- BIZ—Oh Those Copy Cats . . . kinda like the disgruntled kid who gets mad and takes his ball when the game isn’t going his way, well… The government of Antigua thinks they can throw the US economy into a funk by allowing anyone to copy anything that can be duplicated by repealing intellectual property treaties with the US. This is because they’re ‘mad as hell’ that the US isn’t responding quickly to trade disputes between the two countries. More here
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DELIVERY—Aircell has announced the completion and full operational readiness of the nation’s first wireless network designed specifically to provide mobile broadband services to commercial and business airline passengers while flying over the U.S.M The company’s wireless network enables full corporate and personal email, VPN access, web surfing and much more. Aircell also marks another historical milestone in the company’s 16-year history by placing into full operational service the nation’s first mobile broadband network built for aircraft operating in the continental U.S. In January of this year, the company completed its nationwide wireless Air-To-Ground (ATG) network. This brought, for the first time, coast-to-coast, border-to-border, mobile broadband coverage over the U.S. to commercial airlines and business aircraft. Unlike all other wireless networks in the nation, the Aircell network can provide air travelers with seamless connectivity when using their inflight mobile broadband Internet service, called Gogo. The world’s largest airline, American Airlines and one of America’s newest airlines, Virgin America, have already signed agreements with Aircell to deploy its service in 2008—Itasca, Illinois
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DELIVERY—Digital Rapids Streams to Olympics… yes, the company has already won Olympic Gold, in a manner of speaking, as they were chosen to provide media encoding, transcoding and streaming systems to NBC for the network’s Internet coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing, China. Digital Rapids‘ DRC-Stream encoding and streaming solutions will enable NBC Olympics’ a first—live and on-demand online coverage of the Beijing Olympics. A total of 2,200 hours of video will be streamed live on the Internet at NBCOlympics.com, primarily encoded from video feeds into web-friendly streams through the DRC-Stream systems. Streams will be encoded in the VC-1 compression format for viewing by Microsoft Silverlight technology. The encoded live streams will be archived for viewers to watch on-demand. Digital Rapids Transcode Manager will be used to convert affiliate-provided content between compression and file formats for U.S. domestic distribution—Markham, Ontario and New York
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DELIVERY—Fast Forward Video’s Elite HD Is a Fast First—Moving ever forward and ever faster, Fast Forward Video (FFV) launched the Elite HD, the first camera-mounted digital video recorder (DVR) and player to harness the JPEG 2000 (J2K) compression codec for recording HD-SDI video signals. The Elite HD gives broadcasters a new option for recording high-quality video from HD-SDI cameras while reducing the costs of storage media. The Elite HD supports all HD-SDI camcorders and other video sources with compatible rates, including the Iconix HR-1; Canon XL H1 and G1; Sony F900, XDCAM HD, and XDCAM EX; JVC GY-HD250; Panasonic GP-US932; and Toshiba IK-HD1. The Elite HD also works with any HD-SDI switcher with a compatible output format. Until now, the process has been for broadcasters to rely on the internal recording capabilities of their camcorders to record and playback HD-SDI video. Problem is, these recorders don’t match the video quality of the camera signal itself. In addition, onboard camera recorders require proprietary and expensive storage media, sometimes costing upwards of $500 for a mere 32GB. In a typical workflow, these cards require another device to read the video and transfer it for editing. Enter the Elite HD which accepts an incoming HD-SDI video signal with as many as eight channels of embedded audio and uses J2K to record at data rates up to 100 Mbs with virtually no loss in signal quality. Video is stored to an off-the-shelf, hot-swappable, 2.5-inch SATA drive providing up to 10x more storage for less cost. In addition, the Elite HD can be easily detached from the camcorder and connected directly to a nonlinear editing system via USB cable—Irvine, California
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DELIVERY—Great news for 500 rural communities—Globalstar, Inc. [NASDAQ:GSAT] has announced that Open Range Communications, Inc. has secured approval for a 257M/USD broadband loan from the Department of Agriculture‘s Rural Utilities Program. With this plan in place, Open Range expects to initially deploy its infrastructure into more than 500 rural communities involving over 6 million people, which will increase their economic opportunities and improve their quality of life. The plan calls for coverage to be deployed in rural communities with average populations of approximately 10,000 people. Service is to begin in selected markets in 2008. The agreement contemplates using the Globalstar spectrum to offer dual mode mobile satellite based and terrestrial wireless WiMAX services to American communities that currently do not have adequate access to terrestrial-based broadband voice and data services. Customers outside of the WiMAX coverage area will be able to use Globalstar service over the satellites. The agreement is contingent on various conditions, including Globalstar’s receipt of authority from the FCC to use an expanded portion of its licensed spectrum for ATC services. The term of the agreement is 30 years, is co-extensive with Globalstar’s ATC authority and is subject to renewal options exercisable by Open Range—Milpitas, California
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CONTENT + DELIVERY—The MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF) has announced a full-day Master Class at NAB2008 in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 13th, 2008, titled “The New Television Experience”. Organized in conjunction with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), this special event will explore how new technologies are changing the way digital multimedia is created, compressed, delivered and monetized. Business and technology leaders will share their experiences and unique industry insights at this year’s Master Class featuring keynote speakers from Yahoo, The Open IPTV Forum, T-Com, and MobiTV. The keynote speakers will be joined by panelists comprising operators and other leading technology pioneers and industry analysts such as IBM, Turner, Fastweb, Telekom Austria, Thomson, Nagravision, Harmonic, Motorola, IPTV Americas, Amino, Latens, MRG, NXVision and the University of Applied Sciences Berlin. This MPEGIF Master Class will be held between 10am and 5pm, with the Roundtable Panel topics for this “must-attend” including: How Tomorrow’s TV might look … Differences & Progress — Enabling Technology … Status Report — Show Me the Money … Business Models & ROI — The Role of Internet Television. For more information access https://www.mpegif.org/exhibitions/NAB2008/agenda07.php.
CONTENT + DELIVERY—Sky Angel is a Dribbling Good Sport—Look out, March Madness is available on Sky Angel. Sky Angel U.S., LLC., a national TV provider of faith-based and family programming, added CBS College Sports Network to its line-up. The sports program is available through Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) on Channel 323. This translates out to a full line-up of regular-season and championship events for 35 men’s and women’s college sports, as well as the network’s original programming, features, live studio shows and documentaries. CBS College Sports Network currently provides in-depth coverage of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship and complements CBS Sports’ exclusive live game broadcasts—Naples, Florida
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