19/09/04

No update Sundays

18/09/04

No update Saturday

17/09/04

Nothing to say up here

From my Emails & ICQ

From vk4bkp

B3 new transponders
Optus B3 12640H 21000 3/4 loads 13 tv and 13 radio.
Optus B3 12613H 21000 3/4 also loads 13 tv and 13 radio.

Both transponders display a message from UBI.
"UBI has successfully completed it's test. UBI is now proud to
officially announce it's service on Optus B3. Please watch for
announcements as to how to subscribe to your favourite channels.

From Chris Pickstock

Cricket: Aus v NZ

Insat 2E, 3832V, sr 6250, Australia v New Zealand
Vpid 513, Apid 660

Chris

From Simmo

Footy Show on B1
there's a 4.2.2 on B1, 12491 10850...

It is the footy show, in 4.2.2

From the Dish

PAS 8 166E 3977 V "Thai Outlook TV" has started on , Fta, SR 3253, FEC 3/4, PIDs 308/256.
PAS 8 166E 4080 V All channels in the TAS mux are encrypted again.

Optus C1 156E 12367 V "Australian Christian Channel" has started on , Fta, PIDs 1091/1092.

Palapa C2 113E 3580 H "RCTI has replaced Trans TV" on , Fta, PIDs 201/202.

NSS 6 95E 12678 V "ABC Asia Pacific and Radio Australia" have started on , Fta, SR 6510, PIDs 2307/2308, 2310 and 2311, Australian beam.

ST 1 88E 12642 H "FTV News Channel has replaced CTV" on , Conax, PIDs 102/103.

ChinaStar 1 87.5E 4062 V All channels in the Shanghai Media Group mux on are Fta.

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3625 V "SS Music and a test card" have started on , Fta, SR 30000, FEC 5/6, PIDs 515/680 and 521/740, Asian beam.

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3600 H "Indiavision News and Indiavision Entertainment" have left , replaced by test cards.

Telstar 10 76.5E 12308 V "KTTVS" has started on , Fta, PIDs 880/881.

PAS 10 68.5E 12722 V "YFM" has left .

NEWS

TV war puts tour of India in doubt

From http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/16/1095320902113.html

Australian cricket chiefs fear a battle over television rights could cause next month's Test series in India to be cancelled, and last night were seeking clarification from Indian board president Jagmohan Dalmiya about the implications for Australia's tour if the multimillion-dollar broadcasting crisis is not settled.

At the heart of the dispute is ESPN-Star Sports, which has challenged the Board of Control for Cricket in India's decision to award TV rights for all international cricket played in India for the next four years to rival network Zee for almost $444 million. The BCCI has received a court order preventing it from seeking fresh bids for rights to the Australian series until the wrangle is resolved.

"There is a concern. (Chairman) Bob (Merriman) has had some preliminary advice from BCCI that there could be a risk to the tour going ahead," a Cricket Australia spokesman said last night. "We are seeking urgent clarification, and we are hoping that some time in the next 12 to 24 hours, he'll be able to get some more detailed communication from BCCI."

When The Age tracked down Dalmiya last night and asked whether the tour would proceed, he replied: "I can't say at this stage." When pressed on the matter, Dalmiya said: "I can't say anything more at the moment because it would be prejudicial. While the matter is in the courts, it is difficult for me to comment."

ESPN-Star contended in the Bombay High Court that Zee, India's biggest listed media company, did not fulfil a requirement to have two years' experience of telecasting international cricket matches.

The court, which has put off hearings until September 21, wants the BCCI to maintain the status quo until it reaches a verdict after it emerged there were negotiations afoot with public broadcaster Doordarshan. But with the Australian series set to start on October 6, the BCCI maintains the court's decision is untenable.

BCCI lawyer Virendra Tulzapurkar told a hearing on Wednesday that if the matches were not telecast, "there is every likelihood that not only will the entire series be cancelled with the possibility of penal measures, but also that the same is likely to cause serious international repercussions".

The International Cricket Council requires third-umpire coverage for all Tests, and usually uses footage from the broadcaster. The issue also raises serious financial concerns for the BCCI, which relies on media income to sustain the matches.

"Time is running out and we are desperate," a senior BCCI official told Agence France-Presse. "There is no guarantee that even if the court gives an early ruling, it will not be challenged by the losing party in a higher court. The case could go on for months."

The official said there were serious concerns about the Australian series. "It is mandatory that third-umpire coverage is made available for the Tests.

"If this is not done, anything can happen. Official status for the series may be withdrawn, the International Cricket Council may not post third umpires or referees and more punitive action may be taken."

Sky silence talkative refs

From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10792726%255E23217,00.html

NEW Zealand's chief rugby broadcaster, Sky TV, has pulled the plug on talkative referees.

The pay channel will turn down the volume on officials' microphones during match broadcasts because it believes some referees talk too much.

"Some guys talk the whole time. We don't want 'War and Peace' from them, just the Readers' Digest version," director of rugby Andy Fyfe said today.

All referees have microphones in major matches in New Zealand and they are left open to let viewers hear conversations between refs and players.

"Our gut instinct tells us the referees have become too prevalent in the NPC (New Zealand's National Provincial Championship) and we're going to reduce their input," said Fyfe.

"There are times when you want to hear a referee and these are the times when we will make sure they can be heard."

The behaviour of some referees this season has led to complaints from viewers. New Zealand international referee Paul Honiss was recently criticised for his chattiness and for a "patronising" attitude to players.

New Zealand Rugby Union deputy chief executive Steve Tew said the matter was "a production issue" for Sky

Dunedin meeting on TVNZ

From http://www.odt.co.nz/

Got a gripe with the television? Or maybe a compliment?

TVNZ is holding a public meeting in Dunedin to hear the views and opinions of TV One and TV2's southern audience next week.

"We are coming to talk to our shareholders. You own us. We want to hear the issues and concerns you have about TVNZ, receive feedback and listen to your ideas," public affairs head Avon Adams said.

"We have a mandate to focus more on public broadcasting and we take that very seriously," Ms Adams said.

TVNZ chief executive Ian Fraser, members of the executive, sales staff and local journalists would attend the meeting, which would start with a short presentation before taking questions from the floor and then breaking for refreshments and informal chatting, she said.

The first of the Talk Television public meetings was held in Hamilton last month.

It attracted about 150 people, who raised a range of issues, including wanting fewer commercials during children's television, more agricultural programmes and criticising the unbalanced coverage of the war in Iraq, Ms Adams said.

The third meeting is planned for Napier in November.

TVNZ hopes to hold four public meetings a year around the country.

The Dunedin meeting will be held in the Fullwood Room at the Dunedin Centre from 5.30pm to 7.30pm next Thursday.

Entry is free, but for seating purposes tickets are required and can be ordered by calling 0800-825-588.

Under the charter, introduced last year, TVNZ has to focus on programmes that will develop New Zealand's cultural and national identity.

(Craigs comment, there you go South Island Apsatters turn up at the meeting and ask WHY TVNZ is not making sensible use of their transponder space on B1)

SATELLITE TRANSMISSION PROBLEMS: ShinSat to provide UBC back-up signal

From http://nationmultimedia.com/page.news.php3?clid=6&id=120992&usrsess=1

But companies still silent about refund demanded by thousands of viewers

Shin Satellite Plc has promised to provide a back-up signal of the pay-TV programmes shown on United Broadcasting Corp (UBC) – in the event of future disruptions from its Thaicom-3 satellite.

But both ShinSat and UBC have kept mum on the question of a refund for its 300,000 satellite TV subscribers unable to view programmes last Sunday and Monday because of a temporary glitch with the Thaicom-3 satellite.

“UBC and ShinSat have jointly developed additional measures to ensure continuous service for UBC’s satellite TV programme viewers,” said Yongsit Rojsrivichaikul, ShinSat’s executive vice president in a joint statement yesterday after a meeting on Wednesday to try to prevent similar problems.

ShinSat will deploy additional back-up transponder capacity for UBC in case of future tranmission disruptions. The extra capacity will either come from existing Thaicom satellites or from its partners, Yongsit said. A telecom industry source said ShinSat would have to use transponders of its Asian operator partners if the glitch occurs again. That’s because its Thaicom-1 and -2 satellites are fully utilised.

The situation is likely to improve if ShinSat can launch the broadband satellite iPSTAR as scheduled early next year and then shift UBC to iPSTAR, he said.

The source said ShinSat and UBC did not reveal if or how they would refund viewers affected by the glitch.

Services from the Thaicom-3 satellite were disrupted on the nights of September 12 and 13. ShinSat said the problem was due to maintenance that had to be undertaken immediately, which coincided with an eclipse.

This resulted in a temporary blank-out of all UBC satellite TV programmes, which sparked an outcry from viewers, who demanded that UBC should give them a refund.

UBC has 400,000 subscribers, 300,000 of which are satellite TV programme subscribers. The remainder are cable-TV programme subscribers. Thaicom-3 satellite has 23 international customers and seven local customers.

UBC chief executive Sompan Charumilinda said the group understands that technical glitches sometimes occur with satellites.

UBC’s share price closed at Bt21.30 yesterday, down from Bt22.60 on the previous day.

Intelsat to End Participation in Galaxy Satellite TV Holdings Limited

From Press Release (Edited)

Pembroke, Bermuda, 16 September 2004 - Intelsat today announced that is has decided to end its 51% participation in Galaxy Satellite TV Holdings Limited of Hong Kong, whose subsidiary Galaxy Satellite Broadcasting Limited provides local and international pay-TV programming to the Hong Kong market.

Intelsat’s partner in the Galaxy business, TVB, will acquire Intelsat’s share in the joint venture and has agreed to release Intelsat from any future cash contributions. A related existing agreement for Intelsat’s in-kind contribution of satellite capacity on the IS-709 satellite will end on 31 March 2005. Intelsat’s financial results for the period ended 30 September 2004 will reflect a non-cash charge of approximately $30 million to write down the Galaxy investment.

“We continue to believe that Galaxy’s service offering represents an attractive alternative for pay-TV subscribers in Hong Kong,” said Conny Kullman, CEO of Intelsat. “Galaxy’s growth has been slower than anticipated, however, and it is not in Intelsat’s strategic interest to invest additional resources and management time on this business.”

About Intelsat

Building on 40 Years of Leadership. As a global communications leader with 40 years of experience, Intelsat helps service providers, broadcasters, corporations and governments deliver information and entertainment anywhere in the world, instantly, securely and reliably. Intelsat's global reach and expanding solutions portfolio enable customers to enhance their communications networks, venture into new markets and grow their businesses with confidence. For more information, please go to www.intelsat.com.

Contact
Dianne VanBeber
[email protected]
+1 202 944 7406

Allison Scuriatti
[email protected]
+1 202 944 7841

Subash Chandra bats for sport

From http://inhome.rediff.com/cricket/2004/sep/17zee.htm

From trading in vegetable oils to taking on global heavyweights in a fight for India's cricket television rights, Subhash Chandra delights in challenges.

The chairman of India's biggest listed media company, Zee Telefilms, caused a stir last week when he walked into a Bombay court room to defend Zee's cricket coup.

Zee, which launched India's first satellite TV channel in 1992, was the surprise highest bidder and won conditional rights to show the Indian cricket team's home matches for four years starting in October.

But ESPN Star Sports, a joint venture of Walt Disney and News Corp.'s Star, challenged Zee, claiming it had no experience in broadcasting live cricket.

A court ruling is expected later this week.

The clash is reminiscent of a stand-off in July between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi over broadcast rights to Italy's soccer clubs.

But 54-year-old Chandra, a devout Hindu who is fond of quoting the Bhagavad Gita scriptures, loves a good fight.

Chandra's Essel group, which owns Zee and employs 5,000 staff, has interests ranging from packaging, entertainment parks and online lotteries to films, television and publishing.

Its slick glass-and-chrome offices in Bombay are a stark contrast to Chandra's more rural background.

Born in a village in Haryana, Chandra is one of seven children of a cottonseed trader.

As a young boy, he wanted to be an engineer. Aged 19, he opted against college studies and, spurred by his grandfather, set up a vegetable oil unit, later moving to grain exports.

NEW PATHS

A visit to a packaging exhibition led to the 1982 launch of Essel Packaging, which makes laminated tubes for toothpastes, cosmetics, food and drugs. The company merged with Swiss firm Propack AG in 2001 and became Essel Propack Ltd.

In 1988, Chandra set up Bombay's first amusement park, EsselWorld.

Zee was the outcome of a casual visit in the early 1990s to a friend at Doordarshan, the state-owned television channel. Chandra signed a lease for a transponder on the Asiasat satellite and won equity backing from some non-resident Indians.

Chandra is said to have watched every programme aired on the channel in its initial years. Today, the network is distributed in the United States, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and is preparing to launch a sports channel to add to its news, films and music.

After a near-monopoly, Zee now lags rivals Star and Sony. Analysts say cricket could help Zee bridge the gap.

Zee is very nearly a fully integrated entertainment company, with production and distribution alliances for feature films, and dominant cable and direct-to-home (DTH) TV ventures.

With a swathe of white hair over his right temple, Chandra is described by colleagues as down-to-earth and hands-on. He makes decisions quickly and is unafraid to ask for opinions or admit to mistakes, an associate said.

He also makes no bones about his background, preferring to speak Hindi than English and smoking 'bidis.'

While some question the viability of spreading himself so thin, others say that, despite the appearance of a professionally-run group, Essel remains a family concern.

Three of Chandra's brothers head Essel Propack, Zee News and the cable unit, while his two sons lead the newer businesses -- online lottery, DTH broadcasting and the sports channel.

Known to say "walking down beaten paths is for beaten men", Chandra's path is as gripping as an India-Pakistan cricket Test.

HC asks TV channels to work out norms for censorship

From http://sify.com/peopleandplaces/fullstory.php?id=13569020

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has asked nine satellite TV channels to come together and work out self-censorship norms over airing of adult movies and programmes.

A Bench of Chief Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice D Y Chandrachud gave the order on a PIL filed by a teacher of St Xavier College, Pratibha Naithani. Naithani contended that once a film had been rated A by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), it could not be shown on TV.

Earlier, the Bench had restrained satellite channels from beaming adults only movies or programmes without prior permission of the CBFC.

On September 1, the respondents namely Star TV, Sony TV, Zee TV, Udaya TV, AXN TV, Surya TV were restrained from showing such programmes and were also asked to file affidavits stating how many adult movies were shown during last three months and at what time.

