TelcoTV Notebook
Dispatches from TelcoTV 2007 in Atlanta
By Todd Spangler and Tom Steinert-Threlkeld -- Multichannel News, 10/28/2007 8:00:00 PM
Starz: Rethink Movie Tiers
Atlanta — Bill Myers, Starz Entertainment’s president and chief operating officer, urged telephone companies to consider bundling his company’s movie channels at lower-priced tiers than cable operators’ packages that include the Starz lineup.
Cable operators typically offer Starz’s movie channels only to customers at tiers in the range of $75 to $80 per month, he said. Telcos have an opportunity to offer a package that includes movie channels for $50 to $55 per month by dropping certain other programming, Myers said in a keynote. “If you take that content and package it, and price it in a way that it’s a real strong price-value [ratio], you can really wreak havoc in this space.”
EchoStar Turns IPTV Key
Atlanta —EchoStar Communications launched ViP-TV, a programming-transport service for IPTV that will put the satellite operator in competition with SES Americom, which provides a similar service called IP-Prime.
Ironically, the EchoStar plans to use an SES Americom satellite as the backbone for the service. ViP-TV will use a high-powered Ku-band satellite that will provide the ability to transport 300 or more channels of TV programming to multichannel service providers.
Ku-band transmissions are subject to degradation, from heavy rain or other inclement weather. C-band satellite transmissions, which SES Americom’s IP-Prime uses, are so-called big-dish systems with larger antennas managed by commercial operators.
In the style of thrifty CEO Charlie Ergen, EchoStar did not spend big bucks coming up with the moniker for its programming-transport service. ViP-TV general manager Dan Daines said the company only came up with the name Oct. 18. EchoStar’s lawyers pushed through the trademark clearances by Tuesday, Oct. 23, when the company announced the service.
SES Americom, TVN Roll VOD
Atlanta — SES Americom’s forthcoming video-on-demand service for Internet Protocol TV providers will be offered in partnership with TVN Entertainment, Bill Squadron, president of the satellite company’s IP-Prime business, said on a TelcoTV panel discussion.
The VOD service, scheduled to launch in the first half of 2008, will use Harmonic’s StreamLiner 2000 video servers, storage encoding solution and ingest-gateway workflow software.
IP-Prime product management director Walt Davis noted in an interview Wednesday that SES Americom will provide VOD content to IPTV providers on a nonexclusive basis. Telco customers will be able to specify which on-demand content they will carry, just as they can select linear channels from among IP-Prime’s collection of 285 standard- and high-definition networks.
TVN will transcode on-demand content into MPEG-4 video format.
Blame It On the Internet
Atlanta — AT&T director of programming Peter Tracy said the Internet has trained people to personalize their content-consumption habits, and so that’s what the next generation of TV viewers is growing up to expect.
“The broadband experience has been personalized for years,” Tracy said. “You talk to anyone who gets a [digital video recorder], it changes the way they watch TV. They’re customizing their viewing experience.”
Canby Turns to EchoStar for HD Transport
06/10/2009SES Americom, Cisco Take IPTV Rural
02/06/2007Hey Charlie, Here is an Aspirin
04/11/2008Telco TV Live
10/22/2007
