31/1/01

THE NOKIAS HERE, And I am not :-) seeya tommorow

30/1/01

Livechat tonight 8.30pm Sydney time onwards in the chatroom, NOKIA TOMMOROW have paid the customs $183NZ as GST no other charges.

The hackers been reported to their ISP have to wait and see if they have another go at me when they come on later.

From my Emails & ICQ

Dear Sir,

There is a conference about telecommunication ( one or two papers in
satellite communication and related subjects ) to be sponsored by
Iranian government and to be held on Tehran for two weeks. ( end of
August - 10 September 2001 ). People with good knowledge or experience
in these fields are invited to submit their paper and attend.
For more information please contact:

[email protected]

This one from Abdul

Hi how are you going. at home ive currently got a panamsat 2 sattelite and coship reciever.
i love my wcw wrestling, ive looked on your website to see if theres any feeds on wcw. there is but i couldnt figure out the frequency. i was wondering if you can give me some information on wrestling and other sports channels for the panamsat 2 satellite.


Craigs reply, Wrestling pay-perview type events are transmitted I think via the Intelsats usually unencrypted. Here are some other places to look for wrestling, I don't know if there is any via Panamsat 2. I hope you have a moveable dish. For better details check the programs link for these channels on the satellite pages. These ones from a "Sat-Sports" page that I started working on a few weeks ago but have yet to finish.

WWF Smackdown (RCTI, Palapa C2 Friday nights) also on Ekushey TV Friday nights (Asiasat 3)
WWF RAW and WWF Smackdown these 2 are on Starsports (Asiasat 3)
WCW is on Indosair (Palapa C2 Sunday afternoons)

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3695 H "Sky raceing Channels" here have all encrypted

Insat 2E 83E 3620 V VSNL-1 "AAJ Tak" Earthquake feeds here, Sr 3254 fec 3/4 (ZONE BEAM)

Asiasat 2 100.5E 3799 V "APTN Asia" is fta at the moment.

NEWS

Indonesia Satellite Venture Gets India License

From www.satnewsasia.com

ACeS International Ltd., operator of the first satellite based, geostationary handheld mobile telecommunications system designed for the Asian market, has received a license to provide its services in India.

ACeS is a joint venture among mainly Asian investors led by Indonesia's PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN). ACeS uses its ACeS Garuda 1 satellite to deliver mobile services to subscribers throughout Asia. A second satellite, ACeS Garuda 2, will be launched later this year.

The Indian government said that AceS International plans to invest US$30 million in Shyam Telecom Ltd. to enable its system by late 2001. ACeS International president Adi Rahman Adiwoso said his company would soon build an Indian gateway with Shyam, allowing Indian customers to make calls through ACeS Garuda 1.

AceS International has spent some US$675 million for its operations in Indonesia and the Philippines. The company also has licenses to launch in Taiwan and Thailand this year with services in India beginning later on.

The ACeS network supports a subscriber base of over two million users and 126 regional gateway stations but has only 5,000 customers at present. Adi, however, said this figure would rise to 80,000 this year as the company expands its coverage to India.

Adi described India as a good market as the country had only 13 million phone lines in a population of more than one billion people.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said India had 2.7 main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants in 1999. The number of main telephone lines grew 20 percent from 1995 to 1999.

ACeS is co-owned by PSN, Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) and Jasmine International Overseas Company Ltd. of Thailand.

ACeS plans to obtain licenses in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos. In addition, the company has started to lobby China to open China to satellite phone services.

South Korea to Develop Stratospheric Telecommunications

From www.satnewsasia.com

South Korea will continue developing its own stratospheric telecommunications services and will invest over US$7.9 million to build this new telecom platform.

The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MCIE) said it would develop the platform in partnership with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. It expects the system to become operational on or before 2010.

Stratospheric telecommunication services utilize unmanned 150-meter platforms orbiting 20 kilometers above the Earth that provide high resolution, long duration and constant time data and imagery over a specific area. MCIE said South Korea plans to orbit a number of these platforms, each of which will be able to process 200,000 lines.

Unlike ordinary GEO, MEO and LEO satellites, stratospheric platforms can be retrieved, repaired and returned to orbit, extending their life span. Satellites normally have an in-orbit life span ranging from 10 to less than 20 years.

The United States, Japan and the European Union are currently investing in stratospheric platforms. Japan has announced an investment of 100 billion yen to develop its platform, called Skynet, by 2007.

MCIE said Koreas stratospheric telecommunication project is part of the national effort to develop a national telecom network based on broadband technologies. Korea already has the most number of broadband subscribers in the world.