However, only Sony TV filed an affidavit stating that it had shown 25 adult movies in the last three months

16/09/04

My TV+ are planning a 3 channel Russian service via B3. I reckon most likely to be in the Globecast mux. I wonder how they will source the Russian channels? via 96.5E? keep an eye on the Russian sats

Website for My TV+ note this is not the other group who call themselves TV PLUS
http://www.mytvplus.com.au

Tarbs/UBI will officially be using Optus B3 (no surprise with that announcement)

We are still using the old Apsattv server due to a problem with the power supply on the new one. The new server may be switched over next week.

From my Emails & ICQ

From George (Who took the info from Auscity forums)

MyTV+
Here it is:

They planning to start transmission in the middle of October, sat B3, three
channels: (all Russians)
1 - 1 TV + 1 Radio -- $40
2 - 2 TV + 1 Radio -- $49
3 - 3 TV + 1 Radio ~~ $60

With existing dish - new box free.
No dish - $120 installation.

One year contract, two weeks - one month prepaid.
Interesting they are going to run it on B3!

Info from MY TV+ website translated useing Altavista Babblefish

Dear friends!

We resemble to you that by company MYTV Plus.
They will be officially until 30 September
are declared three basic russkoyazychnykh television channels,
which, we are assured, it is maximal
your interests will satisfy, will justify your expectations
and will not exceed your possibilities.
If you please, you follow our news bulletins on the Russian program SBS,
in the newspaper "arguments and facts"
and also in the stores of company "Russian leisure".
Immediately after obtaining of the entire information

You will be able to ring on the telephone
1300 738 290

and to agree about the convenient for you bottom and the time
for the connection.The filled form you will be able
to transmit to the technical representative of the company
after connection. If to you and by your friends be necessary additional
forms, you will be able to also order them on the telephone pointed out
above.

The Russian version of contract conditions will be published
in the newspaper "arguments and facts", and also it it is possible
to order on the vyshcheukazannomu telephone.

With the respect, the board
company MYTV Plus.

(Craigs comment, you may get more sense out of them if you ring the number?)

From George

Tele Libian is testing on UBI channels CH57
Optus B3 12674 22500 H

From Rudino Penny

Craig,
F.Y.I. RCTI channel Palapa C2 loading on 3580H Freq 27000.Comes up as Family Channel.Clear here in North western australia.

From Steve Hume

Chinastar 1 87.5E fta
4062V, 26500 are all currently fta

From the Dish

Intelsat 701 180E 10975 H "Canal Evenement" has started on , enc., PIDs 169/116.(Fta at times)
Intelsat 701 180E 11074 H "ESPN" has started on , Fta, PIDs 521/740.
Intelsat 701 180E 11500 H "TVSN" has left again, replaced by a test card.

(N Kawano)

PAS 8 166E 3836 V "TVBS Golden" is now encrypted.
PAS 8 166E 4080 V "Gala TV Variety, Gala TV Comprehensive and Gala TV Drama" are now Fta

Optus B3 152E 12525 V "Sigaram Movie Channel" has started on , Fta, PIDs 2360/2320.
Optus B3 152E 12674 H "Tele Liban" has started on , PIDs 522/650.
Optus B3 152E 12701 H "TVE Internacional Asia-Africa" has started on , PIDs 522/650.

Agila 2 146E 3880 H "ESC 1" has started on , Fta, SR 3200, FEC 3/4, PIDs 4144/4145.

Koreasat 3 116E 12490 H "Quizup Interactive TV" has left , replaced by a test card.

Palapa C2 113E 3580 H "Trans TV" has started on , Fta, PIDs 201/202.
Palapa C2 113E 3580 H "Family Channel" has left .

AsiaSat 3 105.5E 3760 H "Indus Plus" has left .

ST 1 88E 3632 VAll channels in the Space TV mux on are now encrypted, except Taiwan Music Channel, Casa TV, and TNN.

Telstar 10 76.5E 3760 H "TVE Internacional Asia-Africa and Tele Liban have replaced TRT International,BVN TV and RNW 1-3" on , Fta, PIds 263/519 and 264/520.
Telstar 10 76.5E 3920 H "Animax Asia" has started on , PowerVu, PIDs 1110/1102.

PAS 10 68.5E 3974 H "Cartoon Network Pakistan" has started on , enc., PIDs 1560/1520.

(N Kawano)

(W Zaremba, H Heijden)

NEWS

Optus renews satellite deal

From http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,10782308%255E1702,00.html

TELECOMMUNICATIONS company Optus has re-signed a multi-million dollar agreement with satellite owner PanAmSat to operate its PAS 4 satellite for another 10 years.

Optus has been operating PAS 4 since its launch in 1995.
Under the re-signed agreement, Optus would continue to look after the orbit determination and manoeuvre planning of PanAmSat's PAS 4, the telco said.

Optus said it would also monitor all PAS 4 technical systems including fuel, batteries, propulsion and communications payload.

Optus – a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd – uses its Perth Earth Station in Lockridge to communicate with the satellite, which is roughly located over Australia.

Under the agreement, Optus will continue to fly the PAS 4 satellite until it reaches the end of its useful life, when Optus will implement the satellite's de-orbit procedure.

Optus did not reveal the cost of the agreement.

Gilat Announces First SkyEdge Contract With Australia's Optus

From http://www.spacedaily.com/news/vsat-04zze.html

Petah Tikva, Israel (SPX) Sep 15, 2004

Gilat Satellite Networks announced Tuesday an agreement to supply Australia's second largest telecommunications company, SingTel Optus, with a SkyEdge hub and remote sites for the expansion of Optus's already existing Gilat networks, which will be upgraded to SkyEdge as well.

SkyEdge is Gilat's recently announced revolutionary, unified platform supporting a variety of applications and topologies including mesh, star and multi-star.

The introduction of the system represents a major step forward in VSAT technology.

The agreement with Optus is the first SkyEdge contract to be announced following a successful beta phase. The deployment and upgrade of the network is expected to be completed in Q4 of 2004.

Optus operates two-way satellite services throughout Australia and New Zealand based predominantly on Gilat's 360 and 360E systems, which will now be expanded to SkyEdge as well.

The existing Gilat network is already being used by Optus to deliver distance-learning services to small rural towns and isolated homesteads in New South Wales (NSW) and across the Northern Territory (NT).

The network will now be expanded to support additional distance learning applications, health, rural broadband for SOHO and SMEs as well as total solutions for corporations throughout Australia.

"We are pleased to continue our relationship with Gilat and are confident that this upgrade will enable us to improve the quality and range of services we supply to our customers," said Warren Hardy, Managing Director of Optus Wholesale & Satellite.

Oded Sheshinski, Gilat's Manager for Australia-Pacific, said, "This agreement with Optus is a natural extension of the successful operation of our network in the past and Optus's satisfaction with our technology, solutions and close customer support."

"We are pleased that the first network of our new SkyEdge Product family should be deployed by Optus which will benefit from the most advanced VSAT technology available and be able to continue to expand its offering of solutions to its customers throughout Australia and New Zealand."

The SkyEdge Product Family: One system. A world of possibilities.

With the ability to support an endless array of applications in data, telephony and broadband IP all using the same hub, the SkyEdge product family represents a breakthrough in the industry.

It is the first truly comprehensive satellite communications platform to deliver superior data, voice and video services over a single, powerful system.

The family consists of the SkyEdge System (the hub), and five VSAT products including:

- SkyEdge Pro - Multi-service VSAT, supporting interactive data, mesh telephony, broadband IP and video, with plug-in cards architecture expanding the VSAT capabilities.

- SkyEdge IP - IP Router VSAT, supporting interactive, broadband IP, VoIP and multicasting applications.

- SkyEdge Call - Telephony VSAT, supporting thin-route telephony applications.

- SkyEdge Gateway - Trunking Solutions VSAT, providing mesh trunking solutions supporting digital telephony and IP data on demand trunking applications.

- SkyEdge DVB-RCS - Enhanced Standard VSAT, fully supporting the DVB-RCS standard. Being much more than only a return link standard, this dual mode VSAT provides a unique real end to end standard solution for a satellite network operator with an arsenal of additional access schemes, embedded software and enhanced IP acceleration features for full flexibility and support in a complex IP environment.

Echostar to carry 17 CCTV channels

From http://www.advanced-television.com/pages/pagesb/newsdaily.html

China Central Television (CCTV) is to sign a deal next month to allow the distribution of 17 channels originated in mainland China by Echostar in the US.

A formal announcement is expected in Los Angeles on October 1, China's national day, following the signing ceremony attended by a group of senior CCTV executives.

The agreement will give Echostar six CCTV channels, seven provincial ones, three produced by Hong Kong's Phoenix Satellite TV and one service by Hong Kong terrestrial Asia Television. The channels will mainly be in Mandarin, although CCTV-9 is in English.

Echostar reaches more than 8.5 million homes in the U.S. and is the country 's second largest direct to home satellite TV provider. News Corp-owned DirecTV had been angling for the carriage rights, but backed out of the bidding.

Zee mulls launch of new English movie channel

From http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k4/sep/sep173.htm

MUMBAI: The Zee Group is contemplating launching its own English movie channel following the buy-out of its current partner Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by a group headed by Sony Corp.

According to a PTI report, the business head for Zee's English channels Ajay Trigunayat has been quoted as saying that the group is contemplating starting its own English movie channel, either on its own or in partnership with some other media company.

The decision, he is reported to have told, will be taken in the next four to five days following a meeting of senior programming, marketing and other personnel at Zee.

According to the report, Zee had a content sourcing agreement with MGM for the last four years and the Zee-MGM English channel commanded a market share of around 17 per cent.

In the report Trigunayat said that MGM had no equity participation in the venture and both parties were free to call off the agreement if they desired so.

"Even as we had the partnership with MGM, many of the movies on the channel were being sourced from other players like Paramount and Miramax. Thus we can go solo, taking the content from various partners," he has been quoted in the report as saying.

He said that after four years of existence in the market along with MGM, the channel had developed enough expertise in marketing and distribution, adds the report.

15/09/04

Sorry abut the lateness of the update, got a lot going on. Repairing pc's etc

New software version 5.5 for Emetabox 1,2,3 and clones (Divitone vbox etc) is out, it fixes bugs relating to Irdeto / Zee TV and other issues. Get this from your dealer! A very worthwhile upgrade.

From my Emails & ICQ

From ANON

The outage affecting TRT, TFM, VOT, 3ABN, 3ABN Radio and Daystar since 0415 GMT is apparently due to the incorrect positioning of Thaicom 3 due to a control issue at Thaicom. As RRSat do not have a tracking antenna they are no longer able to uplink to the bird in it’s “new” position and T4GL is therefore inoperative.

Thaicom advised that they are aiming to reposition the satellite manually (possibly by 1100 GMT but likely later) at which point RRSat should be able to hit it again and we should reacquire the missing services. Theoretically the control systems should then keep it in the box.

RRSat are aware of the above situation and recovery plan.

(Craigs comment, This of course affects those services that Globecast re-broadcast via B3)

From Herb Gardiner (NZ)

Lamenting the truth... my musings

Well, I guess one has to face the cold hard reality... No satellite
provider is seriously interested in NZ. Why? It appears that it may
be because we are such a small population. Which in the scheme of
things is true, yet we have one of the highest ethnic counts per head
of population in the western world! Surely 3 million ethnic kiwis is
worth tapping into??!

On the national front, TVNZ has it's own transponder on B1, with
rumours it now has a partner for it's newly acquired transponder
which used to belong to TelstraClear. What's TVNZ doing with this
valuable commodity? Nothing! Oh yes, we have the TVNZ channels and
two far removed international news channels, but who seriously wants
that? No one, that's who. We all know that to make this service fly,
TVNZ need to have both TV3 and Prime on their bouquet. Will this
happen? After some careful research (with some collegues), we found
that TV3, at least for now, isn't interested - and is certainly not
TVNZ's 'partner'. Which leaves Australian channel 9-based Prime. Who
knows what they're thinking. No one there ever seems to be able to
comment. Besides, having Prime would be good, but certainly not the
attaction that TV3 would be!

What about TVNZ acquiring quality programming for it's bouquet from
overseas? The first and obvious choice would be ABC's Asia/Pacific
service. But can they get the re-screening rights for it here?
Ofcourse not! It would appear that the powers that be (at the ABC)
have forgotten that NZ makes up a large population of the pacific,
and/or are just not interested in providing services here. Duh??
Maybe they should re-name their service ABC Asia/Selective pacific
states only. It would be more accurate.

Yes, we could all have large c-band dishes, but who the hell wants
one of them in their backyard! (the average punter, that is)
As for other channels, forget it. Sky already has them sewn up, or at
least they'd like us to believe they have! TVNZ are in the perfect
position to test this, but will they? Ofcourse not, because unlike
our Prime Minister, they have no balls!

What about Ku channels from overseas being beamed into NZ? Yes, one
gets here, and very strong too where I live. Problem is, it's
encrypted, and one can not buy a card legally for use here. Answer,
buy a decoder which you can type in a number to unlock the channel,
or buy a pirated card. Hmmm, the lengths we have to go to!
Oh yes, we used to have the ABC Northern service too. A quality
service which attracted much support from this side of the Tasman.
This service mysteriously disappeared one night, never to return...
One could get sceptical over either TVNZ's or Sky's involvement over
this, especially now since Sky are now showing the national netball
cup from ABC Australia live on it's sport channels. Something we once
didn't have to subscribe to watch. Very interesting...

So that's about it. Summing up... TVNZ has a commodity it could use
to it's full advantage, but won't. GlobeCast who have supported the
NZ ethnic community up to now seem to be abandoning it with it's new
agreement with Panamsat. Time will tell. And any other quality
external services can only be obtained illegally. Great!

What are we left with? Nothing. Yep, the future does seem bright...
For Sky Television!

Herb.

From vk4bkp

Mystery B3
B3 12501

I have a bump there, make that a mountain at 12500H. Very strong on
the 2.3m but no symbol rate can be found from 2000-45000. Either the
symbol rate is lower than 2000 or it's not a digital signal?

From George

TVE is showing on CH70 on UBI channels
B3 12701 22500 H

From the Dish

No lyngsat in my email yet

NEWS

This debacle brought to you, slowly, by Telstra

From http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/15/1094927618151.html

The world is rushing towards using the internet to deliver TV channels to viewers in their lounge rooms - all except, that is, for Australia.

That's because Australia does not actually have broadband. We call it broadband, and a million people have bought it, but it's a bit like calling a bicycle a Harley-Davidson.

