Uneasy alliance between Canvas and manufacturers
Project Canvas has named Cisco, Humax and Technicolor as manufacturer supporters of the broadcast-broadband project. At a presentation to the Digital TV Group, Richard Halton, project director, Canvas said the three were working on “developing the complex technical requirements of what we’re trying to prepare”. In February the DTG accused the Canvas partners, which include the BBC, BT and TalkTalk, of running a “parallel process”, leading Halton to adopt an occasionally conciliatory tone; “Don’t think the relationship is straight forward and the moment a chair of chair meetings is appointed you know what kind of relationship you’re in.” Halton said Canvas had accepted a seat on the DTG’s steering group. Following its submission to the BBC Trust, DTG director-general Richard Lindsay-Davies said he was now in discussions with the corporation’s regulatory body over precisely which documents should be released. In a clear warning to Project Canvas, Lindsay-Davies said that the CTV specification would be delivered to the industry, but that the partner would not necessarily be Canvas.

KDG confirms DVB-C2 plans
Christoph Schaaf, the chair of the DVB-C2 technical module and head of new technologies at Kabel Deutschland, has said the cabler plans to use the new DVB-C2 transmission system for on demand and high definition services. Similar to its terrestrial and satellite counterparts, DVB-C2 allows bandwidth savings of at least 30% when compared to the 15-year old DVB-C used today by digital cable platforms. Twelve HDTV services can be fitted into an 8 MHz channel, a 100% gain between MPEG-4 and MPEG-2. Schaaf said he anticipated the introduction of new tiers that would exclusively run on the DVB-C2 system, though he admitted the market would require some stimulation, potentially by European MSOs purchasing only DVB-C2 compatible devices. Kabel Deutschland is currently taking to vendors about suitable prototypes and anticipates the first samples to be made available in the fourth quarter.

June launch for Cablecom CI Plus
Cablecom is to officially introduce CI Plus to its subscribers, starting in June. The Zurich-based Cablenet is the first UPC company to adopt the technology that will be marketed as the DigiCard. Subscribers will be able to purchase the DigiCard for CHF 99 (€67.70) with Cablecom hoping that the card, which fits into the Common Interface slot on a number of the latest television sets, will encourage cable viewing on second and third sets. The introduction of the DigiCard is part of a new digital package being launched by Cablecom in June. The 55-channel offer also includes a 300 Kbps ‘free broadband’ connection. A price increase of CHF 0.70 will take the monthly subscription to CHF 23.20. To date 400,000 Cablecom subscribers have opted for the current digital package.

German TV Platform plans ASO roadmap
The Working Group AG Digitalisation of the German TV Platform has published a roadmap for analogue switch-over on satellite and cable. Switch-off of all analogue satellite transmissions of German TV channels is now officially scheduled on April 30, 2012, and requires “foresighted behavior of all involved“, according to Jörg-Peter Jost, member of the executive board of the Platform. Under Jost´s management, the measures and milestones are defined in this roadmap with regards to digital satellite transmission over the Astra satellites. The interactions with the digitalisation of the cable households are also analysed and suitable steps towards the increase of the use of digital channel offers by the cable households suggested.

Sky plans Germany’s first live 3D telecast
Sky Deutschland is following in the footsteps of its UK counterpart with a live 3D transmission of the Bundesliga. The exclusive telecast will show the March 14 match between Bayer Leverkusen and Hamburger SV. It will be produced by DFL and Sportcast and shown to an invited audience in Munich that will include former German international Franz Beckenbauer. As is the case with BSkyB, the current generation of Sky Deutschland HD receivers are already capable of handling 3D content, providing the viewer has a 3D television receiver. A separate version of the match will be captured for the 3D audience. Presenter Jessica Kastrop and commentator Kai Dittmann will host the transmission that will use multiple 3D cameras.

Canal+ Spain joins growing 3D line
Canal+ Spain has become the latest broadcaster, and the first in Spain, to announce plans for 3D broadcasting.  Transmissions from a new channel, Canal+ en 3D, will take place on April 17 with a concert from the Spanish recording artist Enrique Bunbury. Canal+ en 3D will be available on the iPlus Digital+ hybrid receiver, though the lack to date of 3D displays means that in reality the broadcast will be restricted to the selected few. Bunbury’s performance will be based on his number one album Las consecuencias, which Canal+ believes will become a television event.

Traditional TV securing OTT presence
Online TV is increasingly being dominated by broadcasters controlling access to their content, rather than making it available to third party sites, according to Screen Digest’s Ben Keen. In a presentation at DVB World in Lisbon entitled The Over-the-Top TV challenge, Keen explained that high content prices and low revenues mean that service providers often take a loss on pure play service. Although most of today’s TV content is being monetized by advertising, the traditional TV that consumers pay for on a programme-by-programme basis is being dominated by Apple’s iTunes store. According to Screen Digest projections, UK online TV revenues will be worth around $0.56 billion by 2012, with advertising only contributing $0.1 billion and subscription an even smaller proportion. The $3.2 billion US total paints a similar picture, through drawing on higher advertising revenues.

