20 March 2007
German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle is now offering advertising slots on its worldwide TV channel DW-TV in the framework of a European bouquet.
“Europe TV” is a joint project of DW and TV 5 (France), TVE (Spain) and Euronews. It is an initiative of FTP, France Télévisions Publicité, which public service French TV channels such as France 2 and France 3.
The entire offer of “Europe TV” reaches more than 430 million households worldwide and constitutes a unique platform for advertising on an international scale.
20 March 2007
Content integration, playout and distribution services for Top Up TV Anytime
Three-year deal to facilitate on-demand services for digital terrestrial television
Solution encompasses integration with Arqiva-provided SDN multiplex system
Arqiva has secured a contract to provide content integration, playout and distribution services for Top Up TV to facilitate overnight delivery of selected programming to set-top boxes. The three-year deal will see Arqiva providing Top Up TV Anytime with three playout channels from Chalfont Grove to Arqivas switching centre in London. The integrated content will then be delivered to the SDN digital terrestrial television multiplex system at Arqivas Feltham media centre, ready for transmission.
Simon Dore, chief technical officer at Top Up TV said, We needed a flexible solution that combined content integration with a reliable distribution network. Arqivas existing relationships with the DTT multiplexes combined with their offer of a solution tailored to our needs made it an ideal technical partner.
John Bozza, head of broadcast sales at Arqiva added, Top Up TV Anytime is an innovative approach to providing programmes on-demand and makes very efficient use of digital terrestrial capacity. Were delighted to be playing such a crucial role in the delivery process.
20 March 2007
GlobeCast, the worlds leading content management company via satellite and fiber for professional broadcast, announced today that it has been selected by MobiTV, the global leader in mobile and broadband television and music services, to manage critical content ingestion to support the delivery of live television to MobiTVs mobile and broadband platforms in North America.
From its digital broadcast center and teleport in Los Angeles, the Companys IP broadcasting hub in the U.S., GlobeCast is furnishing 24/7 channel ingest via satellite, signal encoding, monitoring and connectivity of live channels for delivery into MobiTVs proprietary technology platform(s).
By centralizing our channel ingestion, MobiTV is now able to easily ingest and move channels on a global scale across GlobeCasts worldwide network of teleports, satellite capacities and a global fiber ring, said Kay Johansson, CTO for MobiTV. Not only do we have more flexibility to scale internationally, we have a solution in place that protects our proprietary technology while keeping our partners content secure.
The agreement with MobiTV confirms GlobeCasts growing leadership position as a global content manager and aggregator for IP-delivered video to telco, cable and mobile platforms.
20 March 2007
RadioScape announced today that it will immediately extend its current multi-standard radio product line to support all digital standards required for the French market. This will enable the development of multi-standard radio receivers capable of supporting DAB based standards including T-DMB and DAB+, as well as DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), and current analogue standards AM and FM.
On March 12th, 2007, Industry Minister, Mr François Loos, issued a ministerial decree for the transition to Digital Radio in France based on a multi-standard approach. The AM band (short, medium and long wave) will experience a renewal through the adoption of digital standard, DRM. In addition, the T-DMB implementation of the DAB standard will be used in both Band III and L-Band, with the likely incorporation of the recently announced DAB+ standard.
John Hall, RadioScapes CEO, commented: This is a breakthrough moment for the French radio market. Finally, the transition to digital has begun and, as expected, both DAB and DRM standards are joint winners. We will support both the receivers market with our multi-standard module product line, as well as the broadcast market with our proven DAB broadcast systems. Given our significant experience in DAB and DRM standards we are uniquely positioned to enable the French market to go digital.
Multi-standard DAB/DRM receivers now shipping
Over the past 3 years, RadioScape has pioneered the development of multi-standard radio receiver technology to support both DAB and DRM standards. RadioScape is now shipping the award winning RS500 module, which provides reception for DAB (Band-III & L-Band), DRM (LW, MW & SW), FM-RDS, AM (LW & MW) including AMSS, automatic alternative frequency switching (AFS), EPG (DAB), SD-CARD Recording (DAB/DRM) and playback of MP3/WMA files.