Broadband TV needs 4 megabits (million binary digits of data) per second to work. Soon that will drop to 2mbps because of new compression technology. On ADSL broadband in Australia we get 256 kilobits (a thousand bits) per second, and up to 512kbps, for most people. On cable, if you can get it, the speed is around 1mbps.

Consumers in France, Italy and Austria are routinely getting 4mbps speeds over their copper wires. In Korea, a quarter of all broadband subscribers are getting 25mbps on fibre; in Japan there are a million people getting a 100mbps.

Every country in the world has broadband speeds of at least 2mbps - except Australia.

Why? Because other countries' copper wires are a bit fatter, and the distance from the exchange to the home is usually shorter, but mostly because they have spent the money in their exchanges that Telstra hasn't.

Microsoft is trialling broadband TV services in Switzerland and Canada and selling broadband television software called IPTV to global cable and telecommunications companies.

Telstra's partner in Hong Kong, PCCW, has a service called Nowbroadband TV offering an a la carte menu of 59 channels (that is, you can buy them one at a time). ESPN was added this month. It has 300,000 customers.

In Paris, the French phone company is offering 17 TV channels on broadband as part of its standard internet/telephony package.

Go to any one of the dozens of broadband TV websites and you will find hundreds of channels available to watch from all over the world. The other day I watched Sudan TV but couldn't understand a word of it.

Sony has just launched "LocationFree" in the US - basically a portable 12-inch LCD monitor that can connect wirelessly to the internet and play broadband TV channels wherever you are.

There is some activity in Australia too. The ABC is already producing content with eight separate broadband TV channels: news, sport, business, kids, music, comedy, media watch and, would you believe, Basil Brush.

As I write this I'm watching the ABC's comedy channel on my laptop, but it's not very funny.

In Melbourne, TEAC is designing a set-top box that connects a television set to the internet and allows viewers to switch seamlessly between normal TV and broadband TV using a remote control. Manufacturers everywhere are rushing similar set-top boxes to the market.

Foxtel's Kim Williams says he is looking at broadband TV closely and expects Foxtel to be delivering channels via the internet within three years. But it could be earlier, he's not sure.

Telstra is also looking at it, along with every other phone company in the world, and thereby hangs a small tale.

The 1995 Foxtel shareholders' agreement gives each of the three shareholders - Telstra, PBL and News Corp - a right of veto over anything Foxtel does.

More importantly, the agreement allows Telstra to offer TV channels over the phone lines and there's nothing PBL or News could do to stop it.

In 1995, Packer and Murdoch and their lawyers obviously didn't think of broadband TV; Telstra's engineers had an idea it might happen and they told the lawyers to keep that option available.

Telstra's problem is not its Foxtel relationships but its failure to increase the speed limit of the network.

The ABC comedy channel I'm watching is streaming at 222kbps but it is playing in a window on my laptop about two inches square. Playing a TV channel on a large television in lounge room - perhaps a plasma screen - would need 4mbps.

After the new compressions standard called MPEG4 comes out later this year that could fall to 2mbps. (MPEG stands for moving picture expert's group, a standard setting body and MPEG4 is the fourth compression standard; compression uses very fancy software to work out which parts of a picture aren't moving and don't have to be sent that particular second, saving on data).

TransACT sells 37 TV channels in Canberra using packet switched data streaming technology (as opposed to the cable broadcasting that Foxtel does). Mostly it is carried on its fibre network but in Canberra's southern suburbs 1000 customers are connected via Telstra's copper wires.

To repeat: a thousand people in Canberra are watching TV streamed down the copper wires. It cost TransACT a bundle to upgrade the exchanges and it is still losing money but expects to make good profits eventually.

The rest of the country needs to catch up with south Canberra

UBC subscribers demand refund

From http://nationmultimedia.com/page.news.php3?clid=6&id=120864&usrsess=1

Scores of frustrated satellite-TV customers of United Broadcasting Corp Plc (UBC) have called for a refund after programmes were blacked out for hours on Sunday and Monday following a glitch on the Thaicom 3 satellite.

Many affected subscribers said UBC had to show responsibility for the night-time blackouts.

“I subscribed to its Bt1,500 monthly package, meaning I pay UBC Bt50 per day. So UBC has to refund me around Bt100,” one disgruntled customer said.

She said she was left feeling even more frustrated when she called UBC on Monday morning and only got an answering machine, which told her that the blackout was due to a technical problem on Thaicom 3.

Another UBC satellite-TV viewer said that if the problem occurred again, he would switch to an illegal satellite dish.

A UBC executive source said the company would today meet with Shin Satellite, which owns the Thaicom 3 satellite that broadcasts UBC programmes, to discuss ways of ensuring no future glitches.

The source added that the two companies had not yet talked about refunding subscribers.

“We’ll talk about the satellite’s reliability and how to ensure such glitches never happen again,” the source said.

Thaicom 3 experienced a technical error on Sunday night, blacking out all UBC programmes.

ShinSat took 13 hours to fix the glitch.

In a filing to the Stock Exchange of Thailand on Monday, ShinSat said the disruption on Monday night occurred when the company “decided to temporarily turn off the transponders on its Thaicom 3 satellite in order to recharge the batteries while performing maintenance during the eclipse”.

But UBC satellite-TV programmes were blacked out again on Monday night and it took 10 hours for the problem to be fixed.

ShinSat’s share price dipped to Bt14.80 yesterday from Bt15 a day earlier, while UBC’s share price fell to Bt23 yesterday from Bt23.10 the previous day.

UBC subscribers who receive the programme signal via cable lines were not affected by the glitches.

UBC has more than 400,000 subscribers, of which around 300,000 receive programming through satellite signals. The rest get their service via cable lines.

The Thaicom 3 satellite experienced a glitch in February following a power-supply error, blacking out some UBC shows.

STREET WISE: Satellite snafus snuff out UBC

From http://nationmultimedia.com/page.news.php3?clid=6&id=120868&usrsess=1

Sunday night was a real nightmare for the 75 per cent of United Broadcasting Corp’s customers who tuned in on the TV provider’s satellite dishes.

That was the night when the final round of the US Open, the last tennis Grand Slam of the year, was set to take place.

It was a big night as Swiss Roger Federer was to serve and volley with Australian Leighton Hewitt. A win by Federer would have made him the third person to ever snatch three Grand Slams in the same year.

But as the satellite went dead, viewers were left disappointed.

Tennis fans grumbled but they were happy for Federer when learning about his victory – through other channels, like the Internet and good old-fashioned radio. And at least, they figured, they could catch a repeat of the game on Monday night.

But as right as rain, the satellite went kaput again Monday night, a few hours before the rerun was about to air. There might be a chance to catch the game later, but as time passes, it won’t be as enjoyable.

With the problem repeating itself two days in a row, a bad feeling washed over many a UBC subscriber. Some fretted that it would happen again and most likely during their favourite programmes.

On Monday night, a subscriber cried foul when the satellite was dead in the middle of “Will and Grace”. Others were upset about having the start of American football season interrupted both on Sunday night and the rerun game at 8pm on Monday.

UBC might not truly understand the extent of the discontent until it imagines this could have happened when its highly popular reality show “Academy Fantasia” was still running.

With UBC’s service coming at a substantial price on a par with what many western nations charge for cable, subscribers do not want explanations but confirmations that the problem won’t recur.

If the ShinSat satellite UBC uses can’t be fixed, it may be time that the cable operator thinks about other options.

It may have to consider expanding its fibre-optic network, to replace all the satellite dishes. Indeed, the dish is something no subscriber wants . Aside from the monthly rent, they have to cope with so many related problems – such as delayed transmission signals or total signal disruptions under heavy clouds or rains.

Or, what about a discount during rainy season?

STMicroelectronics' High Definition Set Top Box Decoder Selected for Integrated Digital TV Reference Design

From http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/09-14-2004/0002249638&EDATE=

Oplus Technologies Ltd. chooses the STi7710 for integrated HDTV reference design

GENEVA, Sept. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM),
the world's leading supplier of integrated circuits for digital set top
boxes(1), announced today that its latest high definition MPEG-2 decoder has
been chosen by Oplus Technologies Ltd. (http://www.oplus.com) to be included
in its Leonardo(TM) reference design for high definition integrated digital
television sets. The new ATSC-compliant reference design will be used by Flat
Panel TV manufacturers to add digital capability to their existing products to
meet the U.S. Federal Communications Commission mandate stating that, by July
2007, all but the smallest TV sets sold in the U.S. must include a digital
tuner to receive over-the-air digital broadcasts.

"We are delighted that Oplus has selected the STi7710 for their latest
reference design," said Armando Caltabiano, General Manager of the Retail
Products Division of ST's Home Entertainment Group. "The combination of our
expertise in digital video applications and Oplus' high-performance,
high-quality video display processors will provide a compelling solution to
customers."

The Leonardo(TM) reference design includes Oplus' Matisse and Rembrandt
ICs which employ innovative de-interlacing, scaling and image enhancements
algorithms to ensure superior image quality irrespective of the input and
output formats. Complementing these chips, the STi7710 combines a high
definition MPEG-2 decoder, a powerful CPU and a comprehensive range of
interfaces all in a single package. The input digital signal may come from a
terrestrial, cable or satellite network.

"Selecting the STi7710 was a natural decision for us as it provides all
the digital components for a Digital TV on a single device and allows Oplus to
take advantage of ST's market-leading position," said Yair Alpern, CEO of
Oplus Technologies. "We are confident that our Leonardo(TM) reference design
will enable Flat Panel TV manufacturers develop new high quality Integrated
Digital TV products, while meeting regulatory requirements and minimising
their time to market."

About STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics is a global leader in developing and delivering
semiconductor solutions across the spectrum of microelectronics applications.
An unrivalled combination of silicon and system expertise, manufacturing
strength, Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio and strategic partners
positions the Company at the forefront of System-on-Chip (SoC) technology and
its products play a key role in enabling today's convergence markets. The
Company's shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, on Euronext Paris
and on the Milan Stock Exchange. In 2003, the Company's net revenues were
$7.24 billion and net earnings were $253 million. Further information on ST
can be found at http://www.st.com.

(1) In-Stat/MDR MPEG Video ICs: The Promise of MPEG-4, June 2004

GSLV To Launch EDUSAT On September 20

From http://www.spacedaily.com/news/india-04n.html

Preparations for the launch of EDUSAT by India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F01) are proceeding satisfactorily at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. As per the present progress, the launch is expected to take place at 4:01 pm on Monday, September 20, 2004.

Integration of GSLV-F01 on the launch pad commenced on July 7, 2004. All launch vehicle systems have been integrated and checked out successfully.

EDUSAT, the first exclusive satellite for educational services, was transported to SDSC SHAR in the first week of August 2004 and, since then, it has undergone all checks. After propellant filling operations, the spacecraft has been encapsulated and integrated with GSLV.

In the next few days, a complete checkout of the fully integrated launch vehicle along with satellite will be carried out. The launch rehearsal is planned on September 16, 2004 and the final countdown is expected to begin in the early hours of September 19, 2004.

The Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office, Mr Prithviraj Chavan, today visited SDSC SHAR and had a view of the fully integrated vehicle. Mr G Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO briefed the Minister on the preparations for the launch.

Zee rejects re-bid proposal; action moves to Bombay HC on Thursday

From http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k4/sep/sep145.htm

MUMBAI / NEW DELHI: Acting on expected lines, Zee Telefilms Ltd this evening filed an affidavit with the Bombay High Court stating that it has rejected outright the "suggestion" made by the court last Thursday that it enter into a re-bid process for the telecast rights of international and domestic fixtures controlled by the Indian cricket board for the next four years.

The move by Subhash Chandra's company, which can legitimately lay claim to having won the rights fair and square over two rounds of what the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) supremo Jagmohan Dalmiya has turned from a tender process into an auction, confirms a report put out first by Indiantelevision.com on 11 September.

In a related development, the Union sports ministry also filed an affidavit today to state its position vis-a-vis the ESS-Zee case as it had been made a party to the case by the peritioner.

The sports ministry has stated, according to officials, that BCCI is an autonomous body and reserves the right to conduct its own business the way it deems fit.

A statement issued by Zee after it filed its affidavit says: "Zee Telefilms Limited Board of Directors in their meeting on September 13, 2004 firmly decided against re-bidding. Accordingly we have served the copies of our affidavit on the parties to the writ petition no. 2462 of 2004, pending in front of the divisional bench in Hon'ble High Court of Mumbai. The matter will come up for direction at 11 am tomorrow and hearing will commence on Thursday morning," Copies of the affidavit have also been served on BCCI and ESPN-Star Sports.

What this means is that the issue of Zee's eligibility to bid for India cricket rights, which was the argument around which ESPN Star Sports moved the courts in the first place, will be argued between the opposing counsels on Thursday. The case is being heard by a two-judge Bench of Chief Justice DS Bhandari and Justice DY Chandrachud.

It is pertinent to note that even in this case, it was the BCCI's counsel that threw in yet another googly when the hearings began last Thursday by suggesting a re-bid as a way out of the legal imbroglio. The argument put forth by the counsel of the Indian board was that in the light of the fact that the crucial Australia series was set to kick off early next month, some resolution was essential, and fast.

The BCCI counsel's proposal came even though it had announced on 5 September that Zee had won the rights after increasing its bid amount from the earlier $ 260 million to a humungous $ 308 million. Additionally, Zee on 7 September made an initial payment of $20 million, honouring one of the conditions set by the board when it awarded Zee the rights.

As already reported by Indiantelevision.com, Zee is not letting any "roadblocks", legal or otherwise, detract from its determination to have its channel begin beaming into Indian homes on its scheduled launch date of 2 October.

While the details of what exactly the company is doing in this regard remain sketchy at the moment, what can be confirmed is that that Subhash Chandra's media company is not about to enter into any equity collaboration a foreign partner outside of content agreements. This puts paid to any chance of the Zee Group and AOL Time Warner entering into a JV for the sports channel. What it also rules out is any JV deal with the Dubai-based sports broadcaster Ten Sports.

Speaking of content, the question that comes up is around the sort of programming that will go into channel when it launches. As per indications, for the first three months after launch, Zee Sports (as the channel has been christened) will be primarily cricket-led.

And what happens if the legal tussle is not resolved by the time the Australian team lands in India in the first week of October? The argument looks like being that it is for the Board for Control of Cricket in India to sort out.