BSkyB: Hybrid strategy, but DTH core
Brian Lenz, BSkyB’s director of product design and TV product development, has revealed that the technical glitches that dogged the launch of the Sky Player on Xbox last October were down to a serious under-estimation of demand. Lenz told the annual gathering of the DVB Project in Lisbon that putting Sky Player on Xbox had exceeded expectations by 2 or 3. “It nearly crashed our services in the first week we had so many requests. That shows we had pent up demand and what we can do with our content if we put it into new places”. Giving details of the planned Push VOD service scheduled to launch later in the year, Lenz told delegates hybrid was core to where the satcaster’s strategy goes next. He said several thousand hours would be made available to customers that plugged in their broadband connection to the Ethernet port on the reverse of their Sky+ HD receivers. “

Kabel Deutschland IPO on March 22
Germany’s biggest cabler Kabel Deutschland KDG plans to raise about €700 million in an initial public offering scheduled on March 22, according to a prospectus that has just been published. KDG may sell as many as 45 million shares. The IPO price range is to be announced from March 10 to March 12, with an offering period starting from March 11 to March 15 and ending on March 19. The initial listing will be on March 22. Earlier, Kabel Deutschland embarked on a dual track strategy, by on the hand hand talking to possible buyers, while at the same time preparing for an IPO, in order to maximise the value of the company. Talking to takeover candidates, the operator was valued between €5- 5.5 billion. But the shareholders believe an IPO can bring in more money.

ONO secures €200 million additional funding
The board of directors of Spanish cable operator ONO has approved the provision of funds worth €200 million from shareholders through a shareholder loan as part of a refinancing plan for the company. ONO will have immediate access to €125 million to boost its business plans. The remaining €75 million will be reserved and disbursed only in terms of the liquidity needs of the operator. The formalisation of this contribution by the shareholders will provide a definite boost to the closure of the refinancing plan, which in turn will guarantee the financial stability of ONO for the coming years. In the medium term, the company could find different ways of generating financial resources, such as a bond issue, capital increase or an eventual IPO.

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Content

Clover's Week Stuck in the middle Content discovery has made middleware fashionable again, but we can’t all have the same one, writes Julian Clover

There is something about middleware, proprietary and otherwise, which really sets the nerves a jangling. Last week at the DTG Summit in London I watched the tomatoes metaphorically fly overhead as the head of Project Canvas, the BBC’s Richard Halton, simultaneously apologised and dug his heels in over what papers had and hadn’t been seen by the Digital TV Group members.

A few days later it was the DVB Group that was addressing the issue of how reception devices might begin to display the availability of linear and broadband-delivered video content in a seamless manner. The EBU is clearly in favour of HBB, note the capitalisation here, we’re talking Hybrid Broadcast Broadband the concept not the commercialisation. That said the Franco-German project has hit the ground running, even if the organisation has become a little quiet in recent months.

The DVB still carries the scars of the IPR process that stalled attempts to get MHP into Europe’s set-top boxes – remember the European Commission stopped short of mandating. The initial IPR licensing fees were more than the market could take.

MHP is still very much in business in Italy, Austria, Poland and Belgium, many in commercial deployments, and is also a part of CI Plus. However MHEG-5, the UK’s preferred standard for the digital interface, is the preferred option for its on-screen displays. If you look around Europe you have pockets of proprietary middlewares, NDS, OpenTV, and now TiVo enters the frame, both in its direct deal with Virgin Media, and the new relationship with Conax.

In the past, developments such as Teletext, Nicam stereo, etc, have found their way into TVs across Europe because it was generally agreed that it was the right thing to do. Besides, it helped sell more sets, and the public were happy as a result. Those around at the time suggest there has been a shift towards an attitude where there is a greater desire for individuals to fight their own corner, rather than work towards a common good.

This could be said to be particularly true with the manufacturers of Connected TVs; why would you want to include someone else’s hybrid system when your own points the consumer towards content on which you can take a percentage?

If the number of pay-TV subscribers holds up then half of the UK will not be following Canvas anyway, at least in their front rooms, and wit more networking probably not anywhere else. These viewers will switch on their television sets to be presented with the options provided by Sky or Virgin Media, both of which will have their own way to pull in broadband content from the internet.

This means that the public service broadcasters involved in Canvas will have to continue to repurpose their content to appear on these platforms, which in these days when PSBs pick and choose their public service obligations, might even qualify as a commercial decision.

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