France Telecom has selected Orca Interactive to provide the COMPASS Content Discovery and Recommendations platform for the implementation of a multi-screen content discovery and recommendation solution across all the Orange TV related services.

Orca’s COMPASS includes a variety of recommendations engines to provide a blend of personal, optimized recommendations to TV, PC and mobile users. With COMPASS, Orange subscribers will be able to easily discover content that is relevant for them, resulting in more customer satisfaction and higher conversion rates. Since Orange offers a variety of content services, being able to pro-actively assist customers with their purchase decisions becomes a crucial factor for increasing the ARPU. COMPASS comes pre-integrated with Orca’s world-class IPTV middleware, RiGHTv, so France Telecom will benefit from seamless integration and rich functionality.

Originally posted here:

Website: Rapid TV News

Asian pay-TV industry body/lobby group the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) is turning its attention to the high-growth market of Vietnam.

All be it starting from a low base, Vietnam has enjoyed pay-TV growth of almost 400% from 2006 to 2009.

CASBAA has organised a Vietnam Pay-TV Industry Seminar in Hanoi on April 28.

Themed “Pay-TV on the Rise”, the one-day programme will gather both domestic and international broadcasters, platforms, telcos, technology and service providers, as well as government officials to examine the business models and challenges for this burgeoning Vietnamese sector.

CASBAA said exponential growth is expected to continue and that it was eager to promote Vietnam’s pay-TV sector.

“It is one of the most exciting developing markets in the Asia Pacific with huge business potential.

We should not miss these opportunities,” said Simon Twiston Davies , CEO of CASBAA.

More:

Website: Rapid TV News

Technicolor’s Chiswick, West London, play-out facility can now handle 3D material, a ‘first’ claims the company.

Technicolor says it has developed its Broadcast 3D service offering to ensure optimal viewing and distribution technologies are being used.

The company is now ready to offer this service to its cable, television, and satellite network service provider clients.

“With the availability of 3D televisions, we are very excited to be the first to offer this new Broadcast 3D service to our customers,” commented Chuck Parker, president of Technicolor’s Digital Content Delivery business.

“Broadcast 3D is a natural extension of the many services we’re already providing, including upstream in production and post production, as well as delivering the highest quality 3D images to theatres and to the home via Blu-ray Disc, broadcast, and digital delivery.”

Technicolor says it is able to manage live or pre-recorded content, from post production through encoding for satellite, cable, IPTV or terrestrial distribution.

The company is also able to generate logos and other visual effects for 3D broadcasts.

The Broadcast 3D transmission suite at Technicolor’s Chiswick Park offices features equipment from Sensio, Orad and Miranda.

Originally posted here:
Technicolor ready to offer Broadcast 3D

Website: Rapid TV News

Spain’s main cable operator Ono can celebrate its recent positive economic results in the middle of the current deep crisis.

The company ended last year with a net profit of €50 million compared with losses of €26 million in 2008.

Ono also surpassed its expectations for EBITDA, ending the period with €730 million compared with €701 million for the previous year, a growth of 4.2%.

The forecasts of the company at the beginning of that period were an EBITDA between €680 and €720 million.

However the operator’s revenues went down to €1,510 million, 5.6% less compared with the previous year due to the economic crisis, and an accompanying decrease in telephony and pay-TV consumption.

Ono had 1,902,000 residential subscribers at the end of last year, a decrease of 17,000 clients in relation to the same month the previous year.

But the company’s management are continuing the policy to push the market of triple play clients or combined services of telephony, pay-TV and the internet.

So 36% of its client base asked for these services in Q4 last year, compared with 34% in the same period the previous year.

But the operator registered a strong growth in the number of clients in broadband internet with a total of 1,326,000 at the end of last year, growth of 3.4%, compared with 1,283,000 at the end of the previous year.

So 72.6% of the company’s client base have this type of service.

As for Ono’s pay-TV service, the company had 6.2% fewer clients last year meaning a total of 975,000 subscribers.

This downturn corresponds to the operator’s basic TV services while the premium TV services registered better results in the number of clients.

So the downturn in the number of TV subscribers made the operator bet more on getting new clients to its telephony and broadband services.

As for the operator’s fibre optics network, at the end of last year it had more than 7 million homes connected, an increase of 41,000 homes.

According to Jonathan Cumming, Ono’s financial director the 2009 results “show that in spite of the difficult economic situation last year the company overtook its forecasts in terms of EBITDA, operative cash flow and free cash flow.”

Originally posted here:

Website: Rapid TV News

Spain’s main audiovisual group, Prisa’s Sogecable, is planning the launch of a pay-DTT operator as a complementary service to its satellite pay-TV operator Digital+.

This future new pay-TV operator will be an individual service to that of Abertis Telecom’s Premium TDT offer, which currently only offers premium soccer channel Gol TV.

That channel’s owner, Mediapro, recently announced its own pay-DTT operator launch. So apparently there will be two pay-TV operators in Spain.

With Sogecable’s new project the producer wants to directly compete with Telefónica’s DSL pay-TV operator Imagenio, cable operator Ono and the country’s other IPTV offerings from Jazztel and Orange.

In order to initiate the new project Sogecable will include the two digital channels allocated to its national free-to-air network Cuatro, which it has agreed to sell to Mediaset’s national private free-to-air network
Telecinco in return for 18% of the capital of the new group.

According to this agreement Telecinco has given Sogecable the management of its pay-TV offering once the two groups are merged.

According to the newspaper Expansión, Prisa is working to have its pay-DTT channels ready for next September once new channels have been added to Gol TV.

But going with a different technology would mean commercial problems so Sogecable could be forced to adopt Abertis Telecom’s chosen technology for its new pay-DTT operator.

Abertis adopted Nagravision and Irdeto conditional accesses.

A total of 270,000 pay-DTT boxes have been sold so far in Spain, all under the TDT Premium standard led by Abertis.

But taking account of the expectations of the pay-DTT market, retailers bought nearly 1.5 million of these boxes. Now it is time to commercialize them.

With the same pay-DTT box the user will be able to get different offerings.

Sogecable’s new pay-DTT offering could cost around €15 monthly according to some company sources, which is the same price as Gol TV’s.

With an averge monthly price of €40, Prisa’s satellite pay-TV operator Digital+ is Prisa’s main income source.

Sogecable wants pay-TV on DTT