Speaking to indiantelevision.com over phone yesterday, Dalmiya said, “We have to think ahead to the Australians series and others too if the legal case does not get resolved, as much we would like it to get settled soon.” Dalmiya further pointed out that if the cricket matches were not telecast, BCCI would also run into problems with the International Cricket Council.

“Forget the money, we would lose face if the matches are not televised as we are obliged to provide replays, etc to the third umpire and ICC may even penalise us heavily, apart from the likelihood of the Australian cricket board demanding compensation,” Dalmiya tried to explain.

And it is not just the Indian telecast that is at issue. The feed has to go Australia and other international territories as well. Highlighting the mess the BCCI has landed itself in, the Indian Express in a report filed today, has quoted a Sky Sports spokesperson as saying, ‘‘The BCCI is yet to get back to us (on the telecast issue). We have been waiting to hear from them for months on end now.’’

Ten Sports asserts going it alone on distribution

From http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k4/sep/sep156.htm

MUMBAI: Dubai-based sports broadcaster Ten Sports declared today that they have set up their own in-house distribution team and are managing the distribution side of the business independently.

The "clarification" was made in response to rumours in the industry that Ten Sports was likely to hitch its distribution activity to the Zee Group stable following its recent split from Modi Entertainment Network.

The statement issued by Ten today states: "Any rumours of the channel joining or aligning with the Zee Turner bouquet or forming a distribution JV with Zee are completely false. Any pricing offers made by Zee’s distribution team or its distributors, involving the selling of the Ten Sports channel as a part of an alignment with the Zee’s bouquet or Zee’s sports channel are baseless."

With the upcoming Pakistan-India hockey series and the tri-series in Pakistan involving Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe round the corner, the Ten Sports distribution team is working closely with distributors and cable trade on the ground, the statement adds.

After its break with MEN, the question that has been doing the rounds is on whether it would ally with Zee or the Sony-Discovery distribution platform.

Star likely to beam Sky, Fox News

From http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2004/sep/15star.htm

The Rupert Murdoch-controlled Star India is planning to launch two of its parent News Corporation's prime television channels -- Sky News and Fox News -- in India. Fox News, the 24-hours news channel, is a part of News Corp's US television network Fox Broadcasting Company.

Sky News is a part of the media conglomerate's UK direct broadcast satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting.

Peter Mukherjea, chief executive of Star India told Business Standard: "We are considering introducing both Fox News from the US and Sky News from the UK. But this will depend on the cable operators' carriage capacity which by all accounts is pretty full up these days and shows very little sign of change."

He admitted that channels like Sky News would have a small audience but said there was an appetite for this kind of news.

FBC, News Corp's most prominent presence in American television, is aimed at an 18-34 year-old audience. According to the company, the emergence of BSkyB in the early 1990s as an extremely profitable venture, along with the growing success of FBC in the US, helped News Corp back to financial health in a relatively short time.

14/09/04

Live satellite chat 9p.m NZ and 8.30p.m Syd time onwards tonight in the chatroom.

Seems a major item slipped past me at the end of last week. Now we know what those Pas 8 KU signals are all about. See news section!

So we now have UBI, PanGlobal, WMI, TV Plus and My TV ? all after a slice of Ethnic tv in Australia. There are others as well such as TVB and A-Skynet. Things are going to get very interesting as they battle it out for the ethnic market.

The new Pas 8 KU service is no good for us in NZ though due to the beam footprint, unless you have access to a high quality 5M or larger Ku rated dish and live in the South Island.

B3 Globecast mux new channel loads "Sigiram 2" has movies logo. But looks like usual song and dance type Indian stuff its FTA at the moment.

From my Emails & ICQ

From Mayuran

Sigaram 2 movies

Sigaram 2 is a 24hrs Tamil Movies channel. Sigaram, Sigaram 2 and Sun TV india will remain FTA for next three months.

Regards
Mayuran

From D.Koon

NSS6 95E
12716H Mhz; SR 5000 reads TV 2050. Vpid/0 Apid/0 PCR/8191 A single carrier and encrypted.
12678V SR 6510 is ABC Asia Pacific Television. Pids are V/2307 A/2308 PCR/2305.
Radio Pids are A/2310 PCR/2305 for ch1 and A/2311 PCR2306 for ch2

D.K.
Northern Australia

From Vk4bkp

Intelsat 701 11500H 3800 3/4 now showing colour bars

From Justin

Hi all

BVN-TV is now testing on the UBI channels, as well as TRT.
Anyone have any idea if BVN-TV is destined to become part of UBI and lose the FTA service on 12658?

Thanks
Justin

From the Dish

New launch time for Apstar 6 with Long March: October-December.

Intelsat 701 180E 12729 H All channels in the PBS mux are now encrypted in MDS.

Optus C1 156E 12487 V "The test card" has left .

Apstar 1A 134E 4058 V "The Hunan TV test card" has left .

Telkom 1 108E 3460 H "Radio Singapore International" has started on , APID 82.
Telkom 1 108E 3500 H "FeMale Radio" has started on , APID 62.

AsiaSat 3 105.5E 4111 H "Celestial Movies" is now encrypted.
AsiaSat 3 105.5E 4140 V "Alpha Telugu" has started on , Encrypted, PIDs 105/112.

Asiasat 2 100.5E 3960 H "EuroSport News" has started on , Viaccess, SR 27500, FEC 3/4,PIDs 257/259.
Asiasat 2 100.5E 4148 V "CBN" has started regular transmissions on , Fta, PIDs 350/351.

AsiaSat 2 100.5E 12222 V "CRI TV and two CRI" have started on , PowerVu, SR 6000, FEC 3/4,PIDs 1110/1211, 1213 and 1221.(China beam)

NSS 6 95E 12595 V "TCM" has replaced DD News on , Conax, PIDs 169/110.

ChinaStar 1 87.5E 3900 V "Channel H, Channel Documentary, Game Channel and Cahnnel C" have started on , Irdeto, PIDs 3909/3912, 5477/5480, 5605/5608 and 5733/5736.
ChinaStar 1 87.5E 4062 V "Guide of Gestation, TJTV Home Channel, Dressy Channel, Guizhou Tianyan I-Go,Collectibles Channel and GTV" have started on , Irdeto.

Insat 2E 83E 3683 V "Cine World" is still on , Conax, SR 2950, FEC 3/4, PIDs 258/259.

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3600 H A Shin promo has started on , Fta, PIDs 523/760.
Thaicom 3 78.5E 3640 H The RR Sat mux has left .

PAS 10 68.5E 3778 V "Aastha TV 2 has replaced CMM Music" on , Fta SR 2940, FEC 3/4,PIDs 4194/4195.

NEWS

PanAmSat and GlobeCast launch PanGlobal TV

From http://www.aib.org.uk/newsContent.asp?node_id=8,9&content_id=762

10th September 2004

PanAmSat Corporation has teamed up with GlobeCast to launch PanGlobal TV. Hosted on the PAS-8 Pacific Ocean Region satellite, this new Australian DTH platform will target international broadcasters wanting to reach Australia’s 5 million multicultural viewers.

“By joining forces with GlobeCast to form PanGlobal TV, PanAmSat has added another dimension to its already varied Asia-Pacific satellite offerings,” said David Ball, vice president, Asia Pacific sales, PanAmSat. “International customers looking to distribute their programming to Australia’s vibrant Pay TV market will be able to access an established DTH neighborhood of more than 60,000 homes, where the necessary antennas have already been deployed. This is the ideal opportunity to reach a fast-growing market.”

“GlobeCast is a leading DTH service provider worldwide, including in Australia with its successful DTH platforms,” said Mark Lobwein, DTH Sales Manager, GlobeCast Australia. “Through our relationship with PanAmSat, GlobeCast greatly expands its satellite portfolio over Australia, and its ability to offer customers a choice of Direct-to-Home distribution paths to this dynamic market.”

PanGlobal TV’s customer base will target international broadcasters who wish to reach Australia’s diverse multi-cultural communities. The service will transmit channel signals from either GlobeCast Australia’s Sydney teleport or the PanAmSat Napa Valley teleport. In addition to digital encoding, signal processing and transport, PanAmSat and GlobeCast Australia will uplink the space segment to the PAS-8 Ku-Band Australia beam. PanGlobal TV offers backhaul to either the Napa teleport or the Sydney teleport by satellite, fiber or hybrid satellite/fiber contribution.

www.pansamsat.com
www.globecast.com

Encore Beams Up NewSat

From http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=59234

DULLES, Va. -- Encore Networks, a leading developer of integrated converged Virtual Private Network (VPN) security solutions, today announced that it has signed a reseller agreement with Australian satellite broadband operator, NewSat. NewSat will add Encore’s complete line of IP only and IP+Legacy VPN security appliances to their broadband satellite solutions.

NewSat, a wholly owned subsidiary of Multiemedia Ltd. (ASX:MUL.AX), one of Australia’s largest satellite communications companies, offers high-speed, two way (V-SAT) satellite broadband services. NewSat provides next generation video, Internet, VoIP and data communications for organizations throughout the Australasian market whose networking needs have outgrown traditional broadband technologies, such as ADSL, ISDN and cable. NewSat’s customers include Woolworths Department Stores through Airworks Media and the US Department of Defense.

“NewSat has taken the lead in deploying products that can provide end-to-end secure remote access over satellite and terrestrial connections to remote Australian locations,” stated Bill Grant, Encore’s Vice-President of Broadband Network Solutions. “Encore’s site-to-site satellite VPN solutions will be instrumental in NewSat’s ability to continue delivery of bundled broadband VPN solutions.”

Encore Network’s VPN security products, including the BANDITä and the VSR-30ä are uniquely versatile IP+Legacy and IP only VPN appliances that provide satellite enterprise data networks support for IP VPNs, stateful inspection firewall, IP routing and QoS, legacy data protocol convergence, and patent-pending Selective Layer Encryption (SLE). With its feature-rich ELIOS operating Systems, Encore Networks help NewSat address their today and tomorrow customers need with a broad range of applications and services that allow them to converge their data applications to broadband IP infrastructure without compromising the security of their data and the level of performance that they get over terrestrial networks.

“Our mission is to open new frontiers for networks in any location, with video, Internet, voice and data communications that make traditional broadband services look dated,” said James Kellett Director of Marketing of NewSat. “Encore’s VPN security solutions insures our quality of service to these locations by providing the only appliance to date with Selective Layer Encryption which guarantees our high, two way throughput.”

ShinSat blames satellite glitch on ‘eclipse’ repairs

From http://nationmultimedia.com/page.news.php3?clid=6&id=120792&usrsess=1

The Thaicom 3 satellite temporarily malfunctioned late Sunday night, disrupting the television programming of its main customer, United Broadcasting Corp Plc (UBC).

Shin Satellite Plc (ShinSat), the owner of the satellite, filed a notice with the Stock Exchange of Thailand yesterday, saying the disruption occurred when the company “decided to turn off temporarily the transponders on its Thaicom 3 satellite in order to recharge the batteries while performing maintenance during the eclipse”.

The Thaicom 3 satellite resumed service in the early afternoon yesterday.

The maintenance knocked out UBC satellite television programmes at 11.54pm on Sunday, leaving many viewers frustrated, especially those waiting for the US Open final between Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt at 3am yesterday and American football fans waiting for some of the first games of the season at midnight.

“It’s very frustrating for me that it had to blank out during the final round,” said one UBC satellite TV viewer.

Subscribers of UBC’s cable television were unaffected by Thaicom 3 satellite’s downtime. But ATMs at some banks, which use the satellite to link with their branches, also experienced disruptions.

Sompan Charumilinda, chief executive of UBC, said the company did not receive prior warnings about the maintenance.

“We have already made an appointment with ShinSat executives to discuss how to prevent such events from happening in the future,” he said.

UBC has more than 400,000 subscribers, of which about 300,000 receive programming through satellite signals.

The rest get their service via cable lines.

The Thaicom 3 satellite experienced its first glitch in February when a problem surfaced in its power supply.

That knocked out some UBC satellite programmes and cut off a number of transponders, which have been rendered useless to provide television signals. ShinSat has yet to solve the power supply problem in the affected transponders.

A telecom industry source said the power problem means Thaicom 3 can only provide service via the unaffected transponders.

“As a result, its unaffected transponders are overloaded, thus tilting the satellite off-balance on Sunday night.

“ShinSat had to shut down all power and reposition it back to the right position,” the source added.

He said if such events continue it would affect customer trust, especially regional customers who receive the iPSTAR broadband satellite service from Thaicom 3 satellite.

ShinSat currently provide iPSTAR broadband satellite service via the Thaicom 3 to regional customers.

It is planning to launch the real iPSTAR satellite into orbit early next year.

Thaicom 3 satellite started operating in 1997 and under normal conditions is expected to last 15 years.

(Craigs comment, this prompted a follow up comment in the Nation newspaper, see below)

Blaming disrespectful & permanent lies of Shin management towards their customers

From http://nationmultimedia.com/page.discuss.php3?clid=6&theme=A&usrsess=1&did=13036&newsid=120792

For a geosynchronous satellite like Thaicom, eclipse is natural phenomena and it happens during 2 equinox seasons every year. it means that the solar panels don't receive light during this period to power up fully the satellite, instead it must run on batteries...but Thaicom3 batteries and power system have a failure and are partially out since 2002...then Shinsat to not dry up/discharge completly the batterries and protect their asset decide simply to switch down some transponders... that's look normal but it could not qualified as normal maintenance "to recharge the batteries" as they said...cause they always do this in emergency without any planning/warning/caring/informations to their customers in order to avoid reimbursement claims for glitch/services shutdown...as it's also Shinsat policy to cut immediately services to pressure any late payment!

SATTEL :Resumption of services on Thaicom 3

From http://www.thaimisc.com/freewebboard/php/vreply.php?user=boranphone&topic=8636

13th September 2004

Resumption of services on Thaicom 3

To : The President
Stock Exchange of Thailand

With reference to the notice sent to the Stock Exchange of Thailand,
letter reference No.SSA405/2004 dated September 13, 2004, on the
disruption of services on Thaicom 3 due to the recharge of batteries
while performing maintenance during eclipse.

The Company would like to inform the Stock Exchange of Thailand of
the latest information, that at this time the batteries on Thaicom 3
have been recharged to their normal status, and the Company has
commenced opening transponders sequentially since midday today.

Please be informed accordingly.

Yours sincerely
- signed -
(Dr.Nongluck Phinainitisart) President
Shin Satellite Public Company Limited

Hitch in Thaicom transponder affects Star News, etc, SS Music

From http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k4/sep/sep137.htm

MUMBAI: Star News faced a transponder problem late Sunday night, which was resolved only early this morning at 6 am. The news channel uplinks from India via the Thaicom transponder to the Asiasat 3 satellite.