SingTel Aeradio Selects Norsat To Provide DVB Data Hub For New Broadband Services

From www.satnewsasia.com

SingTel Aeradio Pte Ltd. (SAPL), a wholly owned subsidiary of SingTel Group, will soon begin operating a DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) Data Hub for its SingTel Satellite DVB-IP High Speed Integrated Service System.

The data hub will be provided by Norsat International Inc. Called SpectraWorks DVB Data Hub, the system is fully redundant and easily installable. Delivery and installation are expected to be completed this February.

Norsat designs, engineers and markets products for use in the satellite wireless communications industry. It has two principal operating units: Norsat Broadband Networks (satellite broadband terminals and DVB Data Hubs for the broadband IP market) and Norsat Atlanta (VSAT components and after-market maintenance and repair services)..

SAPL is a leading IT service provider in Singapore and has extensive experience in providing consultancy and design services, systems integration and maintenance of enterprise network infrastructure in both the public and private sectors in Singapore. Its customers include government agencies, educational institutions, aviation and service industries and the property sectors.

Since the 1950s, SAPL has provided consultancy on airport projects and facilities management services to the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), Meteorological Service, Marine Departments, RSAF and other airport operators and agencies in Singapore.

India's Satyam Infoway to Launch 4th Satellite Gateway

Satyam Infoway Ltd., a major Indian Internet and e-commerce provider, said it would soon launch its fourth international satellite gateway.

To be located at Pune, the gateway will enable faster Internet downloads and faster transmission on the backbone network. Satyams other satellite gateways are located at Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.

Thirteen more gateway are being built by Satyam in 13 cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Cochin, Chandigarh, Jamshedpur, Lucknow and Bhopal.

The launch of the Pune gateway will make Satyam the only Indian Internet provider to have four operational satellite gateways.

Satyam said that international traffic is routed through these gateways and will not flow into the national long distance links of its Internet backbone network.

Satyams chief technology officer Rahul Swarup said that the company is partnering with Singtel, New Skies and Loral Cyberstar for these gateways.

Satyam is Indias largest integrated Internet and e-Commerce services company. It offers end-to-end solutions with a range of products delivered over a common Internet backbone infrastructure.

The Company derives a substantial portion of its revenue from corporate services (B2B) that include corporate connectivity, network and communications solutions and integrated e-Solutions, such as consulting, execution, management and hosting.

Tandberg Television Provides Digital Solutions to Launch TV Today's Uplink Facility in India

From www.satnewsasia.com

Tandberg Television, a leading supplier of open solutions for digital broadcasting, and Business Partner, Horizon Broadcast announced the installation of evolution 5000 encoders and modulators into TV Today's uplink facility, for the first 24 hour digital news channel to be uplinked from India.

TV Today, a privately owned broadcast production company, has built the new uplink facility to expand its content distribution network by utilizing the latest available technology to deliver satellite feeds. The project is the culmination of more than 2 and a half years of world wide research and planning, and the platform installed reflects a move to digital output in line with plans to provide increased news feed services with plans to expand to the neighboring countries.

The solution reduces transmission costs and provides a point of entry for future digital expansion with flexibility and expandability. TV Today operates a news production house, creating original national and regional current affairs programming for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The uplink facility is designed to build on its existing supply relationship with Doordarshan and add revenue by providing digitally compressed news feeds to new customers.

Anoop Varma, Manager, Network Distribution, at TV Today said, "this solution is not just one of the best available - we found it to be the most compatible with the state of the art technology we imported from all over the world to set up this world class facility." He went on to say, "the solution is simple and provides us with the technology to launch the new service now and the flexibility to expand easily as we upgrade."

"The Indian broadcasting market is very important to Tandberg Television and we are pleased to assist companies with entry-level digital transmission solutions," says Sue Gilks, Business Partner Development Manager for Asia at Tandberg Television. "We will continue to work closely with TV Today, ensuring that this solution provides the most effective cost of ownership and helps the company to achieve its plans for step-by-step expansion."

29/1/01

The internet problems I was having turned out to be someone trying to hack into my pc. My Blackice firewall stopped them easy enough so no harm done. On Thursday everything from January will be compiled and uploaded to the history page. Theres a survey type thing below I can't give any details of this planned channel yet. I could of set it up via one of those online interactive surveys but I didn't have the time to stuff around with it.

Something Different for today

There is a new FTA cband channel (in ENGLISH) hopefully comming soon via
Panamsat 2 now is your chance to have your suggestions passed on to those
involved.

