17 June 2004
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.
17 June 2004
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.”
17 June 2004
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.
14 June 2004
The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) has appointed Henry K. Middleton as CASBAA General Manager, Singapore & Southeast Asia. This new position will encompass the Association’s relationships with government, member organisations and the multi-channel television and broadband industries as a whole, as well as building on a CASBAA decision in 2003 to formally open an office in Singapore.
“This is a big step forward for the Association. It reflects general industry growth and the ever-growing importance of Singapore as the region’s communications hub,” said Marcel Fenez, the Chairman of CASBAA.
The appointment of Mr. Middleton comes as CASBAA announces new memberships and upgraded participation in the Association by 13 companies.
14 June 2004
Leading global satellite services company GlobeCast announced on 11 June that its Washington, D.C.based Government Services Group has been awarded a multi-year contract by Arrowhead Global Solutions, Inc. to provide international space capacity on multiple satellites to support U.S. government communications abroad.
Established in 2003, GlobeCasts Government Services Group represents one of the companys fastest growing business markets, providing U.S. federal agencies, state agencies and government prime contractors with domestic and international satellite and ground segment services including teleports, satellite capacity, terrestrial services, equipment procurement, project design, engineering and integration to deliver a broad range of strategic and secure communications.
Arrowhead Global Solutions, Inc. selected GlobeCasts Government Services Group to supply multiple satellite transponders to support international enterprise services and applications across multiple world regions for the U.S. military and other federal agencies. Arrowhead is using the GlobeCast service to provide its customers with bandwidth that can be used for both fixed and mobile ground terminals.
14 June 2004
International broadcaster Radio Netherlands received a boost when results of a recent survey by Dutch market research company The Choice showed that the Dutch abroad value the service provided by Radio Netherlands. The average respondent gave the Dutch international service a rating of 7.4. Approximately one in four Dutch people listen to Radio Netherlands during their stay abroad. The existence of the international service is considered by 72% of the respondents as (very) important.
Acting Director General Jan Hoek said: “These great figures are a boost for Radio Netherlands. After a period of reorganisation, it is good to know that the Dutch people value us so highly.
The number of Dutch holidaymakers listening to Radio Netherlands has increased recently after a slight fall end at the end of the 90’s. “We can see that holidaymakers find it important to have short summaries of Dutch and international news, background and service information. Moreover many holidaymakers tune into us for coverage of sporting events”, said Jan Hoek, who added “Radio Netherlands cooperates editorially more and more with the domestic public broadcasters. The 7.4 is therefore indirectly also for our colleagues.”