The hitch was with the Thaicom transponder, which broke down late last night and being a weekend, took a while to get fixed. Shekhar Suman's Poll Khol was the show that lost out as a result of this.

Star News uplinks through the Videsh Sanchar Nigam's Ltd.'s gateway in Mumbai to an Insat satellite from where it would be downlinked at Star's Hong Kong headquarters. The final product, in a digital format, would then be again uplinked to Asiasat 3 satellite for beam back into India and the neighbouring areas where it can be downlinked by MSOs and cable operators for further re-distribution.

Star News brand director Keertan Adhayantaya says, "Since it was a weekend, the problem took some time to get resolved. We usually have a back-up plan ready for such unforeseen problems. On our part, the effort is always such that the channel doesn't get affected. But since it was a Sunday, it took longer."

As a result of this break down, the news channel lost about an hour of advertising moolah, but Adhayantaya was confident that the channel would recover this loss in the next couple of days.

The other channels that were also affected by this were music channels etc and SS Music.

All the other Star channels uplink from Hong Kong as each sends in the programme tapes to the head office. Star News is the only channel on the Star Network that uplinks from India.

Tamil TV channels go off screen for hours

From http://newstodaynet.com/13sep/rf17.htm

To state that Raj TV network has run into trouble would be an understatement. At a time when the network has come under the scanner for violation of licence guidelines, the channels beamed by Raj TV Network Limited went off air last night till this afternoon. Also off the screens were a few channels including Vijay TV and SS Music giving rise to speculation among the viewers.

It may be recalled that the Centre had informed the Madras High Court that Raj Television Network Limited had consistently involved itself in violation of the conditions of licence for two television channels and operating two others without licence.

However, cable TV operators said a technical snag in the satellite had resulted in the channels going off air and added that this was being sorted out. As a result, a total of 60 channels could not be beamed in Chennai.

The Centre had sent a notice to Raj Television Network Limited recently for not renewing their licence which expired on 30 September, 2003. The management of Raj TV approached the Madras Court on 25 August, 2004 and obtained a stay on the Centre's move to cancel their licence P-4790.

In its counter submitted in the Madras High Court on Raj TV obtaining a stay, the Ministry of Communications and Technology said 'continuation of the stay would perpetrate an illegality.'

They contended that the channels were on air without renewal of licence and the management had paid a demand draft towards the renewal fee and royalty fee only after a notice.

They also contended that two channels - Raj Vissa, a Telugu channel and Raj Music - were being operated without permission from the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. These channels had been uplinking through its teleport illegally for over a year with daily news bulletins and current affairs programmes.

They also submitted that renewal of licence was not automatic and that would in no way recognise the right of renewal of licence.

Meanwhile, political reasons are also linked to the Centre's decision to cancel Raj TV's licence. They say, a political party running a satellite TV network, has been taking up the cudgels against Raj TV for beaming MDMK general secretary Vaiko's padayatra on their channel.

In this backdrop, a few channels including Raj TV going off air since last night had led to doubts among viewers.

When contacted, an employee of Sumangali Cable Vision, the Multi-System Operator for Chennai, denied any political reasons behind the blackout of these channels. It is due to a satellite fault, he said.

Enquiries with cable TV operators also revealed that it was only a technical snag in the satellite.

A fault had been detected in THAICOM, a satellite in Thailand. It is being sorted out and efforts were on to get these channels back on air as early as possible, said officials in Raj TV.

TELE-satellite News - Number 37/2004 ­ 12 September 2004 -

A weekly roundup of global TV news sponsored by
TELE-satellite International
Editor: Branislav Pekic

Edited Apsattv.com Edition

A S I A & P A C I F I C

AUSTRALIA

DIGITAL TV TO ARRIVE IN 2005

Digital TV services are coming to the Border and
Albury-Wodonga viewers will be able to take them up
next year. Digital television was launched in
metropolitan markets in January, 2001, and the service
will now be available in Albury-Wodonga from 2005 and
in smaller outlying towns from 2006. An Australian
Broadcast Authority spokesman said the Border would
soon have digital television available. "We are
looking at some time between July and September next
year," he said.

NEW DIGITAL TV STANDARD HITS 400,000

Free-to-air channels have agreed on a standard new
set-top box to give viewers interactive power on their
digital TVs, but the new standard leaves 400,000
people with existing set-top boxes out in the cold.
After more than three years, the ABC, Seven, Nine,
Ten, SBS and the regional broadcasters will have the
facility to compete with the interactive capabilities
of digital pay-television networks such as Foxtel.
Whatever they offer in terms of interactivity will be
available on set-top boxes sold in the future and
labelled "interactive". But those 400,000-plus people
who have already bought similar boxes will not be able
to see the interactive features. Pay-TV group Foxtel
has begun promoting interactivity as one of its key
selling points since the services began with the
launch of the new Foxtel Digital service. Foxtel
recently launched a polling service on Sky News, has
the Sports Active interactive service on Fox Sports
channels and has an interactive service on the Weather
Channel. Now the free-to-air TV networks will be able
to introduce similar services on their digital
free-to-air channels. The set-top boxes are expected
to be available early next year.

PANAMSAT AND GLOBECAST LAUNCH PANGLOBAL TV

PanAmSat Corporation has teamed up with GlobeCast to
launch PanGlobal TV. Hosted on the PAS-8 Pacific Ocean
Region satellite, this new Australian DTH platform
will target international broadcasters wanting to
reach Australia’s 5 million multicultural viewers.
PanGlobal TV’s customer base will target international
broadcasters who wish to reach Australia’s diverse
multi-cultural communities. The service will transmit
channel signals from either GlobeCast Australia’s
Sydney teleport or the PanAmSat Napa Valley teleport.
In addition to digital encoding, signal processing and
transport, PanAmSat and GlobeCast Australia will
uplink the space segment to the PAS-8 Ku-Band
Australia beam. PanGlobal TV offers backhaul to either
the Napa teleport or the Sydney teleport by satellite,
fiber or hybrid satellite/fiber contribution.

CHINA ­ HONG KONG

SHANGAI MEDIA GROUP LAUNCHES FIVE DIGITAL TV CHANNELS

The Shanghai Media Group (SMG) launched five digital
channels in Beijing on September 9, with digital
signals covering 22 municipalities and provinces
nationwide, the Xinhua News Agency has reported. "The
five channels have 245,000 digital television viewers,
making up 79 per cent of the total viewers in China,"
a source from the group said. "China Satellite
Communication Corporation will provide a satellite to
safeguard signal transmission for these channels," the
source said. Encrypted by the satellite, the digital
signals from the five channels, together with other
six paid TV channels provided by Tianjin TV Station,
Hubei TV Station and Jiangsu TV Station, will be sent
to digital television viewers. SMG is the second firm
authorised in China to launch digital channels. On
August 9, state-owned China Central Television
launched six digital channels in Shanghai, Guizhou,
Chongqing and Sichuan.

FIJI

PAY-TV PROCESS CLARIFIED

Applications for pay-TV licences are assessed on merit
and its endorsement is the prerogative of the
licensing committee and the Communications ministry.
Chief executive in the Prime Minister's office Jioji
Kotobalavu said this as Fu Shun Television (Fiji)
Limited, a Chinese company, enquired as to when they
would be granted a pay-TV licence. "They have to go
through the proper channel which is the Information
and Communications Ministry. Besides, Fiji Television
only enjoys an exclusive licence in providing public
service television - not pay TV," Kotobalavu said.

INDIA

ESPN STAR SPORTS TAKES BCCI TO COURT OVER TV RIGHTS

Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. are challenging in
court the conditional award of Indian cricket TV
rights to media firm Zee Telefilms. On September 5,
the Indian cricket board awarded Zee, India's biggest
listed media company, rights to telecast all of the
Indian team's home matches for the next four years.
Zee had been in a fierce bidding war with ESPN. Zee
emerged the victor over the global TV heavyweight
pairing after raising its bid to $308 million from
$260 million, compared with ESPN Star's $230-million
bid. The cost is equal to Zee's sales over the last
three years, but at stake is a potential revenue pie
of as much as $350 million. Provided Zee meets certain
initial payment conditions, the Board of Control for
Cricket in India has promised it 144 days of
international cricket over four years starting in
October. ESPN Star filed its petition against the
decision in the Bombay High Court, said a spokesman
for ESPN Software India, which provides programming to
ESPN Star. ESPN Star said Zee was not qualified to bid
because it did not have experience in broadcasting or
producing live international cricket events as
specified in the tender. The chairman of the country's
largest private channel network Subash Chandra said
that the new channel would be launched irrespective of
BCCI granting the telecast rights to it.

KAIRALI TO LAUNCH SECOND CHANNEL

Buoyed by its impressive growth, recorded for the
first time, the Malayalam Communications Ltd beaming
the pro-Left Kairali Television, proposes to launch a
second channel very soon. ''We are in the process of
launching a second channel,'' to cater to the growing
needs of the viewers spread across the continents,
Kairali Managing director John Brittas said. Beyond
news and informative programmes, the channel would
beam the latest developments in agriculture,
technology, tourism and other sectors, he said. A
final decision on the launch would be taken by the
annual general body meeting of the company slated for
September 25, he said.

DTH TO BE COMMISSIONED IN KERALA

Doordarshan's free-to-air Direct-To-Home satellite
television service would soon be commissioned in
Kerala, a top official said on September 9. The DTH
service would initially offer a bouquet of 30
television channels directly to the user, of which 17
would be DD channels and the remaining that of private
broadcasters, Peer Mohammed, Director, Doordarshan
Kendra, Thiruvananthapuram, told reporters. Barring
the initial investment of around Rs 3000 on the
equipment, there would be no monthly subscription as
Doordarshan had made it free-to-air. The 30 channels
would be beamed through KU-band transponders and the
reception would be of highest quality.

NDRTV APPLIES FOR UPLINK FOR BUSINESS NEWS TV CHANNEL

New Delhi Television Ltd has informed BSE that an
application has been made to the Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting on September 9 for
permission to uplink another TV channel i. e. a
business news channel.

ENGLISH TV CHANNEL DEDICATED TO RAMANUJA PHILOSOPHY

A new satellite television channel in English, Sri
Vaishnava Channel, is to be launched on January 5 to
propagate the philosophy of Sri Ramanuja. P.
Sundararajan, one of the promoter-directors said that
initially the channel would function as a joint
venture with Sanskar channel, New Delhi, till it gets
its own transponder. The channel is the brainchild of
Sri Prasanna Venkatacharyar Chaturvedi Swami and its
goal is to spread the Vaishnavic dharma and culture.

PRASAR BHARATI TO CARRY BBC AND CNN

India’s broadcasting corporation, Prasar Bharati,
plans to include BBC and CNN in its DTH
(direct-to-home) platform, India’s Business Line has
reported. Prasar Bharati has distributed about 5,000
sets of set-top boxes and dish antenna to rural areas
in the country so far.

MALAYSIA

TV3 AND RTM TO WORK TOGETHER

Private station TV3 says it is keen to work with
government-owned Radio Television Malaysia for the
benefit of the nation, the official Bernama news
agency has reported. TV3 chief executive officer Datuk
Farid Ridzuan said although there was competition
between them in certain areas, there were other areas
where they could compromise for the sake of the
country. The matter, however, was still at the
discussion stage. Datuk Farid said he had met
Information Minister Datuk Paduka Abdul Kadir Sheikh
Fadzir to discuss the best way to cooperate with RTM.
He said TV3 had a 26 per cent market share of the
overall advertising revenue and hoped to double the
figure in the future. Asked what TV3's area of focus
would be, Datuk Farid said the station had always
emphasised providing informative entertainment to
viewers.

QATAR

SAUDI ARABIA

AL-JAZEERA MOST POPULAR CHANNEL

With some 90 per cent Saudi households having
satellite TVs, the Kingdom has a much larger
Al-Jazeera viewership base than US-sponsored Al-Hurra,
a new survey reveals. Al Hurra’s credibility ratings
were also found to be quite poor all over Saudi Arabia
in contrast with the high scores of Doha-based
Al-Jazeera and Dubai-based Al-Arabiya. The Arab
Advisors Group survey covered all channels viewed in
Saudi Arabia, be they news, music, sports or general
entertainment. The survey indicates that close to 16
per cent of Arab households in Saudi Arabia have
pay-TV subscription. The survey also gives an
indication of the market shares of the main pay-TV
operators— ART, Orbit and Showtime. Ninety per cent of
surveyed households indicated that they prefer to
watch satellite TV programs in Arabic, or with Arabic
subtitles. Only 10 per cent prefer the English
language. On the news channels front, Al-Jazeera
topped the ranks in brand recognition and viewers with
close to 82 per cent of households watching the
station. Al-Jazeera is closely followed by Al-Arabiya
with 75 per cent. The Saudi Al-Ekhbaria is viewed by
33 per cent of households, while Al-Hurra is watched
by 16 per cent of households. CNN was next with 12 per
cent followed by Al Mustakila (11 per cent), ANN (8
per cent), NBN (8 per cent), and BBC World (6 per
cent). Close to 70 per cent of respondents said that
Al-Arabiya is very trustworthy.

SOUTH KOREA

MOBILE SATELLITE BROADCASTING SERVICE PREPARES FOR START

Companies in South Korea and Japan say they are ready
to launch a new satellite broadcasting service in the
next two months that can send video and audio directly
to devices such as mobile telephones, handheld
terminals and in-car receivers. Prototype terminals
for the service, which will be launched in South Korea
by TU Media Corp. and in Japan by Mobile Broadcasting
Corporation (MBCO), were on show at the International
Telecommunication Union's Telecom Asia 2004 conference
and exhibition in South Korea. TU Media is planning to
broadcast a package of 14 video channels and 24 audio
channels from November for a monthly charge of US$11
said Cho Jin-Ho, manager of the company's technology
strategy team. Japan's MBCO will start its service in
October and plans to offer seven video channels and 30
audio channels, said Yoshitake Yamaguchi, senior
manager for MBCO's satellite and coordination group.
The service will cost between US$9 and US$27 depending
on the number of channels selected. TU Media's TV
line-up will include South Korea's four major TV
networks while MBCO will include about eight hours per
day from Japanese public broadcaster Nippon Hoso
Kyokai and cable channels such as MTV Japan and
all-news NNN24.

