SatNews

Satellite Industry Intelligence Since 1983

digiGO! — The Digital (R)Evolution™

  • Magnify Net webpage Magnify.net has released its Magnify Mobile™ solution, which enables iPhone users to shoot, upload, store, and share their personal videos on a Magnify-hosted channel at no charge.  Magnify Mobile enables users of iPhone 3GS devices to Instantly submit videos to channels that they create on Magnify.net and create playlists, make comments, reviews, and integrate design templates, content controls, site reporting, and monetization tools. Magnify Mobile is an extension of the Magnify Network, which enables websites to curate video in a way that is relevant to users’ specific interests.  The company, which counts more than 62,000 customers, has deep roots in television and documentary film production, and the Magnify Mobile app combines the best approaches of user-generated video content with online publishing and advertising tools. iPhone 3GS users can submit videos from other sources to their Magnify channels.  Magnify Mobile provides users with greater levels of customization than traditional social networks, such as Facebook, as users design and layout their individual channels to fit their personal tastes.  Whether for a personal hobby, club, sports team, or hobby, users can also customize their Magnify channels for syndication on their home TV or personal media center, such as Boxee. Magnify Mobile is initially available on the iTunes App Store and will eventually be developed for other smartphone platforms, including Blackberry and Android.  


  • Research In Motion logo Although the manufacturer and distributor of the ever-popular Blackberry, Research In Motion (RIM), continues to experience healthy revenue growth, a patent dispute with Visto sliced some settlement remunerations from the overall profit picture. And RIM is not all that positive regarding their guidance for the upcoming quarter. Net income for the quarter was off, down to $495.5 million from the $475.6 million in the previous quarter one year ago. Legal charges amounted to $112.8 million, and the company OK’d payments of $267.5 million to Visto to cover all of the patents and claimed intellectual properties filed in the suit. The good news is that new BlackBerry subscribers amounted to 3.8 million in number, and RIM’s gross margin popped up to 44.1 percent, better than the previous quarter’s 43.6 percent, but down from the 50.7 percent one year ago. One concern for the future is analysts’ concerns BlackBerry inventories are not being refilled at the predicted robust pace.


  • R&S NX8500 VHF transmitter Rohde & Schwarz is adding a new family of VHF high-power transmitters to its product line. The R&S Nx8500 family covers analog, digital, and mobile TV, as well as digital audio broadcasting. As a multistandard platform, it can be used worldwide and upgraded for future standards such as DVB-T2. The compact system setup and high energy efficiency reduce infrastructure and life-cycle costs. All Rohde & Schwarz family 8000 transmitters use essentially the same components, allowing network operators to take advantage of synergies for operation and for storing spare parts. The liquid-cooled transmitter family is designed for high transmit power in the VHF band III as is typically required for basic coverage in broadcasting networks. In addition to analog TV, the R&S Nx8500 transmitter family supports the DVB-T, ATSC, ISDB-T/ISDB-TB and DTMB digital TV standards. It is already prepared for the DVB-T successor standard, DVB-T2. In addition, the transmitters cover the T-DMB, DVB-H, MediaFLOTM and ATSC Mobile DTV mobile TV standards. For digital audio broadcasting with DAB(+), which is also part of the portfolio, the transmitters achieve an outstanding signal quality with a modulation error rate (MER) of up to 33 dB. R&S Nx8500 transmitters provide an output power up to 20 kW for analog TV and 7.8 kW for COFDM standards. The output power for ATSC is 11.5 kW and for DAB up to 8.0 kW.


  • Palm Pre smartphone The Palm Pre may well find its support via Verizon Wireless a thing of the past. Unnamed sources indicate this smartphone will be dropped by the company by January of next year, with one reason being that the current (and exclusive) provider in the U.S. of the smartphone, Sprint Nextel, is somewhat lackluster in its opinion of the item’s overall success in the market. There were some additional concerns regarding the battle of the online stores, with Verizon’s VCast going up against Palm’s webOS App goodies. The third negative for Verizon was their intent to further push BlackBerry and Android phones with more marketing emphasis, meaning a cutback for Pre.