Andrew Dewhurst, RadioScapes Product Manager for Receivers, added: The requirements of the emerging Digital Radio market in France are a perfect natural transition of existing standards support for our multi-standard product line. We can immediately assist manufacturers in the development of their receiver product plans given the significant expertise already developed with the current generation of DAB and DRM radios. Our multi-standard module family is currently being enhanced to incorporate support for additional DAB implementations, including DAB+, and will be available later in the year.
Broadcast systems already support multiple DAB implementations
RadioScapes Broadcast Systems product line already supports multiple implementations of the DAB standard including DAB audio, T-DMB and DAB-IP, with DAB+ coming later this year. Over 85 broadcast systems are on air at major broadcasters and network operators around the world to support DAB audio as well as DMB based multi-media and mobile TV transmissions.
European broadcast industry eyes multi-standard future
The announcement this week in France follows a year of close collaboration between Radio France, RMC, RTL, SIRTI (regional radios), NRJ and the Lagardere group radio stations who joined forces with the objective of obtaining statutory regulation for the introduction of broadcasting standards, which would give the green light to the adoption of digital radio.
A number of countries across Europe and Asia have already adopted the DAB standard, but the emergence of DRM for the digitisation of the AM bands is a more recent phenomena. Already 18 broadcasters are now broadcasting on DRM with over 28 services now on air, amounting to over 230 hours per day.
In the UK the BBC has announced that it is to undertake a trial of DRM, which will allow it to explore digital radio using medium-wave frequencies. The trial will broadcast BBC Radio Devon using the new technology in the Plymouth area and will last for a year from the end of April.
20 March 2007
Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) is pleased to announce the appointment of Andy Clark as the new Head of the English Department. Andy will take up his new role in May. The Current Head of English, Mike Shaw, is retiring this summer.
Andy Clark joined RNW in 1998 as producer on Newsline, and in 2003 launched the weekly discussion show Amsterdam Forum. In 2006, Andy joined the small editorial team based in The Hague. He returns to work full-time in Hilversum as the English department rolls out its new programming.
20 March 2007
RadioScape extends Software Defined Radio solutions to additional DSP platforms and announces plans to support new ADI BF52x series for Mobile TV
RadioScape announced today that it plans to extend the range of programmable semiconductor platforms that will support its proven software radio solutions. Having already had significant success in developing a broad range of software, module and subsystem solutions for the DAB digital radio market based on Texas Instruments DSPs, the company believes that in emerging digital radio segments there will be demand for its proven stacks and applications for DAB, DMB, DAB-IP, DRM, FM and AM on other platforms. The first of these will be the Analog Devices Blackfin® BF52x series of processors, announced today.
John Hall, RadioScapes CEO, commented: A significant strength of the Company, since inception 10 years ago, has been our ability through our Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach to quickly incorporate new standards as well as the embedded applications that make these standards user friendly in a consumer device. As digital radio finds its way in to all manner of consumer products such as cell phones, PCs, personal media players, in car entertainment systems, in addition to the more traditional radio products we see today, device manufacturers are looking for much more innovative solutions. In some cases this will simply be a software load for an embedded processor already in the consumer device, and in some cases it will be for the entire broadcast receiver subsystem. By extending our support for new platforms we will be able to satisfy a broader range of radio and mobile TV applications.
In conjunction with the announcement by Analog Devices (ADI) today of its new BF52x family, RadioScape has announced that it has developed a highly integrated software implementation of its DAB baseband decoder and audio video decoder for this new platform to address the emerging mobile TV market. This has already been demonstrated to potential customers and initial products will be available later this year. (See separate release). This work paves the way to include the ADI platform across the range of RadioScapes digital radio solutions in the future.
Hall added: Our selection of additional platform partners is driven by two key considerations. First there has to be a great fit in terms of feature set and price against our roadmap requirements. Second, there has to be a strong alignment in strategic market focus between the two companies we want our partners to be as committed to growing the digital radio and mobile TV sectors as we are. That means they will continue to invest in developing optimised silicon platforms for the future.