Please type yes/no or whatever answer you thinks suitable
As a FTA satellite tv viewer are you interested in the following types of
programming.

Music (English)
Arts programming
Live Theatre
News
Cartoons
Sports
Comedy
Learn English type educational programs?
Sitcoms (U.K or U.S)
Drama
Documentrys
Movies
Childrens programming
Game Shows
Adults ONLY (Porn)

Replies to me or via the mailing list, no names will be usesd, just a straight count of votes. Results will go straight to those involved in the project along with any other comments people would like to add

From my Emails and ICQ

This question via the mailing list from S. Singh

Hello,

I sometime back asked a question here about Thaicom 3
but so far I seem to have gotten no response, so I'll
ask it again. If anyone can then please help.

Question:

Thaicom 3 3640 H sr. 28066.
When you download this frequency, it brings up
12 channels of which only "Mega Cosmos" actually shows
something. The other 11 like "MRTV", "TRT", etc. do not
show anything but they download with their names. They
don't even say if they are scrambled or something like
that. Any ideas??

S. Singh.

Craigs reply, anyone know about this one?

From Bill Richards

All on Pas 2 4058 V Sr 13382 Fec 3/4 All Encrypted

Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "TVB8" Vpid 1160 Apid 1120 SID 1
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "TVBJ" Vpid 1260 Apid 1220 SID 2
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "Xing He" Vpid 1360 Apid 1320 SID 3
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "Utility" Vpid 1460 Apid 1420 SID 4
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "Xing Cantonese" Vpid 1360 Apid 1322 SID 301

Regards
Bill

This from Selwyn at TELSAT

Hi All,

There has been some discussion in this group about S Band hardware.

If you are looking to purchase a S Band feed horn or LNB you may like to consider the following options that we can offer you ex stock.

Seavy S Band Feed Horn, model ESR-20-4, a prime focus linear horn with a N output connector. these are priced at NZ$310.00ea plus GST and freight.

For a good LNB we can offer the Cal-Amp S Band LNB model 31203, noise figure is .7dB typical. It has a N male input connector and a F female output (IF) connector. The IF frequency is from 950mHz to 1150mHz., gain is 58dB. DC supply power is +15 to +28vDC. These LNBs are available at NZ$180.00ea plus GST and freight.

The S Band feed horns and LNBs have an input frequency range of 2500 to 2700mHz.

Note 12.5% GST only applies in NZ clients. Other Countries may be subject to different taxs.


Cheers,Selwyn (TELSAT)

This also from Telsat,

Intelsat reports the following changes that will effect the Pacific region (POR) users.
This configuration is based on a two degree configuration. Intelsat 702 is now been repositioned to 176 degrees East, which was moved from 177 degrees East. Intelsat 701 remains at 180 degrees East. Intelsat 802 remains at 174 degrees East.Intelsat 602 will be moved into the 178 degree slot and will be in an inclined orbit. This will occur in May 2001. The third phase will occur in 2003 when Intelsat 705 will replace Intelsat 602.

The two degree spacing will challenge domestic antenna manufacturers.
Beamwidths of the typical domestic mesh antennas will likely mean the two satellites will be received simultaneously.

Alex in Perth says I804 3651 R Sr 5730 Fec 3/4 NDTV is fta at the moment

Andrew Harrison in Vanuatu has provided a lot more details of his system, see his updated page in the user pages section.

If you want a user page where you can show off your dish and hardware (or even nudie pics of the wife) just send me the pictures (Do not re jpg them etc, I can take care of that) and the info of your setup and as much or little info as you want to supply on the page, e.g icq number yes/no email address yes/no etc and I will fix up a page for you. Just look at what others have put to get an idea.

From the Dish

Panamsat 2 169E Channels below started All on Pas 2 4058 V Sr 13382 Fec 3/4 All Encrypted

Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "TVB8" Vpid 1160 Apid 1120 SID 1
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "TVBJ" Vpid 1260 Apid 1220 SID 2
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "Xing He" Vpid 1360 Apid 1320 SID 3
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "Utility" Vpid 1460 Apid 1420 SID 4
Panamsat 2 169E 4058 V "Xing Cantonese" Vpid 1360 Apid 1322 SID 301

NEWS

Seven pulls out its digit

From http://www.theage.com.au/business/2001/01/27/FFXPV7LQEIC.html

The Seven Network this week became the first commercial broadcaster to demonstrate multi-view digital technology, broadcasting four TV sub-channels during the final week of the Australian Open.

