TELEsatélite - TELE-satellite International Magazine

company’s goal is to have 1,000 of its subscribers
pick up the HD service by the end of the
year and have 5,000 subscribers for the new
offering within the first quarter of next year.
JAPAN
SKY PERFECTV LAUNCHES
FIRST 3D CHANNEL
SKY Perfect JSAT launched channel Sukachan
3D169, Japan's first dedicated 3D channel,
whose line-up to date has included pop concerts,
World Cup soccer matches and baseball
games featuring the immensely popular Yomiuri
Giants. Sukachan's programming is viewable
with special glasses on 3D-ready televisions.
Yet sales for those systems have been anything
but spectacular. Business newspaper Nikkei
reported earlier this month that Sony's Bravia
40-inch and Panasonic's Viera 50-inch models,
which retail for between 30% and 50% more
than comparable 2D systems, have seen a 20%
drop in prices since their debuts in the spring.
MALAYSIA
AXN BEYOND HD LAUNCHES IN MALAYSIA
AXN channel's sci-fi and mystery spin-off AXN
Beyond has launched in Malaysia on HD platform
Astro B.yond. This move completes the
network's footprint in Southeast Asia, following
previous carriage deals inked in Singapore,
Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Astro
B.yond already carries AXN HD, ESPN HD,
National Geographic Channel HD, History HD,
FX HD and HBO HD, plus Chinese channels
Astro Zhi Zun HD and Astro Supersport HD.
TECHNICOLOR SUPPLIES
HD BOXES TO ASTRO
Already an established supplier of MPEG-2 and
MPEG-4 set-top boxes for standard definition
broadcasting, Technicolor will now supply HD
MPEG-4 STBs with local recording capability to
support Astro’s move to offer more technologyadapting
services and products to its close to 3 million
and growing customer base. The innovative HD
enabled STB to be supplied by Technicolor includes
the ability to record to an external disk or disks.
A U S T R A L I A & O C E A N I A
AUSTRALIA
ABC AND ERICSSON BRING
HDTV TO AUSTRALIA
Under-served regional Australians are set to
receive digital free-to-air TV via satellite under a
five-year deal between Ericsson and ABC. The
Federal Government has invested some AUS
160 million into satellite services that will provide
free-to-air TV to 247,000 blacked-out households.
Satellite TV will be delivered using Ericsson's
latest video compression technology, which the
vendor claims will help the ABC expand the reach
of its HD and SD digital TV programming.
FOXTEL ADDS 3D, HD CHANNELS
Foxtel has launched a series of new channels in
November, including four in HD and one 3D-only
channel. They include Speed and Speed HD,
three MTV channels including MTV Hits and
concert channels MTVN Live and MTVN Live
HD. The company also introduced documentary
channels BBC Knowledge HD and Nat
Geo Wild HD to its line-up. These additions
have taken its total number of HD channels to
20. Foxtel 3D will carry sports from ESPN and
Fox Sports, plus movies and documentaries.
W O R L D
TOSHIBA TO LAUNCH FIRST 3D
TV WITHOUT GLASSES
Toshiba plans to market the world’s first 3D television
that does not need special glasses later this
year, according to a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun.
Toshiba will unveil three models of the television,
which will cost several thousand dollars, before
Christmas. The company has developed a new
system that emits a number of rays of light with various
angles from the screen so that viewers can see
stereoscopic images without glasses, the daily said.
BBC, NHK TEST SUPER HI-VISION TV
The BBC has sent a Super Hi-Vision TV broadcast
of a band gig to Japanese public broadcaster NHK
in a successful transmission test of the experimental
digital video format. The Super Hi-Vision
TV signal has a higher resolution than the current
generation of HD plasma displays. Super Hi-Vision
TV can generate a 7680 by 4320 pixel signal,
which no TV can show yet. The highest resolution
that current HD displays can show, 1920 by
1080 pixels, is only one quarter of the resolution
of Super Hi-Vision. The BBC is planning to use
the technology in capturing the 2012 Olympics in
London and showing the video on test screens.
NHK plans to broadcast in Super Hi-Vision by 2020.
www.TELE-satellite.com — 12-01/2011 — TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine
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