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Conference on New Technologies and Piracy
The European Audiovisual Observatory has announced a major conference on audiovisual piracy and its consequences, entitled NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND PIRACY: A CHALLENGE TO THE AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRIES (Paris, 18 June 2004). The French Foreign Ministry (direction de l’audiovisuel extérieur et des techniques de communication) which holds this years Presidency of the Strasbourg-based European Audiovisual Observatory, has chosen the major media issue of audiovisual piracy as the subject of the Observatorys traditional yearly conference.
The conference will be structured around three panel discussions offering a broad analysis of the current situation:
* Where does piracy start?
* What is the impact on the audiovisual industries?
* From the findings to action: the solutions?
Participation at this conference is by invitation only, although there is a limited number of additional press seats. In order to obtain a press invitation, please contact the Observatorys Press Officer, Alison Hindhaugh (alison.hindhaugh@obs.coe.int, Tel: + 333 88 14 44 10)
Related links:
www.obs.coe.int/db/gavis/piracy/html
and
www.obs.coe.int/db/gavis/peertopeer/html
PanAmSat named Best Satellite Operator in Asia; signs HD delivery agreement with NHK
PanAmSat Corporation, which celebrates its tenth year in the Asia-Pacific market at CommunicAsia 2004 (being held from 15-18 June in Singapore), has been named best satellite operator in the region by Telecom Asia magazine. Judged by the Yankee Group and a panel of experts, the award was presented on the basis of financial performance, market leadership, technology innovation and corporate governance.
As the Company enters its second decade in the Asia-Pacific marketplace, PanAmSat continues to be recognized as the best satellite operator by customers, partners and now officially by the industry, said Mike Antonovich, executive vice president for global sales and marketing, PanAmSat. PanAmSat began operations in the Asia-Pacific region with the launch of the PAS-2 satellite in 1994. Today, operating a hybrid network of fiber and five high-powered satellites in orbit over Asia, PanAmSat is able to offer a wide range of services for businesses and events in the Asia-Pacific region. Customers in the Asia-Pacific region include NHK, China Central Television (CCTV), Doordarshan, Korea Broadcasting System, Arirang TV, ABS/CBN, TVB, NicNet and Telstra. The Company has provided a full-range of program distribution services including live worldwide transmission of special events such as the 2000 summer games in Sydney, Australia, and more recently the 2002 FIFA World Cup from Japan and Korea.
PanAmSat also announced that it has entered into an agreement with Japans public broadcaster NHK to deliver live high-definition (HD) sporting events and breaking news via the companys global hybrid satellite and fiber network.
RadioScape expands into Asia Pacific
RadioScape has appointed William Lam as the head of its Asia Pacific operations. He will be based in the company’s new offices in Singapore, where he will be responsible for the company’s broadcast products sales in Asia Pacific. He will also be establishing a new office in Hong Kong to service RadioScape’s customers not only in China but also throughout the region as a whole. Asia Pacific is an increasingly significant area for RadioScape as many of its DAB module and OEM receiver manufacturers are based in the region.
The company continues to lead DAB innovation with the launch of a new module which reduces incremental cost of adding DAB to multi-function products. Based on the company’s highly successful RadioScape RS200, the RS201 has the additional features of CD control, Infra Red remote control, clock and alarm functions as well as DAB, FM and RDS, making it ideal as the heart of a new generation of DAB-enabled boomboxes and hifi systems. Manufacturers can make a DAB-enabled, multi-function product with the addition of only a few items as the module has all the control and functionality integrated within it, ensuring that system level costs are kept low. This module approach can reduce the time taken from months to weeks so that products can be in the shops in Q3 2004 for ramp up to the Christmas market.
RadioScape’s innovative, software-defined module approach is unique in enabling highly differentiated products rapidly to market, and as a result, a major OEM manufacturer of DAB radios, ELANsat Technologies Inc of Taiwan, has licensed the RadioScape RS200L and RS250H module designs. ELANsat currently makes three DAB receivers that it markets under its own LaGIO label. “We designed these products ourselves using the Texas Instruments DRE200 chip,” explained Capten Hsiao, Vice President and General Manager at ELANsat. “However, the DAB market is growing so fast now that we decided to license RadioScape’s module design as it provides us with the ability to licence additional, off-the-shelf, proven software features from RadioScape such as excellent user interfaces, integral FM, Alarm Clock, Rewind, real-time Pause, L-band etc. rather than have to try to create and verify them ourselves. This cuts time to market and enables us to focus on creating differentiated DAB receiver products for sale both under our own brand and for our major international customers sold under their own brands.”
Harris introduces new products at BroadcastAsia2004; sells into Taiwan and India
Harris Corporation’s Broadcast Communications Division is introducing the Synchrony(tm) adapter, its second-generation DVB-T single frequency network (SFN) headend adapter, at BroadcastAsia. Synchrony is ideally suited for DVB-T operators or integrators who are looking to build a DVB-T SFN. It can be used worldwide where DVB-T is a standard for DTV transmission. The Synchrony adapter prepares the MPEG transport stream at the output of the DVB-T multiplexer to be transmitted by DVB-T transmitters in single frequency network conditions, i.e., transmission of the same content at exactly the same time on exactly the same frequency. To achieve this, the Synchrony adapter receives a 1pps time reference and a 10MHz clock reference from a GPS receiver and computes time and control information to produce the Mega-frame Initialization Packet (MIP). MIP information is inserted in the MPEG-2 transport stream and used by transmitters to synchronize the modulation process. Another new product is the Gigabit Ethernet module, a new plug-in module for Harris’ NetVX(tm) Networking System. This new module supports video over IP for rich media content distributors.
Harris also announced that two Taiwan terrestrial broadcast channels and one Taiwan cable channel have chosen Harris Corporation, Broadcast Communication Division’s ADC-100 Automation System to update and expand their facilities. Taiwan Television (TTV), one of the terrestrial television channels in Taiwan, will use Harris as it transitions its turnkey, four-channel playout system from analogue to digital. The new system has main and back-up Pinnacle servers for full server redundancy, with two program and two commercial video servers. Program content is cached from multiple VTR machines housed in a Flexicart via the Harris ADC-100 automation control. This is also the first time in Taiwan that DVB multi-lingual subtitling systems have been incorporated.
In India, leading business channel CNBC-TV18 has purchased its second ADC-100(tm) automation system from Harris Corporation’s Broadcast Communications Division for its new facility in Mumbai. This follows the successful Harris installation at its playout facility in New Delhi for CNBC-TV18’s English Business News Channel. Both installations were co-coordinated through Harris’ distributor, Ideal Broadcasting Partners. The Harris ADC-100 system will fully automate the control and playout of program material for the soon-to-be-launched Hindi Business News Channel. The transmission storage system will be comprised of Seachange servers under Harris automation control.