The Nine and Ten Networks are not far behind, with Ten planning a multi-view broadcast of the final round of the Canon Challenge at Sydney's Castle Hill course tomorrow.

Federal Government legislation does not permit commercial TV stations to show new channels on their digital signals.

But the stations can multi-view - the broadcasting on sub-channels of other camera angles or information from a sporting venue.

Although Seven's move was the first since digital TV launched on January 1, Ten has conducted extensive multi-view trials during last year's Melbourne Cup and FAI 1000.

Nine says it will be doing multi-views at the one-day cricket final in Sydney on February 7.

The new Seven channels, which could be seen only by the 500 or so people in Australia with the set-top boxes needed to pick up the signal, were on display to advertisers and advertising agencies at the tennis.

One channel featured IBM statistics on the players' progress. Another featured the tennis telecast boxed in the centre of the screen around which advertising logos flashed.

A third channel showed the tennis action from a camera in the roof directly behind the umpire. The fourth channel gave another cut of the TV broadcast seen by most people.

This meant that while home viewers might have been shown a player preparing to serve, those with a set-top box could see a crowd shot at the same time.

Seven head of sport Tony Sinclair said the multi-views were giving production staff a chance to experiment with different styles of broadcasting. "The hardest thing will be coming up with something people will want to watch as an alternative to the main telecast," he said.

Mr Sinclair said the British experience was that die-hard fans preferred to concentrate on the game.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TO ENTER CHINESE TV MARKET

From TSI CHANNEL NEWS - Number 04/2001 (18.01.2001)

National Geographic is set for a breakthrough into the potentially lucrative
Chinese TV market through a distribution deal with China Central Television,
the nations largest network. The science and nature program supplier will have
the potential to reach a large portion of Chinas population, which now exceeds
1.2 billion people. Central to the arrangement is EarthNetMedia, which has
inked an agreement with CCTV to distribute and broadcast National Geographic
programming throughout China. EarthNet is a Los Angeles-based production
company providing product for broadcast and the Internet.

JAPAN

CONSORTIUM LAUNCHES SATELLITE BROADCASTER

From TSI CHANNEL NEWS - Number 04/2001 (18.01.2001)

A consortium of Japanese companies, including Jupiter Satellite Broadcasting,
Jupiter Programming, Sony Broadcast Media, Nihon Keizai Shimbun and TV Tokyo,
has launched Interactive, a broadcaster that plans to operate six speciality
channels, including a movie channel, on the N-SAT-110 communications satellite
from March 2002. Jupiter Satellite Broadcasting will own 30 per cent of the
start-up while Sony Broadcast Media will hold 15 per cent, Jupiter Programming
12.5 per cent and TV Tokyo and Nihon Keizai Shimbun 12.25 per cent each.
Interactive will operate six speciality channels devoted to films, animation,
economic news, TV shopping, golf and entertainment aimed at women. It will also
offer various interactive services, including data broadcasts and home
shopping.

China plans to leapfrog western digital TV specs

From http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010126S0032

In a blow to U.S. and European digital TV standards being heavily promoted in China, the country's foremost technology university has joined with a Chinese-owned U.S. technology partner in a closely held digital TV development effort.

Sources said the alliance is designed to forge a DTV transmission standard for China that combines spread-spectrum and orthogonal frequency-division multiplex technologies. With an eye to future mobile applications, the standard, if successful, could leapfrog dated U.S. and European specs, some observers said.

The digital transmission technology is being explored by researchers at Tsinghua University, based here, together with Legend Silicon (Fremont, Calif.). The goal of the group is to develop "a robust and yet very flexible, future-proof modulation scheme," said Lin Yang, Legend Silicon's chairman and president.

Borrowing heavily from telecommunications schemes, the new DTV transmission technology is designed to allow China to use its DTV spectrum not only for standard- and high-definition TV broadcasting but also for future data services and even cellular phone applications.

"If China wants to jump start its information industry, we need a DTV standard that uses its spectrum efficiently," Yang said. "We regard this as a serious natural-resource issue."

Seventy-five percent of China's available spectrum under 1 GHz is set aside for TV applications. Of the remainder, 10 to 15 percent is controlled by the military and the rest is available for existing cell phone applications. Hence, some engineering executives here said China needs a DTV standard that allows the sharing of spectrum reserved for broadcasting with emerging information delivery services.