THAILAND

MCOT PREPARES GLOBAL TV CHANNEL

MCOT has moved a step closer to fulfilling its dream
of creating a new global television channel. "The day
after tomorrow, MCOT executives and I will fly to
Europe to sign contracts with Rai Uno, Italy's biggest
TV channel, and TV5 of France," said MCOT president
Mingkwan Sangsuwan on September 6. "Through the
channel, we will broadcast the world's
English-language news around the clock." The new
global TV channel will be called MCOT Television, the
company's first-ever English-language offering. MCOT
plans to ink similar deals with stations from another
18 countries as part of its plan to broadcast the
channel around the world.

PROVINCIAL CABLE FIRMS AGAINST PAY-TV PLAN

Provincial pay-TV operators have strongly opposed the
government’s proposal to pour billions of baht into a
pay-TV service, the Bangkok Post has reported. They
said the service would create new barriers for local
operators to attract new subscribers. The local
operators currently face limited financial resources,
high operating costs and debt burdens, as they depend
on subscription fees for their core revenue. Deputy
Prime Minister Visanu Krue-ngarm recently floated a
plan to create a pay-TV service, costing up to
US$480.6 million, as part of a government plan to
crack down on unlicensed operators. The minister said
the initiative was also aimed at narrowing the gap of
information access between urban centres and the
provinces, and would charge customers an
''affordable'' monthly fee. It was not fair for the
government to jump into the business to compete with
the private sector, said Bumroong Wasontakorn, the
President of the Thailand Cable TV Association.

13/09/04

Thaicom 3 Down all day? Thaicom appears to have had some major power problems today. I'm trying to find out more info but both C and Ku were down at one stage. Thaicom 3 has had power problems in the past. All the B3 Globecast Thaicom3 sourced channels were affected and had cards up all day. The outage does not appear to be sun outage related. Sun outages don't last all day...

Sun outage time of the year..so if you lose your signals for a while don't panic

NTV Turkish channel on B3 showed the G.P last night.

Horizon channel Asiasat 3 TV guide link
http://www.21126888.com/timetable/tt_new.asp?chno=ch51&yyyymmdd=

From my Emails & ICQ

From Vk4bkp

Intelsat 701 new sig 11500
Colour bars are up on Intelsat 701 11500H sr3800 3/4 vpid 33 apid 36.
Channel ID is "TV1" with [test] underneath.
Has Audio off 7 Central!!

I701 Fiji TV is now much weaker

From Bill Richards

Subject: I701
0000 UTC
I701 11500 H SR 3800 FEC 3/4 Vpid33 Apid36 SID2
Colour test card FTA Nokia says ch is labelled *TV1

Asiasat 2
0620 UTC
4072 V SR 6110 FEC 3/4 Vpid308 Apid256 SID1
"Asiaworks TV Jakarta Bureau Test Card" FTA

Thaicom3
0025 UTC
3600H Vpid523 Apid760 SID12
IPSTAR and Shin Satellite Promo has started FTA

Regards
Bill Richards
South Australia

From George

V'8s feed seen on B3
12442 H Sr 6670
12451 H

From Dharmesh Bamrolia

Know me if you have the details of freq. showing live ICC mini world cup
cricket as a FTA channel???

Thanks.

(Craigs comment, DD National is showing some of them , Insat 2E or Insat 3A)

From the Dish

PAS 8 166E 4080 VAll channels in the TAS mux are encrypted again.

Optus B3 152E 12701 H "NTV Avrupa and Show TV" have started on , Fta, PIDs 512/640 and 513/641.

Telstar 18 138E 12402 V "ETTV Movie and LS Movie Channel" are fta.

Apstar 1A 134E 4058 V A Hunan TV test card has started on , Fta, SR 4420, FEC 3/4,PIDs 100/110.

AsiaSat 4 122E 4100 V All channels in the CDM mux are fta.

Palapa C2 113E 4080 H "RRI Pro 2 FM" has started on , Fta, APID 661, right channel.

AsiaSat 3 105.5E 4111 H "Celestial Movies has replaced TVB 8" on , Fta, PIDs 1100/1120.

AsiaSat 2 100.5E 3706 H "APTN Direct" has started on , cFta, SR 4167, FEC 5/6, PIDs 4226/4227.

ChinaStar 1 87.5E 3790 H "CCTV 4" has started on , Fta, SR 6150, FEC 3/4, PIDs 1160/1120.

ChinaStar 1 87.5E 3900 V "OTV Arts & Entertainment Channel, OTV News & Entertainment Channel, OTV Music Channel and OTV Folk Opera Channel" have left , replaced by test cards.

Telstar 10 76.5E 3780 V "Show TV has replaced Syria Satellite Channel" on , MDS, PIDs 515/643.(MDS???????)
Telstar 10 76.5E 3920 H "A test card" has started on , PowerVu, PIDs 610/602.

NEWS

Players deeply divided on digital

From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10708301%255E7582,00.html

AUSTRALIA'S media industry has emerged deeply divided over how to increase uptake of free-to-air digital TV after 37 submissions were made to the federal Government's first digital TV review.

The first of the four reviews focuses on whether new digital TV channels or other services should be allowed on the digital TV signals of the Seven, Nine and Ten Networks.

The reviews, which will create headaches for whichever political party wins the federal election, will set the Australian media's agenda for the next 10 years. And while the timing of the reviews was set by legislation, they are occurring as free TV's conversion to digital is being surpassed by pay TV.

The reviews will help the government decide whether a fourth TV network will be allowed; if pay-TV services can be provided by the free-TV networks and if the free-TV networks or other media can offer extra channels through digital TVs.

On that last point, not even Seven, Nine and Ten can agree on what they should be able to do.

Seven strongly supports multi-channeling, Nine remains completely against the idea and Ten says multi-channeling should be allowed but only if on a subscription-based system.

The pay-TV industry has adopted the most conciliatory position, saying multi-channeling should be allowed from 2008 but only if the anti-siphoning regime which keeps most sport on free-TV is removed.

And Telstra, which owns half of Foxtel, disagrees with free-TV multi-channeling due to its likely threat to the broadband internet sector.

The Australian Consumers Association has advocated the greatest relaxation of existing rules, arguing for a fourth digital-only TV network and the ability for TV groups to use their spectrum how they see fit.

That means they could offer extra digital TV channels, high definition TV programs or data enhancements as long as they maintain a minimum standard of digital TV signal.

But the ACA said the free-TV networks should not be allowed to provide pay-TV services on their digital TV spectrum unless they began paying for use of the spectrum.

Australia's advertisers were also keen for change, with the Australian Association of National Advertisers saying the Government should either allow multi-channeling or begin subsidising the cost of free-TV digital set-top boxes.

"There is no indication the take-up of free-to-air digital TV is going to grow appreciably solely on the basis of improved picture quality," it said.

Sony Australia, which produces digital TVs and is the main supplier of high definition (cinema quality) digital broadcasting equipment, said the digital TV uptake was in line with its forecasts.

But it still believed changes were needed to increase digital TV uptake, such as the ability for the free-TV networks to multi-channel.

"In order for Sony, and the equipment supply industry more broadly, to continue to successfully promote digital technology . . . it is important that Australian TV networks have the ability to significantly increase the transmission of digital TV programming," it said.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance criticised the "painfully slow" take up of digital TV and said the free-TV networks should be able to provide only two extra channels but only if they paid to use that extra spectrum.

But the MEAA did not believe multi-channeling should be mandated and if a free-TV network did not use that spectrum it should be made available to others.

The MEAA said the digital TV spectrum could also be used to provide a fourth TV network, an indigenous TV service or a third national public broadcaster.

Astro posts RM53m 1H profit

From http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_e8d43e4b-cb73c03a-940b8400-5096fb53

Astro All Asia Networks Plc recorded its maiden net profit of RM53.13 million in the six months ended July 31, 2004, from a net loss of RM31.24 million a year earlier, on the back of higher growth of its multi-channel television (MC-TV) segment.

In a statement on Sept 10, Astro said revenue grew 25.14% to RM814.53 million from RM649.51 million previously, driven primarily by TV subscription revenues of RM650.7 million from a growing subscriber base.

Astro’s group chief executive officer Ralph Marshall in a letter to shareholders said prospects for the group were bright due to strong local and regional economic conditions.

“The vibrant media and entertainment industry will continue to outpace economic growth as it feeds off a young, growing population with rising disposable income and discretionary spending,” he said.

He said, outside Malaysia, Astro would continue to seek regional opportunities where it could leverage on its infrastructure, multi-lingual skills and broadcast expertise to drive future profitability and growth.

“We remain focussed on opportunities we believe exist in Indonesia for MC-TV, in India and Vietnam for radio, and in China for Celestial,” he added.

Capital expenditure (capex) for the first half was RM36.1 million, up from RM19.3 million a year earlier due to the implementation of its customer relationship management system and the broadcast back-up facility in Cyberjaya that would require capex of some RM70 million for the financial year ending Jan 31, 2005.

Astro’s MC-TV division achieved 102,958 new residential subscribers in the first half. However, it suffered a higher level of churn at 9.6% in the second quarter, up from 9.2% in the first quarter and 7.3% a year ago from the full impact of unauthorised access to its services through cloned smartcards and set-top boxes.

Astro currently has a subscriber base of 1.5 million. Out of this figure, about 1.386 million are residential subscribers, representing a penetration of 27.7% of TV homes, up from 23.3% the year before.

The average revenue per subscriber rose to RM80.7 in the second quarter after a rate adjustment in late May. However, its programming cost had gone up to RM206.1 million from RM177 million last year.

Subscriber acquisition costs on a per-box-sold basis declined 17.1% to RM754. Its total subscriber acquisition costs decreased some 10% from RM171.1 million to RM154.9 million.

Marshall said work was in progress to substantially grow its service next year when Astro take on its new satellite transponder capacity on Measat 3, which is scheduled for launch in mid-2005.

Revenue from Astro's radio business grew 22.8% to RM58.2 million, accounting for about 75% of the total advertising spend on radio. Astro has 8.9 million listeners or 44.1% of total listener share tuning in to any of its five stations weekly.

An AC Nielsen survey in April affirmed ERA, MY FM, hitz.fm as the top stations in their respective Malay, Chinese and English language category with MIX FM and Light & Easy coming in second and third among the English stations.

Astro’s Chinese movie distributor Celestial Movies continued to pose solid future growth with revenue growing 65% year-on-year to RM23.4 million, Marshall said.

Work was continuing on the re-mastering of the 760-film Shaw Library, with 82 titles completed in the first half, while 54 titles were released for DVD and movie channel distribution, he added.

At the end of July, some 287 titles had been re-mastered and over three million copies had been sold globally.

Celestial Movies has secured video distribution deals from another five countries and from two additional countries for its movie channel. It has now penetrated 15 countries for DVD distribution and six countries for its movie channel.

(Craigs comment, Celestial movies has also just started on Asiasat 3)

Tech Firms Announce Video Anti-Piracy Technology

From http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) - NDS, STMicroelectronics and Thomson said on Friday they will develop new encryption technology to foil video piracy, a $3.5 billion problem for broadcasters and movie studios.

The anti-piracy technology, known as the secure video processor (SVP) platform, is designed for media companies to protect their content from unauthorized copying and redistribution.

A rise in piracy has accompanied the explosion of digital video players. Crafty programmers have discovered ways to crack into DVD players, for example, to make copies of Hollywood movies quickly and cheaply.

The new technology is designed to allow media companies to encrypt their content with their own digital rights management (DRM) specifications and have it unscrambled for viewing solely by devices embedded with SVP-enabled chips.

The companies hope enough SVP-enabled video playback devices and TV set-top boxes will hit the market in coming years so as to allow consumers to transport the encrypted content to specially equipped SVP devices for playback.

NDS, 78 percent owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, has developed the anti-piracy software component for SVP. Beginning next year, Thomson will embed SVP-enabled chips developed by STMicro into its video playback devices and set-top boxes.

American satellite TV operator DIRECTV, a News Corp affiliate, is the first to use the new technology, the companies said.

The SVP alliance was introduced in Amsterdam on Friday at a broadcasters conference in Amsterdam.

Scientific-Atlanta Launches New DVB Satellite Receivers for Delivery of Video and IP Services

From Press Release

KORTRIJK, Belgium and ATLANTA, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Four new
satellite receivers introduced at IBC 2004 by Scientific-Atlanta will provide
a variety of cost-saving, video, audio and data delivery features for free-to-
air or secure broadcast reception of digitally encoded content. The new
satellite receivers will be on display at IBC 2004 in Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, 10-14 September, Stand 479, Hall 1.

New DVB Satellite Receivers for Broadcast and Cable TV Distribution
For optimized flexibility in commercial headends, the new Satellite
Receiver (D9840) has a common interface (DVB-CI) for operation with a number
of Conditional Access systems and optional features include ASI input, ASI
outputs and SDI outputs to support digital-tier cable pass-through or
re-encoding using digital video output. The new Professional Receiver (D9842)
supports 4:2:2/4:2:0 video decoding for contribution applications where high
video quality is required. This product supports BISS for secure distribution
of video using an interoperable scrambling system and has an optional DVB 8PSK
front-end to support more bandwidth efficiency over the satellite, using
higher order demodulation.

New DVB Satellite Receivers for Private Networks/Business TV /SMATV/IP
The new PowerVu(R) Satellite Receiver (D9834) is designed for cost-
effective satellite content distribution to provide a highly-affordable
solution for the business TV, private networks and SMATV environments. Whether
the customer requires free-to-air reception or secure broadcast reception via
PowerVu conditional access, this receiver will meet the video, audio, data and
VBI needs (supports DVB VBI and DVB subtitling). Up to 10 Mbps of IP data
support (simultaneously with video) allows for support of services such as
business training, corporate announcements, storage of data to a network
server, ad insertion, and multicast or unicast streaming video requirements.

The D9834 is a variable-rate, content delivery solution to facilitate
transition from analog to digital. To further meet customer needs, Scientific-
Atlanta is also introducing the entry-level PowerVu Satellite Receiver (D9835)
for SMATV applications.