Andrew Dewhurst, RadioScapes Product Manager for Receiver Solutions, added: The radio of the future will increasingly be part of a multi-standard, multi-media device. The challenges of supporting such broad functionality as well as the integration of the radio with other device features is significantly reduced through the SDR approach. We now have a highly portable code base and this gives us the opportunity to engage with other semiconductor partners as we develop our roadmap. This enables us to increasingly focus our resources on new applications and solutions for system level integration of digital radio.
RadioScapes SDR approach
Radio is enjoying a renaissance with increased listening figures according to RAJAR as new ways to listen to radio become available such as cell phones, TVs via Set Top Boxes, Internet, Home Cinema, Personal Media Players, etc. This is opening up new business opportunities for RadioScape plc to add Digital Radio functionality to these devices by using its unique Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach, which it has pioneered so successfully to create a range of award winning, DAB and DRM radio receiver solutions.
RadioScape was founded over ten years ago on the principle of using software to create Digital Radio solutions. This unique SDR approach has enabled the company to pioneer the development of both broadcast and receiver technology where upgrades and enhancements are often made simply through software uploads. This allows future proofing of both existing and new designs.
The use of SDR allows receiver solutions to be quickly tailored to individual customer and product requirements. This ensures that products can have differentiating features while also reaching the marketplace in the minimum time.
RadioScape extends Software Defined Radio approach to Mobile TV using ADIs Blackfin Processor and achieves significant system level savings compared to todays solutions
RadioScape plc is extending its leadership in Mobile TV broadcast technology with the addition this year of solutions for Mobile TV receivers, which will be based on the latest additions to the Blackfin® processor family from Analog Devices (ADI). Announced today these new, high performance, low power processors will enable RadioScape to integrate the DAB baseband decoder and the audio video decoder onto a single platform. This provides a clear saving in costs while being very competitive on space and power compared to the conventional approach today of having these on two separate chips.
RadioScape is leveraging its extensive Digital Radio systems knowledge, which comes from being the only, end-to-end technology provider for DAB, to focus on creating Mobile TV (MTV) receiver solutions based on the Eureka 147 DAB standard, including the T-DMB and DAB-IP standards. DAB-based standards have been adopted for MTV in many parts of the world as they use spectrum that is already available and provide robust reception. RadioScapes initial MTV solutions will provide DAB/T-DMB and DAB-IP reception as well as DAB radio. Its Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach means that it can add additional standards as appropriate to meet market demands and create multi-standard MTV solutions.
Using our tightly integrated solution of DAB radio and MTV in mobile phone handsets or Personal Multimedia Players will enable many features and applications to be created in software that will further enhance the user experience, said Les Sabel, RadioScapes VP of Technology. These include music downloads, Electronic Programme Guide, picture downloads, broadcast websites, interactive voting and games, and other user specified feeds such as sport, news, traffic, and weather. Our Software Defined Radio approach also allows service providers to deliver value-added applications to existing customers though software updates in the field.
RadioScapes solution integrates both the Eureka 147-based, baseband decoder software (including DAB audio, DAB data, T-DMB and DAB-IP) with the Audio and Video decoders (H.264 video and MPEG 4 for both AAC+ and BSAC audio) into a single software solution. This approach provides significant cost savings over traditional multiple ASIC designs while maximising the flexibility of MTV and Digital Radio solutions, said John Croteau, General Manager, Convergent Platforms & Services Group, at ADI.
The use of SDR allows MTV and Digital Radio solutions to be quickly tailored to individual customer and product requirements. This ensures that products can have differentiating features while also reaching the marketplace in the minimum time. The SDR approach also allows future proofing for both existing products and new designs. New product designs can be generated through the addition of a number of multimedia features (such as pause, rewind, record and cache service) and, in addition, the Blackfin has the flexibility to be either the system master or a slave coprocessor.
The ADI investment in technology development and their evolutionary path provides an excellent route to lower cost, lower power solutions that will have backward compatibility with previous product generations. This continuity in the development process minimises the total cost of ownership by improving product development efficiency relative to traditional approaches where ASIC hardware changes cause significant costly and time-consuming rework, added Les Sabel.
RadioScape is now demonstrating this advanced MTV solution to lead customers.
