ITV director of group development and strategy Carolyn Fairbairn will succeed Tim Davie as chairman of the UK’s free-to-air digital satellite television service Freesat in September.
Davie, currently the BBC’s director of marketing, communications and audiences, will relinquish the Freesat when he becomes the corporation’s new director of audio and music.
High Definition TV News
Sky+ HD was taken by 33,000 new customers in the UK over the last three months, pushing the premium high-definition PVR to a total customer base of nearly 500,000.
Publishing results for its full financial year, Sky said it had 8.98m subscribers in total with net customer additions over the last three months coming in ahead of analyst expectations at 92,000.
Kodak has long been known for producing imaging and photographic material.
hdtv.biz-news.com asked Matthew Yarrow, Kodak country business manager for the UK and Ireland, to explain the rationale behind his company’s decision to move into new territory with the launch of a set-top box.
The number of households worldwide viewing HDTV is set to rise from 45 million today to 255 million in 2013, according to a study by IMS Research.
It estimates that 45 million households worldwide received HDTV service via Direct to Home (DTH), cable, IPTV and Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) at the end of 2007, with approximately the same number of HDTV sets shipping during the year.
Subscribers to America’s DISH Network who have its MPEG-4 HD DVR boxes are to be offered full 1080p (1920×1080 progressive) resolution wherever content is available.
Starting on August 1 with a Video On Demand option for the movie I Am Legend, the new high resolution programming will supercede the 1080i (interlaced) or 720p which until now was usual HD fare for DISH and other services.
LG Electronics and Netflix are to launch the first Blu-ray Disc player that will have the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix directly to the TV.
The LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player, which is to be launched in the autumn, will play high definition Blu-ray discs and up-convert standard DVDs to 1080p.
Strong demand for digital STBs led to record shipments totalling 143 million units in 2007, according to market analysts In-Stat.
The results ensure that the digital STB market remains one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer electronics industry.
UK set-top box specialist Pace saw box shipments rise 55 per cent in the first half of this year with HDTV-enabled receivers with built-in hard drives fuelling the growth.
Pace is now working with 17 of the world’s top 25 pay-TV operators, and reported a CAGR of its HD-PVR shipments up 49%.
Demand for Full HD TVs is helping to offset the declining market value for UK consumer electronics products, according to a report from market research specialists GfK.
The total market for electrical goods fell in value for the first time for years in May, with A/V turnover down 7 per cent compared to the same period last year.
Display industry veteran Paul Semenza has been named as Display Search’s senior vice president managing its North American and European analyst teams.
With more than 20 years of global market research experience, Semenza most recently served as vice president and manager of iSuppli’s Display Business.