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Satellite Industry Intelligence Since 1983

Digital Alert Systems + Hearst TV | SES ASTRA | SNL Kagan | Streambox (SatBroadcasting™)

Digital Alert Systems + Hearst TV are on alert… SES Astra has Balkan deal… SNL Kagan sees IPTV growth… Streambox brings new updates into play…

  • Infopage
    Digital Alert Systems (DAS), a division of Monroe Electronics and an innovator of next-generation Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and Emergency Alert Systems (EAS), has announced that Hearst Television has standardized on the DASDEC™-II emergency messaging platform with EAS-Net™ across 29 stations in 26 markets. In addition to satisfying the federal requirement for CAP compliance, the DAS installation has allowed Hearst to integrate a common CAP/EAS solution with the in-house master control branding system used by all of its stations. The DASDEC-II provides core EAS and CAP functionality in a small single box design. It is available with integrated receivers, advanced hardware interfaces for easy adaptability to ever-evolving technology changes, simple software upgrades without un-cabling, un-racking, opening the case, removing parts, and reassembly, and a network-centric perspective using common web browsers and leveraging common information exchange protocols. The system meets all FCC Part 11 rules and conforms to FEMA CAP V1.2 and IPAWS 1.0 standards, allowing broadcasters to reduce headaches and substantially improve operational efficiency for just a little more than adding a CAP-converter to their legacy EAS equipment. Hearst has taken advantage of EAS-Net, an exclusive communications protocol software that enables EAS data and audio transmission over a TCP/IP network, to integrate its new DASDEC-II systems with the HD master control branding engine that runs at all of its stations. The engine, which sits between the stations’ Vizrt graphics systems and Harris automation, can ensure that emergency messaging matches the look and feel, as well as the quality, of other station content.


  • Infopage
    SES ASTRA, an SES company (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG), has signed a capacity agreement with Telekom Srbija for the DTH transmission of the public TV channels RTS Sat and Radio Beograd in Serbia. The channels will be broadcast free-to-air via SES ASTRA’s orbital position 19.2 degrees East starting from June 1, 2011. With Telekom Srbija, SES ASTRA has won an important anchor customer for its 19.2 degrees East orbital position in the Balkan region.


  • Infopage
    An analysis of the top 75 media economies across North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific by the leading media information provider SNL Kagan, evidences strong growth prospects for IPTV. The analysis notes that IPTV adoption has increased at a 92.4 percent compound annual growth rate over the past six years and forecast that over the next four years:
    • Western Europe will continue to lead the world in IPTV subscriptions, reaching 26.7 million households by 2014
    • China will become the second largest IPTV market, reaching 12.4 million IPTV subscribers by 2014 and pushing the U.S. into third place
      • Latin
    • America and Eastern Europe will see subscriber increases at respective 114 percent and 24.4 percent compound annual growth rates between 2010 and 2014
    • IPTV video service revenues will grow from $12.9 billion in 2010 to $27 billion in 2014, equal to 11 percent of global pay-TV revenues
    • The global move towards IPTV service adoption is being driven by a handful of telcos, with the top five operators accounting for 44.3 percent of the global IPTV subscriber base at year-end 2010
      •
    In the U.K., BT is well-positioned for strong growth, due to BT Vision’s adoption of an innovative hybrid IPTV/DTT technology that leverages the U.K.’s popular Freeview DTT service. Julija Jurkevic, Media and Communications Analyst at SNL Kagan, said, “Although IPTV presently accounts for just 6 percent of the world’s pay-TV subscribers, the platform is fueling hyper-competition and video service innovation in major markets globally. Telcos often provide the spark igniting consumer interest in multi-screen services, HD and VOD, generating in parallel support for investment in next generation broadband networks.”


  • Infopage
    Streambox has announced two major updates to all hardware and software products within the Streambox acquisition platform of professional video encoders and decoders. The Streambox Platform now showcases advanced HD video scaling and automated NTSC or PAL format selection. These new breakthrough features will enable Streambox users to enhance the quality of their video content, while improving efficiency by streamlining their video transport workflow. Advanced video scaling will give Streambox users the ability to capture video in the field at much lower resolution from an iPhone, iPad 2, or Android device, and automatically transcode the video at the studio end, upscaling to full HD resolution fixed output for high quality broadcast results. NTSC or PAL format selection will enable Streambox users to simplify the format conversion process by automatically outputting the preferred format, bypassing the time-consuming step of transcoding the video with a third party product. Advanced video scaling and NTSC or PAL format selection will be integrated into the entire Streambox acquisition platform.