Enhanced PowerVu Program Receiver for Analog-to-Digital Migration
At the show, Scientific-Atlanta will introduce the latest version of the
popular, cost-effective DVB-S PowerVu Program Receiver (D9850) for use by
programmers and cable operators as they transition from the analog to digital
tier. The new D9850 receiver (Release 4), offers a number of new and enhanced
features including, support for BISS-E and BISS-mode 1, and Digital Program
Replacement to further assist operators in their digital transition. In
addition to these latest features, the new version of the D9850 also includes
ASI transport input for monitoring, SDI output with embedded audio for
professional re-encoding in the studio or production facility, AES-3id high
quality digital audio output. A popular new feature, Disaster Recovery,
supports capabilities which automatically helps ensure continuous program
delivery via an alternate satellite transponder in case of primary
transmission path interruption. A convenient Web browser interface supports
easy control and monitoring, while an SNMP interface enables control by a
network management system. All of these features are provided in a compact 1RU
space, including support of up to 50 Mbps of IP data to facilitate large IP
file transfer capabilities to deliver content into VOD/SVOD and ad servers.

About Scientific-Atlanta EuropeNV : http://www.saeurope.com

Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. (NYSE: SFA) ( http://www.scientificatlanta.com )
is a leading supplier of digital content distribution systems, transmission
networks for broadband access to the home, digital interactive set-tops and
subscriber systems designed for video, high-speed Internet and voice over IP
(VoIP) networks, and worldwide customer service and support.

"Forward-looking statements," as defined in the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995, may be included in this news release. A variety
of factors could cause Scientific-Atlanta's actual results to differ from the
anticipated results expressed in such forward-looking statements. Investors
are referred to Scientific-Atlanta's Cautionary Statements (Exhibit 99.1 to
the Company's most recent Form 10-Q), which statements are incorporated into
this news release by reference.

Pace Reveals First MPEG-4 HD Set Top Box

From http://news.designtechnica.com/article5335.html

Pace Technology has revealed its first MPEG-4 Part 10 high definition (HD) set-top box platform as the Company continues to demonstrate its expertise in advanced video coding.

The TDX800 incorporates a hard disk for personal video recording (PVR) and at IBC 2004 it will be demonstrated alongside one of the world's first commercially available VC-1/Windows Media 9 set-top boxes(2), the DB440, also premiering at IBC, completing Pace's advanced video coding (AVC) line-up.

"Within the next three years, advanced video coding will become the dominant TV technology, for both standard and high definition content. Pace, with our MPEG-4 Part 10 and Windows Media 9 demonstrations, is at the forefront of making this transition," says David Gillies, Director of Technology at Pace. "Advanced video coding will be a critical factor in the market acceptance of HDTV and it's also certain that consumers will want PVR with their HD."

Pace's Gillies continues: "At Pace we believe in actively supporting new standards, so operators can be confident that all AVC bases are covered when they select Pace high definition technology."

The TDX800 demonstration utilises the latest Broadcom silicon AVC co-processor and will be available across all television delivery platforms; satellite, cable, terrestrial and IP. It will also be able to demodulate both high and standard definition programming, with the potential to use advanced modulation schemes such as DVB-S2. DVB-S2, when used in conjunction with advanced video codecs, will deliver the same number of HD channels per transponder as available in SD today.

The DB440 is Pace's second generation Windows Media 9-based set-top box and uses the latest developments in this codec. It is based on Microsoft's Windows CE operating system and can deliver a full range of Windows Media 9 video and audio content. In addition, low bit-rate content can be viewed on the DB440 at high resolution (full D1) due to Pace's full utilisation of the advanced post-processing options available in WM9.

DD, Max gear up for Champions Trophy

From http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k4/sep/sep103.htm

MUMBAI: With the mini world cup, The Champions Trophy, kicking off today (10 September) it will be a fight between Max and Doordarshan to see who comes out on top, ratings wise.

While Max will air all the matches, Doodarshan has selected nine matches which will air on DD 1. They include India against Kenya tomorrow (11 September) and the big one India vs Pakistan on 19 September.

While on the subject of India vs Pakistan cricket, it may be recalled that during their World Cup clash last year on 1 March 2003, Max had decimated DD in the ratings war.

Tam data for six metros shows that while Max had a TVR of 20.91 DD only managed 2.28 c&s 4+. Even for 4+ Max was ahead at 13.84 versus 9.01 for DD.

More recently Max managed impressive TVR of 7.99 c&s 4+ six metros when the arch rivals met in the Holland Tourney last month. Keep in mind the fact that the match was rain interrupted. Also, the Holland Tourney is not well known. Evidently Max's ground activities which involved Mandira Bedi playing cricket in different centres with housewives paid off big time.

As had been reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com, Max has beefed up its wrap around programming Extraaa Innings. The question now is whether Max can equal or even better its World Cup ratings. Watch this space for more on that.

Alpha Telugu pay channel from Sept 20

From http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/009200409110332.htm

Hyderabad, Sep 11. (UNI): Ahead of the launch of Alpha Telugu, the first of Zee Telefilms' south channels, from September 20, the pay channel has started the telecast of test signals and trailers of programmes, the company announced on Friday.

Till September 19, it will be free to air signal, after which the signal will be encrypted, a release here said.

The company claimed that the programmes would be "reality dramatised".

"Even the news bulletins will have a different flavour", the release said.

(Craigs comment started on Asiasat 3)

Bharatidasan varsity to use EDUSAT services

From http://www.sunnetwork.org/news/regional/tamilnadu/tamilnadu.asp?id=12477

Tiruchirappalli, Sep 13 - The Bharatidasan university was aiming to become the first university to utilise the services of educational satellite EDUSAT which is yet to be launched by the ISRO.

Senior officials and experts had been deputed to ISRO headquarters for the purpose, Prof C Thangamuthu, vice-chancellor of the university, said while addressing a function organised to launch a novel scheme of book bank.

The university was working on the modalities of utilising the satellite's transponder in the most effective manner, Thangamuthu said. The university was simultaneously working on the procedure to instal virtual laboratory, classrooms and online connectivity in seven districts, he said.

Over 150 poor students belonging to SC/ST categories were given textbooks. The computerised library on the varsity campus would get digitalised in two to three years after which affiliated colleges could have online access to the books for reference, he said.

12/09/04

No update Sunday

11/09/04

No update Saturday

10/09/04

TVNZ + Partner? have secured the Telstra transponder on B1 I don't have any furthur info on it at this stage.

If you are going to APSATTV.COM at the moment all you will get is the old server with non updated info. Please use the link

http://202.9.227.18/~csutton/

Until the old servers pushed over a cliff somewhere.

Globecast have added a 2nd ADHOC channel on B3 12524V

Page will be trimmed majorly for Mondays update

From my Emails & ICQ

From Vk4bkp in Mackay (Far Northern Australia)

DX from Jcsat 2a 154E

I've got an NTSC analogue test card showing on Jcsat2A 12734V on the
2.3m solid and Fuji LNB. It's very weak but it's there!

Found another on 12718V playing a program. Well it's v pol if the
other one is H pol!

Anyone else getting these?

My first Ku analogue, from Japan beam at that! Ah this is like TV DXing all over
again. :-)

(Craigs comment, Great work any other reports from Northern Australia?)

From the Dish

PAS 8 166E 3860 H "BLTV - Buddhism Light TV" has left , replaced by occasional feeds.
PAS 8 166E 3836 V "TVBS Asia" is now encrypted.
PAS 8 166E 3987 V "TVT Channel 11 News 1" is now encrypted.
PAS 8 166E 4080 V All channels in the TAS mux are now Fta.

Optus C1 156E 12367 V "SBS World News Channel, SBS South East and SBS Western" are now encrypted.

Measat 2 148E 11602 H "BLTV - Buddhism Light TV" has started on , Fta, PIDs 512/513.

JCSAT 3 128E 3960 V "ETTV Movie" has started on , Viaccess, PIDs 1136/1137, nighttime.
JCSAT 3 128E 4120 V "MAC TV" has started on , Fta, PIDs 1060/1061.

Insat 2E 83E 3683 V "Cine World" has left .

NEWS

APT Satellite reduces its losses

From http://www.advanced-television.com/pages/pagesb/newsdaily.html#apt

APT Satellite Holdings, a transponder, telecommunications and broadcasting service provider in the Asia-Pacific region, has reduced its losses in the first half. The company posted a net loss of US$6.3 million in comparison to $20.3 million a year earlier. The loss in previous year were attributed to higher depreciation and asset impairment charges.

APT blamed weak demand for transponders and intense market competition for turnover dropped 13.7 per cent year on year to $16.5 million.

"Owing to the transitional stage of [satellites] Apstar I and Apstar IA, and the fact that the satellite transponder services market in Asia-Pacific region has remained highly competitive, the first half of 2004 was full of challenges," said group president and executive director Chen Zhaobin

The group launched Apstar V, the fourth and most powerful satellite of the Apstar fleet, on June 29 to replace Apstar I. The satellite, with 38 C-band and 16 Ku-band transponders and an operational life of 15.3 years, started commercial operation on August 13. The reports says that all existing customers of Apstar I have been transferred to the new satellite and the group has also started transponder services for new customers such as Hong Kong Cable TV and Singapore Telecommunications.

Apstar VI, a $240 million satellite with 38 C-band and 12 Ku-band transponders constructed by Alcatel Space, is scheduled to be launched in the fourth quarter this year to replace Apstar IA.

Twinkle, twinkle, little Ipstar

From http://www.financialexpress-bd.com/index3.asp?cnd=9/10/2004&section_id=15&newsid=&spcl=yes

SHANGHAI - By early next year the night sky will have a new twinkle: Ipstar, a massive satellite beaming broadband Internet across Asia. Conceived in the dial-up dot-com mania of the 1990s, when millions of speed-hungry urbanites promised soaring revenues, the largest commercial satellite ever now seems destined to serve dull, but steady, income-seeking governments, telcos and consumers beyond wired broadband's reach in rural Asia.

Shin Satellite, which plans to launch Ipstar between mid-February and mid-March and belongs to Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's family, will wholesale services to resellers across Asia, leaving them to deal with local regulators while battling stiff competition from ever cheaper, faster wired and wireless broadband.

"I'm not sure a satellite guy charging higher up-front fees is really a threat to ADSL [asymmetric digital subscriber line] operators in urban areas," says Richard Moe, a MacQuarie Securities telecom analyst. "The Shin Corp has always had a bias towards the higher end of the market. To be honest, I was more bullish a few years ago."

ADSL is a technology that provides broadband cheaply, for about US$25 (1,040 baht) a month or less. It uses telephone lines, usually more reliable and faster than satellite links, and works best in urban areas where customers pack around telephone exchanges.

Ipstar's earth stations have provided a low-key first-generation service using current satellites for the past two years. Suppliers targeting users in rural Thailand ask $100 a month for this service. Ipstar is keeping mum about prices for second-generation services using the new Ipstar satellite. "We will charge consumers the market rate in each territory," says an Ipstar spokeswoman. "We will break even when we have 20% of capacity booked."

That may be so, but with broadband prices on a one-way trip south it may not be true for long. "The primary challenge is to get some payback in a reasonable amount of time in a market that is fast commoditizing," says Ross O'Brien, research house Intercedent's Hong Kong managing director.

"The perception that bandwidth is a commodity has driven long-distance rates down to unprecedented levels. Bandwidth is not a commodity like coffee or orange juice, the price is not going to come back," O'Brien adds.

So far two major customers have signed up, neither of which seems destined to deliver fat revenues. Chinasat, a second-tier telco, faces a tough fight from China's huge incumbents China Telecom and China Unicom. While Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), which runs a network of high-tech industrial estates in India, does not appear well positioned for expansion.

In Japan and South Korea, which together account for about half of Asia's 70 million broadband connections, fiber-optic cables, which are even faster and more reliable, are becoming common as prices fall and companies battle fiercely.

"How are they going to compete in the real money markets like Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong that are wired to the max?" wonders O'Brien. "You aren't going to pull anybody away from a fiber-optic cable to their home with satellite Internet."

The Ipstar edge

Alone, this behemoth, at 6.6 tonnes the largest commercial satellite ever, costs $350 million. Adding on launch fees, ground stations, insurance, terminal design and marketing probably pushes the bill beyond $500 million.

Ipstar's size is not all that makes it unique. Its 45 gigabits-per-second capacity, almost equal to that of all the communications satellites floating above Asia, is one reason it weighs the equivalent of five cars. Power is another. When nasty weather threatens, Ipstar focuses more power on that area, in effect burning through all but the most intense storms.

Greater reliability gives Ipstar a significant edge over competing satellites, which cannot perform similar stunts. "They cannot compete on capacity, price or efficiency," says Ipstar's spokeswoman.

Down on Earth, users will tune in using meter-wide dishes connected to an Ipstar terminal that uses compression algorithms to move data between a computer and the satellite. These boxes also have a jack for telephones, providing a direct Internet-protocol (IP) telephony connection allowing worldwide calls for next to nothing.

Local laws and regulators' sympathy for fuming telcos' protests may determine whether consumers and corporations can use this service. In Thailand, for example, IP telephony is technically illegal, a factor that has dissuaded global corporations from pitching regional headquarters in Bangkok.

Unlike the European Union or North America, Asia is a regulatory mosaic that adds costs and has caused companies to give up on more than a few promising products. "Their markets are remarkably disparate and differently regulated," says O'Brien.

However, given Asian politicians' penchant for resolving such inconveniences on the golf course, Ipstar's family connections should help iron out any serious problems, especially involving the often opaque laws in jurisdictions that comprise developing Asia, where Ipstar's greatest opportunities now lie.

In much of developing Asia, broadband is limited, unreliable and expensive. Thailand is a good example. Even in Bangkok connections can be spotty with speed rising and falling.

Conspiracy theorists, propped up on Bangkok's bars, see this as a ruse by the Thaksin government to create an instant market for Ipstar. Perhaps, but it is as likely that Thailand's snail-speed Internet is a result of contradictory laws, bureaucratic infighting and competition among state-owned telcos trying to protect revenues.

In any case, even if Thailand's wired broadband users all migrated to Ipstar, it would still need many more customers to turn a healthy profit. That would require many broadband users across Asia to cut their cable and put up a dish. And while that may happen in the short term, longer-term wired solutions will win out.

But then cities do not comprise the bulk of Asia, where most people still live in rural communities that until recently were lucky to have a fistful of phone lines. "At least initially they [Ipstar] will find a good market among people in rural areas who need large download capabilities," says Moe.

High-speed Internet also offers great potential for delivering government services, improving data collection (which means better-targeted budgets) and improving education and even health knowledge. Ipstar can fill that gap.

Unfortunately, that gap is closing fast. Fixed-line networks are also on the cusp of a revolution. By 2008 British Telecom will replace its current switched network with an IP system, giving almost every home broadband by default. Developing Asia will not be long in following, as this system is cheaper to install and operate than traditional solutions.