Third way


As a result, Chinese government officials and industry executives, along with their U.S.-based partners, appear committed to developing a third way to launch digital TV broadcasts, based neither on U.S. nor European digital TV specs. Both U.S. and European camps have waged lobbying efforts to persuade the Chinese government to adopt their differing approaches to digital broadcasting. But beyond trials, neither has received a firm commitment from Beijing.

China has been carefully monitoring the slow deployment of digital TV in the United States and Europe. Persistent DTV transmission problems, particularly with the U.S. vestigial sideband (8-VSB) modulation scheme, have "worried us somewhat," Yang said, "but it also convinced us that there is an opportunity" for China to create its own DTV standard.

Observers here and in the United States agree that China will go its own way.

"Whatever they adopt will be called a Chinese standard," said Robert Graves, chairman of the U.S. Advanced Television Systems Committee. "They do seem quite intent on putting their own stamp on whatever standard they pick."

A Chinese DTV standard that incorporates a combination of broadcast and spread-spectrum technologies "is going to happen," asserted Ya-Qin Zhang, managing director of Microsoft Research China, here, and a former video engineer with U.S. HDTV Grand Alliance member Sarnoff Corp.

Responding to the Chinese government's plan to roll out digital TV broadcasts in 2003, three different groups are expected to submit unique terrestrial DTV transmission technologies to the Standards Institute of the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (Sarft). In May, lab testing, followed by field tests, is scheduled in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The tests will provide side-by-side comparisons of the homegrown systems with the U.S. Advanced Television Systems Committee spec, Europe's Digital Video Broadcast standard and Japan's Terrestrial Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB-T). The deadline for submitting DTV technology proposals is April 30.

Technology teams


Besides the Tsinghua University group, the competing DTV technology development teams are the HDTV Technical Expert Executive Group (TEEG), headed by Wenjun Zhang, and the Academy of Broadcasting Science (ABS) team, led by Baichuan Du.

Zhang said his test system has a mobile telecommunications feature that uses coded orthogonal frequency-division modulation (COFDM). "We own the intellectual property rights of the technologies," he said. "They are based on QAM [quadrature amplitude modulation]."

TEEG, backed by China's Ministry of Science and Technology as well as China's State Planning and Development Committee, has already developed China's first two prototype DTV systems, based on 8-VSB and the COFDM multiplex scheme. Some observers said TEEG may be furthest along in implementing 8-VSB and COFDM.

Meanwhile, the Academy of Broadcasting Science group is working on the modified version of QAM technology for terrestrial DTV transmission. The group's goal is to use 64 QAM both for cable and terrestrial DTV modulation.

The ABS group is reportedly using a VSB/QAM chip supplied by Broadcom Corp. It is leveraging a large number of filter taps built into the Broadcom chip's equalizer, originally designed for better VSB reception, to minimize delays associated with QAM-based terrestrial DTV transmission.

"It is not so clear which technology will be China's final choice," said Du, vice president of ABS. "But it's obvious that China needs a technology of its own.

Up to now, the Tsinghua University group has been secretive about its DTV work. Of the three efforts, industry sources said, the Tsinghua team appears to have the most novel and perhaps the most ambitious solution.

The project is overseen by the State Key Lab for Microwave and Digital Communication and is led by Tsinghua professor Ke Gong.

Legend Silicon, cofounded by three Tsinghua University graduates transplanted to Silicon Valley, is a member of the National Key Lab's Digital TV Transmission Technology Development Center. Legend Silicon executives said they expect to receive transmitter and receiver chips based on the company's designs from an unnamed fab outside China by the end of March.

Responding to doubts about China's chip-design capabilities, Legend Silicon's Yang, also a Tsinghua professor, said, "We've done solid computer simulation designs and have a very good design flow." After completing the design work, "we got it working [last] July," Yang said. "We had no problems in signing off ASIC designs either."

The National Key Lab is also equipped with Cadence Design tools and serves as a design training center. Yang is a former director of the wireless group at Cadence's Design Services Group.

Leapfrog approach

If China succeeds in developing its own DTV standard, some experts said it might be able to leapfrog U.S. and European DTV standards. Political disputes dogging those standards have made technology upgrades difficult.

Whereas the underlying technologies of the U.S. standard were developed a decade ago, the Chinese DTV effort aims to respond to the future needs of the converging communication, TV and Internet industries. Indeed, when the U.S industry was developing its DTV spec, there was no requirement for either mobile or Internet applications.

"China today is working on a homework assignment" very different from the one given earlier to U.S. developers, Yang said.

