resulting fuzzy picture. The new family channel website (www.ftn.co.nz) is http://tvcentral.co.nz/ .

Digital Broadcasters | BBCArabic Seeks Uni Recruits

With weeks away to the launch of the BBC Arabic TV Channel, the BBC in Dubai has informed Digital Broadcasters Vendor News Asia that a series is of interactive media workshops to recruit talented young university graduates to become broadcasters, is under way. Labelled as “The World as You See It” road show is to target media studies attendees to groom the best into becoming the program and news presenters of tomorrow on the soon to start, BBC Arabic TV Channel. The BBC Arabic team is visiting universities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Egypt and Morocco. (Listed below) The point BBC Arabic is making is that its operation is now about being an integrated Arabic-language multi-media operation - a first, the BBC says, for the region - that completely integrates radio, tv and online Internet. Essentially, experienced BBC journalists will share their knowledge and experience with media students, encouraging them to complete 3 minute video packages of stories they believe will be of wide interest. The best works will be featured on the new channel. Hosam El Sokkari, Head of BBC Arabic, said this is about developing talent that he views as a first step in building a relationship between the BBC and with the multi-media 'broadcasters' of the future. The Arab universities co-operating with BBC Arabic are: United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, Sharjah University, Sharjah, King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Birzeit University, West Bank Palestine, the American University in Cairo, Cairo, Al Ahram Canadian University, Cairo, Cairo University, Cairo, the Mohammed V University, Rabat, Université Hassan II, Mohammedia, Casablanca. More information from BBC's PR support Dubai - info at asdaa.com http://www.bbcarabic.com http://www.bbc.co.uk

Digital Broadcasters | NDTV Using Omnibus iTX System Solution

A reminder from Digital Broadcasters News Asia that New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV) launched two new channels from its headquarters serving the Middle East region. "NDTV GOOD TIMES", went on-air Sept 7, 2007 followed by "NDTV ARABIA" on September 10. Both channels target expatriate (NRI) Indian viewers in the Gulf states. NDTV appointed OmniBus Systems of the UK to supply its comprehensive playout and production system solution, known as iTX. NDTV's Group CTO, Rahul S. Deshpande said that the Omnibus technology was chosen in order to get the two channels air as quickly as possible. And the reason NDTV chose the iTX software package was that the iTX, file-based system unifies playout, storage and automation, across multiple devices, platforms and different software versions, while solving compatibility issues. The bonus is that iTX easily integrates with NDTV's existing content management. NDTV, based in the India's capital, next year notches up its 20th anniversary as it becomes India's first and largest commercial producer of news, current affairs and entertainment programming output. The TV network has expanded to 23 offices and studio facility locations across the sub-continent. New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV) website: www.ndtv.com OmniBus Systems' digital asset management, automation and transmission technology website: www.omnibus.tv