Mobile-phone networks are also offering faster data speeds. Although still significantly slower than Ipstar and no competition for wired broadband, they do offer mobility, for which some users will pay a premium.

And then there is wireless broadband, in its first incarnation, Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), a short-range unregulated radio system typified by hot spots appearing in airports, offices and cafes. Its first incarnation, 802.11b, offers only 11 megabits-per- second (Mbps) that peter out about 50 meters from a base station. Its latest incarnations, the mutually incompatible 802.11a and 802.11g, deliver 55Mbps.

Hong Kong's PCCW is now testing Wi-Max (worldwide interoperability for microwave access), which has a promised range of 48 kilometers from a base station, in six towns in the United Kingdom. Wi-Max mobile phones are already under design. Intel will build Wi-Max into its personal computer processor chips from 2006, after which Wi-Max networks will mushroom.

"My concern is that we are getting more terrestrial broadband solutions, the biggest threat being Wi-Max," says Moe. "When Wi-Max arrives, they may find trunking emerges as their primary business."

Trunking links exchanges and base stations that form a communication network's backbone. Ipstar will likely prove cheaper than laying a fiber-optic cable out to a remote mobile-phone or Wi-Max base station serving a village or a mine and will offer insurance.

"If it's for trunking, there should be a market for it, for redundancy. If you're a telco, you always want a backup if the fiber-optic network goes down, especially in the current climate of terrorism concerns," says Moe.

Regulatory hurdles that may hamper Ipstar in some jurisdictions could also come to haunt other emerging technologies such as ultra-wideband and Wi-Max. "Regulatory authorities in each country will each deal with Wi-Max in a slightly different way," says Moe.

So while Ipstar appears set for a less glamorous role serving governments, telcos and scattered rural consumers, it may yet find its place under the sun. Rising rural incomes will make broadband increasingly affordable.

Five years ago, few predicted broadband's spectacular growth and commoditization in such a short time. Likewise there are signs, such as emerging high-definition television and accompanying 18 gigabyte DVDs, that broadband demand will accelerate. This in turn will spur demand for trunking and redundancy among remote users, suggesting Ipstar's long-term revenue will be steady, if not rising.

STMicroelectronics Publishes Extensions to DiSEqC Protocol to Enable Greater Flexibility for Satellite Broadcasters

From Press Release

Set-top box manufacturers now have additional commands to control Low-Noise
Block subsystems, including ST's SaTCR-1, to simplify installation and reduce costs for broadcasters

GENEVA, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM)
has published a set of extensions to the DiSEqC (Digital Satellite Equipment
Control) specification as defined in the CENELEC EN-61319-1 European standard
-- a widely used protocol that allows a satellite set-top box (STB) to control
peripheral devices connected to the coaxial cable -- which will enable the box
to manage a Low-Noise Block (LNB) based on ST's SaTCR-1 satellite channel
router chip. An LNB is part of the electronics in every rooftop dish aerial.

The SaTCR-1 chip is at the centre of an advanced LNB downconverter
subsystem which simplifies installations that need to handle more than one
signal by combining up to eight input signals onto a single cable. These
signals are then decoded by a corresponding number of tuners, potentially
distributed across many set-top boxes within the home or throughout an
apartment block. This capability allows a consumer to record one channel while
watching another, for example, without needing two separate coaxial cables
from the rooftop dish. Such an upgrade previously required an expensive site
visit by an engineer.

ST is the world's largest supplier of Set-top Box (STB) silicon devices.*
It has worked closely with Eutelsat, at the origin of the DiSEqC
specification, and with SES ASTRA, operator of one of the major European
satellite platforms, in developing the extensions. DiSEqC is an open standard
-- with additions controlled by industry agreement -- that defines a
standardized communication bus between satellite receivers and satellite
peripheral equipment, using only the existing coaxial cable.

By implementing the new protocol, all STB manufacturers can take advantage
of the benefits of SaTCR-1-enabled LNBs, independently of the hardware within
their box. STBs already in the field can be updated via an over-the-air
software download. For software development, ST has made available an
implementation of the new commands as part of the STAPI driver suite used by
STB manufacturers working with ST's leading range of decoders and
demodulators.

"We believe that the market for dual TV and DVR set-top boxes will show
significant growth over the coming years," said Armando Caltabiano, General
Manager of the Retail Products Division, within ST's Home Entertainment Group.
"By publishing our extensions to the DiSEqC protocol, we are ensuring that any
set-top box serving these markets can support LNBs fitted with the SaTCR-1
device."

ST will invite STB makers to carry out compliance tests with a reference
LNB design in its regional laboratories. LNB providers are already delivering
equipment based on the SaTCR-1 chip, and their LNBs are backwards compatible
with set-top boxes which have not yet been upgraded to use the new DiSEqC
protocol.

"After having supported STMicroelectronics on finalizing the respective
command protocol, we are excited to see this new LNB technology now arriving
on the market," said Thomas Wrede, VP Product Management of SES ASTRA.
"Consumers will, in future, only need a single coaxial cable to connect a
multi-tuner hard disk receiver, or to feed several digital satellite receivers
in their home. This will make their decision to get satellite reception even
easier. We will include this new LNB technology in our ASTRA Reception
Equipment Recommendations. The necessary new DiSEqC protocol extensions should
be incorporated into the CENELEC EN 61319-1 standard."

"We have been most eager to drive the characterization and specification
of the new DiSEqC protocol from its end-product and deployment scenario
perspectives and become early adopters of ST's technology," commented Tomer
Bentzion, Chief Executive Officer of FTA Communication Technologies, a leader
in the digital broadcast reception equipment market. "SaTCR-1 based products
will facilitate multiple receiver and Digital Video Recorder deployment across
Europe and will remove upgrade barriers thereof."

About the Technology
The SaTCR-1 Satellite Channel Router works by shifting the frequency of
any input signal to a fixed intermediate frequency. The output signal is band-
pass filtered to generate a narrow sub-band output. By combining several
SaTCR-1 devices, a corresponding number of sub-bands may be generated and
multiplexed together. This composite band can be made up of different
independent channels issued from different LNB inputs and polarizations, and
can be carried on a single coaxial cable.

Control of the SaTCR-1 is achieved through a cost-effective 8-bit
microcontroller, the ST7LNB1. This pre-programmed microcontroller decodes
DiSEqC commands issued by the STBs and controls each SaTCR-1 through a two-
wire interface, without any additional external resources. It also supports
seven pre-defined LNB applications. This simple control mechanism ensures that
the host STBs require no new hardware to take advantage of the capabilities of
a SaTCR-1-enabled LNB. Furthermore, by including in the LNB a microcontroller
with upgradeable software, ST is enabling innovative applications such as LNB
positioning, intelligent diagnostic functions, and simple inter-box communication.

About STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics is a global leader in developing and delivering
semiconductor solutions across the spectrum of microelectronics applications.
An unrivalled combination of silicon and system expertise, manufacturing
strength, Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio and strategic partners
positions the Company at the forefront of System-on-Chip (SoC) technology and
its products play a key role in enabling today's convergence markets. The
Company's shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, on Euronext Paris
and on the Milan Stock Exchange. In 2003, the Company's net revenues were
$7.24 billion and net earnings were $253 million. Further information on ST
can be found at http://www.st.com.

* InStat/MDR - MPEG Video IC Market: Larger than Ever - June 2003 (Report number IN030573MI) iSuppli 2001 Consumer Electronics Semiconductors:
Market Share and Supplier Analysis

Envivio Demonstrates High Definition (HD) MPEG-4 H.264 (AVC) Solution for Cost-Effective Delivery of Broadcast-Quality Video

From Press Release

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Envivio, Inc., a leading
provider of MPEG-4 broadcast and streaming solutions, will demonstrate at IBC
2004 its High Definition (HD) MPEG-4 H.264 AVC solution at Envivio stand
1.469. The Envivio HD H.264 solution cost-effectively delivers HD
broadcast-quality video over satellite, cable, and telecommunications
networks. The H.264 format offers a significant improvement in coding
efficiency compared to other compression standards such as MPEG-2.

Envivio's HD H.264 technology doubles compression efficiency, lowers bit
rates to half of the MPEG-2 requirements for high-quality video, and
dramatically decreases storage capacity. As a result, more content can be
transmitted over existing infrastructures using lower bit rates.

Envivio will demonstrate its standards-based HD MPEG-4 H.264 encoding and
decoding systems at Envivio stand 1.469, for the duration of the IBC 2004
exhibition this week in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

About Envivio

Envivio is a leading provider of complete MPEG-4 solutions, which consist
of a rich set of integrated streaming media tools and systems. The company has
established itself as the most experienced creator of high-quality MPEG-4
solutions that enable broadcasters, network operators, and content developers
to build new revenue streams and use the efficiencies of delivering content to
the full range of MPEG-4 capable devices. The Envivio solution includes
various components to create, encode, protect, and distribute MPEG-4 content.
For more information, visit http://www.envivio.com.

NOTE: Envivio is a trademark of Envivio, Inc.
Contact: Barry Strauss of Envivio, +1-650-243-2718, or
[email protected].

Court adjourns sports rights case; Zee has till Tuesday to decide whether it will re-bid

From http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k4/sep/sep94.htm

MUMBAI: Give this round to ESPN-Star Sports. The Bombay High Court, which this morning proposed that the sports broadcaster and Zee Network submit fresh bids to the Registrar General of the High Court, has given Subhash Chandra's network till Tuesday to decide whether it is agreeable to the court's proposition.

Zee's board of directors is meeting on Monday to decide on what course of action to take. If Zee agrees to the proposal, it has to inform the court accordingly on Tuesday. Then both Zee and ESS will have to submit fresh bids on Wednesday, 15 September. If it does decide to put in a fresh bid, only ESS and Zee will be allowed to submit afresh. One rider the court has inserted here is that there will be no further avenue of appeal if this route is taken by the two claimants in the case.

What is curious about the proposal put forth by the High Court however, is that whosever's bid is higher, will get the rights. That means that the criteria of merit goes out of the window, which is the sole argument around which ESS moved the courts in the first place.

Coming back to the choice before Zee, if it is not agreeable to a re-bid, the case will stand adjourned till Thursday (16 September), when the Bench of Chief Justice DS Bhandari and Justice DY Chandrachud will here arguments on whether Zee is eligible or not to telecast cricket matches.

The bench apparently decided to take the re-bid route to try and avoid further waste of time on the issue. The BCCI counsel had expressed worry that if the issue continued rebounding back and forth, then when the Australian team comes down in October, a broadcaster might still not be finalised.

The talk doing the rounds is that if Zee agrees to the re-bid, then the price for the India telecast rights could touch an astronomical and financially crippling $350 million. Either way the third party in the case, the BCCI benefits.

However, addressing a media gathering after the hearing, ESS Asia MD Rik Dovey maintained that India cricket was not a survival issue for the broadcaster.

"We are looking to grow our business. We have a strong connection with Indian cricket through our brand ambassador Sachin Tendulkar. We also have Saurav Ganguly. We also have cricket from England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Bangladesh. We would like to add India to our kitty."

Earlier in the day, ESS' counsel had argued that Zee had not produced a single day of cricket thus far. "They buy the rights to cricket for their international territories. This includes animation graphics and replays. The only thing that is from Zee are the ads.

What we are disappointed at is the fact that the BCCI deviated from its norms. The bids were supposed to be placed before Price waterhouse Coopers for evaluation. This never happened. PWC only tabulated the bids. In fact, responding to a letter from us, they said that they had told the BCCI to inform all the bidders of their limited role. The BCCI did not do so."

The counsel added that BCCI president Jagmohan Dalimya had had a private phone conversation with Subhash Chandra where the Zee Group CMD was informed that his network was eligible. "How can Dalmiya do this? The bid stipulation is clearly aimed at excluding those parties who do not have their own production unit.

"We gave details of our production unit in our bid document. Even for England tours which are produced by Sky, we take our own production team along with cameras. That is because Indian viewers want to view the action from the perspective of Saurav Ganguly and the team. We also have our own commentary team."

The counsel maintained that Zee on the other hand would either hire a production unit or license the rights to a third party. "If you do that then you cannot claim to be possessing production expertise." Dovey added that a sports broadcaster would produce cricket in a far better manner than a non sports broadcaster. "There are a host of specials that we create around our presentation. The Asia Cup is an example of that."

Meanwhile, the tremors of today's developments were felt on the bourses with the Zee scrip getting quite a hammering. Zee's share price, which opened the day at Rs 161.50, plummeted to a low of Rs 149.40 before recovering slightly to close at Rs 151.15, down 6.4 per cent.

As had been earlier reported by Indiantelevision.com Zee Telefilms has already made the initial payment of $20 million to BCCI for telecast rights of the India cricket matches.

Doordarshan moves to pad up DTH bouquet

From http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/09/10/stories/2004091001291900.htm

Of the 30 channels on offer to start with, 17 would be Doordarshan's own channels and the rest private.

DOORDARSHAN has plans to increase from 30 the number of channels to be offered in its free-to-air bouquet of Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite television service.

Announcing this to presspersons here, Mr Peer Muhammed, Director, and Mr Abraham George, Superintending Engineer, Doordarshan Kendra, Thiruvananthapuram, said that the regular service, named DD Direct + (Direct Plus), would be commissioned very shortly.

Trial transmission had been on air from as early as April this year and the fully digital reception quality conforms to international standards.

The Doordarshan team also presented a demo of the service before assembled presspersons at the Press Club here. Explaining the features, it said that the key benefits to users included a one-time investment on the receive system, its easy local availability, absence of any hidden/recurring cost, a bouquet that will be suitable for viewing by the whole family, excellent signal quality and freedom from intervention by a third player. Of the 30 channels on offer to start with, 17 would be Doordarshan's own channels and the rest private.

Users can access them at their own premises by deploying a small dish of 60 cm to 90-cm size catering to the desired individual signal strength and a set-top box (STB).

Barring the initial investment on equipment estimated at Rs 3,000 for the complete system including the dish and the STB, there will be no monthly subscription to be paid by users. The 30 channels will be beamed through three Ku-band transponders, each with a capacity of hosting 10 channels, leased on the New Skies Satellite (NSS-6) located at 95 degrees East. The footprint covers the whole of India except the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The 17 Doordarshan channels on offer are DD National, DD India, DD Bharati, DD Sports, DD News, DD Gyan Darshan and 11 regional language channels. Twenty radio channels in regional languages are also available.

Further details are available at www.ddindia.com or www.ddinews.com.

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