The core DTV transmission technology, designed by Tsinghua's Key Lab, is called time-domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM). While maintaining data rates as high as 32 Mbits/second to cater to multimedia services, TDS-OFDM is designed for better synchronization of mobile and burst data broadcasting.

Using TDS-OFDM, transmission signals are separated into two parts: synchronization signals, used primarily for channel selection, and signals that carry actual programs. "We use spread-spectrum technology to send synchronization data, while we depend on OFDM to send continuous TV broadcast programs," Yang said. Spread spectrum is used for the synchronized signals, Yang said, because they need to remain "robust and easy to detect in a very noisy environment."

Signals saved

Illustrating the importance of synchronization, Yang said the biggest DTV problem is the so-called cliff effect, wherein a digital receiver goes dark if signal reception is poor. By integrating control signals in the synchronized data, sent separately with digital broadcasts using spread-spectrum technology, consumers could, for example, use such signals to adjust an antenna to receive pictures.

Tsinghua University has also developed a DTV protocol, Digital Multimedia Broadcast-Terrestrial (DMB-T), that could allow an 8-MHz DTV channel to be reused for cellular network applications.

"We have 10 million people living in Beijing alone," Yang said. "If all these people wanted data services and video-on-demand services at the same time, we'd have a problem. We need a technology that supports multiple RF, signal RF and cellular networks."

Developing its own intellectual property is another goal of China's DTV effort. Yang described Tsinghua's DMB-T approach as "a lot of public domain technologies combined together." But Key Lab has filed for a patent covering the entire system. Seven others have been filed for individual transmission technologies.

To drive standards, Key Lab also plans to submit its technology to the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva.

28/1/01

Sorry no update today, got lots of internet related problems..back tommorow

27/1/01

Not much for today, I won't be able to pick up the Nokia untill Tuesday. Egroups has been taken over by Yahoo so now any messages sent to the mailing list can go via [email protected] or [email protected] if you log in to egroups to read the mailing list messages then you will have to convert to a Yahoo i.d.

Andrew Harrison added to user pages

Page to be trimmed tommorow

From my Emails and ICQ

This from Bill Richards,

2100 UTC

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3685 H "Mediasat-SYD test card" Sr 5000 Fec 3/4

Regards
Bill

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3682 H "Mediasat Syd is testing" Sr 4998 Fec 3/4 Vpid 4096 Apid 4097

Asiasat 3S 105.5E 4180 V "Testcard that was here has left"

Optus B3 156E "C7 sports feed seen of womans cricket via Mediasat"

NEWS

Charlton enters Asian TV

From http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1643405%255E462,00.html

BUSINESS magazine publisher and events organiser First Charlton Communications is set to launch a new Asian satellite television service in February with Bloomberg Television.

A weekend political and business program is being crafted as Bloomberg TV looks for more content on its weekend platform, usually a quiet time for the service given the dominance of its financial programming.

"Australia is major news in Asia and will be increasingly so," Charlton Communications chairman Peter Charlton said.

"And the political and social unrest in parts of Asia also makes our role more important."
He declined to comment on the level of investment the two companies were putting into the venture.
The move comes ahead of a decision by the federal Government on a new subsidised Asian TV service.
The Australian reported yesterday that Kerry Stokes' Seven Network could be set to win the five-year $50 million contract.
Charlton Communications also bid for Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade contract.

Mr Charlton said he had not heard if the winning bidder for the Asian TV service had been decided.
But in what could be manoeuvring ahead of the Government's decision, Mr Charlton said the Bloomberg TV venture was going ahead regardless of the outcome.
"I believe in it and if Foreign Affairs want to subsidise Kerry Stokes that's their choice."
But he said it would be an extraordinary decision to award the contract to Seven after what he said some regarded as a patchy record broadcasting to Asia via Australia TV, a platform it acquired from the ABC three years ago.

Under Seven the service has been criticised as failing to meet Australia's national interest objectives and being too commercial.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade tender for the Asian service said it would back an Asian TV service which supported "Australia's national interests in the Asia-Pacific region".

Digital TV to a PC near you

From http://australianit.news.com.au/common/storyPage/0,3811,1640942%5E442,00.html

DIGITAL television was supposed to deliver new services to TV viewers, but new datacasting applications are more likely to be accessed via personal computers, a government sales brochure revealed yesterday.

The promotional document for datacasting licences also states that new media players might be able to convert their datacasting investment to a full broadcasting service in 2006, but will not know their future until 2005.

The brochure for Australia's new digital TV regime, prepared by Deutsche Bank on behalf of the Australian Communications Authority for media groups in Australia and overseas, has emphasised the technology's slow start in Australia.

