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Satnews Daily
March 2nd, 2011

Of Interest To SatBroadcasting™ Professionals...


  • Starmax HD, Spain’s new HD service, has selected GlobeCast to provide aggregation, encryption, and delivery of the full bouquet of channels broadcast to millions of households across the country. Hailed as a significant innovation in payTV, Starmax HD has been developed from the ground up to provide the best HDTV platform to Spanish viewers in an accessible, affordable package without requiring a contract or minimum term. GlobeCast’s end-to-end service for Starmax HD includes fiber contribution from several countries, reception of SD and HD channels at the company’s Saint-Assise teleport in France, signal compression in MPEG4 with multiplexing, uplink and satellite capacity, and encryption for Conax. In addition to GlobeCast’s content management and transmission services, the Starmax platform uses STBs from Ferguson and viewer access cards from Conax. Starmax viewers will have the ability to record programs and play content files from external hard drives, with internet access to streaming content through the STB.

  • SENCORE has a new partnership with reseller and systems integrator Bluebird TV, officially marking the launch of a 2011 sales initiative aimed at markets in India and Israel. Under the partnership, Bluebird TV will distribute the full line of SENCORE's video delivery and monitoring solutions designed for the broadcast market to its impressive roster of customers. Based in Rehovot, Israel, Bluebird TV provides video delivery network solutions for broadcasters, content producers, cable and satellite operators, telcos, and over-the-top distributors of video. To help clients meet business objectives, Bluebird TV offers needs assessment and business planning as well as the full range of network development services ranging from designing technology solutions through implementation, operation, and ongoing support.

  • SES ASTRA, an SES company (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG), has signed a long-term agreement with M7 Group for an additional transponder on ASTRA 23.5 East. The capacity will be used for the continued transmission of Dutch regional broadcasters as well as for additional HD services. The Luxembourg-based M7 Group provides DTH services to more than one million homes in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria using the brand names CanalDigitaal, TV Vlaanderen, TéléSAT and AustriaSat. This agreement represents already the fifth ASTRA 23.5 East transponder that M7 Group contracted with SES ASTRA since the introduction of ASTRA 23.5 East in 2007 as new hot spot for the Benelux market. In addition, M7 Group operates four transponders at ASTRA 19.2 East.

  • dB Broadcast, one of the U.K.'s largest systems integrators, has selected the Snell Kahuna HD/SD multi-format production switchers as central components in the BBC's Broadcasting House redevelopment in central London, W1. Installed in each of the four largest studios in the W1 centre, the Kahunas will drive live news programs and support a seamless migration to HD operations for the world's largest broadcasting organization. The newly developed Broadcasting House will host one of the world's largest newsrooms. The Kahunas will see heavy service in three fixed-rig studios and one flexible-rig studio, switching all incoming content and clips for the 24-hour World Service and News Channel broadcasts, but will still draw from many sources that exist in SD and other formats — thus making the Kahuna's multi-format capabilities crucial. In addition to the four Kahunas, the W1 campus will feature two Snell Sirius 850 1152x1152 routers.