Philip Hunter

The UK’s Freeview service over digital terrestrial has added enhanced interactivity in a bid to keep up with the pay TV sector.

Vodafone German’s decision to pull out of bidding for rights to show Bundesliga football matches highlights the dilemma facing pay-TV service providers.

Consolidation is in the air for Greece’s TV and telecoms market in the midst of the country’s record breaking slump.

Pace set top boxes, deployed by half the world’s leading pay TV operators, could be a Trojan horse bringing Tivo software into many more TV homes.

Spanish triple play operator Jazztel, and Irish broadband provider Magnet Networks, are the latest to trust OTT for paid TV services.

Like DirecTV of the US, Spanish Telco Telefonica has Latin America to thank for strong overall pay TV growth.

Just when it appeared BSkyB may have lost control over sports rights in the UK because of a European court ruling on foreign satellite decoder usage, a legal loophole has allowed it to hit back hard.

Italy has abandoned its beauty contest plan to give DTT channels away for free.

Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator, is accusing incumbent Telco Deutsche Telekom of charging too much for its ducts.

HbbTV has been added to the NorDig specification covering the Nordic countries for IRDs (Integrated Receiver and Decoder), now known as hybridIRDs.

French media conglomerate Vivendi SA has chosen Germany to launch its first Netflix-like subscription video-on-demand service as part of a strategy to become a European wide OTT player.

TVP to start HbbTV service.

Europe is promoting integrated production to reduce the cost and complexity of TV Everywhere deployment, and is also working towards improved interaction between producers and audiences.

Consumers in the UK at least are now willing to pay to watch TV on mobile devices if quality is good enough, according to a survey by online streaming and encoding vendor Viadiator.

Although Asia is catching up with Europe in IPTV subscribers it is falling behind in the proportion of broadband homes reached.

TV Numeric, the only company distributing the French basic pay-DTT package, is considering dropping it after failing to gain many subscribers.

Europe has been battling against African and Middle Eastern countries to preserve spectrum, released by the digital dividend, for terrestrial services.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Media department is being staffed up for its mission to help broadcasters deliver high quality content across all platforms.

Russia could be the next port of call for Netflix in its European expansion with Hulu also in the game.

The year 2011 was the first that the UK cable industry made a collective profit as the leading operator Virgin Media scored with its web connected service based on a TiVo DVR.

As in many other markets, satellite has been gaining market share from cable in Germany, with IPTV also on the rise.