The ACA yesterday formally called for applications for the datacasting auction, scheduled for March or April.

The document says the possibility of becoming a full broadcaster in six years is one of the biggest attractions of a datacasting licence, but also points out that virtually no one in Australia is yet able to see a datacasting transmission because of the low number of digital TV sets and set-top boxes. It also says datacasting services will be available through personal computers capable of terrestrial reception.

Broadcasters started transmitting digital TV signals on January 1, but almost no Australian viewers yet have access to the digital TV spectrum.

Datacasting is an Australian-only definition of media services designed to ensure new services on digital TV do not compete with, or look like, traditional television.

Free-to-air broadcasters, including Kerry Packer's Nine Network, last year won the legislative protection from new competition for at least six years.

John Fairfax, Telstra and News Limited publisher of The Australian had wanted to use digital TV to offer new services. But last week both Fairfax and News repeated that they would not bid for a datacasting licence, saying the Government's rules were "too restrictive".

Datacasters are allowed to offer internet carriage services; limited excerpts of news, weather and other programs; electronic TV program guides; and interactive services such as home banking, shopping, games and email.

With the key Australian media players unlikely to take part, there is now uncertainty about how much money the datacasting auction will raise.

The sale of licences could still raise some cash towards the $2.6 billion spectrum sale target, set by Treasurer Peter Costello last year. But that target will only be met if overseas media groups decide datacasting is a multi-million dollar industry; and if Australia's 3G mobile phone spectrum sale, also due to start in the next few weeks, attracts bids worth at least $2 billion.

Interactive TV? Yes, but not yet

From http://australianit.news.com.au/common/storyPage/0,3811,1635356%255E442,00.html

A NEW interactive television venture is expected to begin commercial operations by May.

Total Television, launched locally last year, will focus on video on demand. It is a joint venture of Yes Television, a UK i-TV company, and CableandTelecoms, a local telco.

YesTV would supply the project with content, software and management services, chairman and chief executives Thomas Kressner said.

Customers can view the service on their existing television equipped with a set-top box and infra-red keyboard supplied by Total TV.

They also need broadband access to their home, which Australian telcos have been slow to roll out.
Mr Kressner said the roll-out would become faster as services such as Total TV became available.

Total TV differentiated itself from existing pay-TV and video-on-demand services by providing more varied content, including internet access and flexible programming, Mr Kressner said.

Viewers could watch what they wanted when they wanted, he said.

YesTV's platform was IP-based, making it "network-agnostic", Mr Kressner said.

The service relied on Total TV forming partnerships with ISPs, e-commerce providers and other online businesses to supply interactive services, Mr Kressner said.

It was in discussions with three ISPs and expected to make an announcement within two months, he said.

The first commercial service would be installed in a Melbourne apartment building in May.

YesTV was launching similar services in Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Hong Kong and Manila, he said.

The company had not finalised costing, but it would be "very competitive", Mr Kessner said.

www.yestelevision.com

Zee readies launch of five new serials

From indiantelevision.com

Come February and the question of whether the Zee empire can strike back after the disaster that was 2000 should become clear. Five new serials are ready for launch and there is a lot riding on them as chairman Subhash Chandra takes his channel back to the future with its core competence of making great programmes.

The five new serials are 'Samander', 'Aanchal Ke Chaon Mein', 'Gardish', 'Anokhee' and 'Kaise Kahoon', Zee Telefilms' Vinod Menon said.

Menon was, however, unable to provide much details other than revealing that two of the serials would be aired at prime time. "Two of these serials will be aired in the prime time slot while two are likely to be slotted at noon," Menon said.

According to press reports, 'Gardish', produced by Ravi Rai, will be telecast every Tuesday while 'Aanchal' will be aired every Wednesday. These are the days when Zee's television rating points (TRPs) are the lowest.

The latest Intam data for the three-week period starting December 18, 2000, indicates that Zee's TRPs have seen a sharp fall in the 9:30 pm to 10 pm slot for Tuesday and Wednesday while, on Monday, Thursday and Friday, the ratings were comparatively better.

26/1/01

No Nokia yet. Will have to wait untill Tuesday now, as Mondays a holiday. Theres an interesting news article in the news section on how Directtv in the U.S is fighting back against the card hackers. Theres a magazine out in the shops called "Satellite Tests 2001" which has some interesting writeups, on receivers such as the Humax 5400, Benjamin 6600CI, Hyundai HSS 800Ci, Various Strong models etc I brought it for the review of the Manhattan DSR 2500- APCI which I am considering.

From my emails and ICQ

Mike of Melbourne writes (Via the mailing list)

Hello group

I am having a problem that is getting worse by the month.

I live in Melbourne and I am looking at Thaicom 3 with a 3.7M Dish
Lately i have been losing service from this bird (all transponders) at
around 5 am in the morning lasting most of the day (usually back by 5 or 6 pm).

Can someone tell me what the hell is wrong?????
It used to play all day, with no problems.
all help will be welcome


mike

[email protected]

Bill Richards supplies the following

0425UTC

Optus B1 160E 12425 H "Golf PGA Tour" Sr 6610 Fec 3/4 Vpid 308 Apid 256

0507UTC

Thaicom3 78.5E 3685 H "Unknown Live Camera looking at yacht racing? "Sr 5000 Fec 3/4 Vpid 4096 Apid 4097

0513UTC

Optus B3 12359 V "Live Cricket Feed" Sr 6110 Fec 3/4 Vpid 1120 Apid 1160

From Pete Patel in Portland, Oregon

My friend has just seen an analog signal on Spacenet 4 172E 3920 V

(Craigs reply waiting on an email from Pete with more details, someone in Northern Australia might like to try for it will need a big dish as the beams not supposed to go South)

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3682 H "Live Test shot card" Sr 4998 Fec 3/4 Vpid 4096 Apid 4097 (Global Beam)

ST 1 88E 3550 V "Open TV" FTA currently
ST 1 88E 3632 V "HKTV" FTA curren

Spacenet 4 172E 3920 V Analog seen here?

NEWS

Subhash Chandra revives satellite project

MEDIA MOGUL Subhash Chandra is reviving his ambitious Agrani project by promoting a new company -- Agrani Satellite Services -- for the purpose.

Chandra and his associates, who comprise the Essel Group, have promoted Agrani Satellite Services which plans to set up a regional geo-stationery orbit satellite-based infrastructure for proving bandwidth to various television broadcasting and distribution companies, internet service providers and other telecom service providers.

The total project cost has been estimated at a whopping Rs 1,150 crore. The company has sought financial assistance from the Industrial Development Bank of India, and the matter will be taken up at the financial institution's executive committee meeting, scheduled for January 29.

The original cost of the Agrani project was pegged at Rs 3,000 crore. However, the project got derailed following the US state department's refusal to grant an export licence for the satellite.

The satellite was to be provided by US-based aviation major, Lockheed Martin. The financial closure of this project was never achieved and the lead institution -- the Industrial Finance Corporation of India -- backed out of the deal.

This time, ASSL proposes to acquire an existing satellite from French major Alcatel Space Industries. The satellite was built in 1997 for use by Shinawatra Satellite, Thailand. It was, however, never used and was lying in storage for three years.

The satellite, now known as Thaicom-4, will be re-christened as Agrani-2. It will have 12 C-band transponders for India coverage, 12 widebeam C-band transponders for Asia coverage and 14 Ku-band transponders.

Of the Ku-band transponders, seven would have a fixed India coverage, three would have a steerable coverage over Europe, Middle East and South East Asia and the remaining four transponders will be switchable between fixed and steerable. These transponders have a total bandwidth of 1,404 MHz.

The satellite will be ready for delivery in about 19 months. The company has already identified Ariane 5 Launch Vehicle of Arianespace, France, for launching the satellite.

ASSL has signed a deal with Alcatel on January 12, 2000, which will ensure that the project will be implemented within the stipulated time and at the fixed price. About 18 per cent of the satellite's capacity is proposed to be utilised by companies of the Essel Group.

Of the total project cost of Rs 1,150 crore, the equity component is Rs 460 crore, while the rupee term loan is Rs 690 crore. While IDBI has been approached for a loan of Rs 350 crore, the balance is proposed to be tied up from other financial institutions and banks.

The equity capital of Rs 460 crore is proposed to be subscribed to by the promoters which include Subhash Chandra and his associates, and other strategic investors such as Alcatel and Arianespace.

However, pending finalisation of the terms of the subscription by the strategic investors, the entire equity is proposed to be subscribed by the Zee-Essel Group for the time being.

DirecTV's Secret War On Hackers

From http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/25/1343218.shtml

Belch writes "4 or more years ago DirecTV launched its service. DirecTV was one of the very first large distributors of smart card technology in their product. So much so, that Hughes corp. (the primary owner of DirecTV) decided to create their own smart cards. Each receiver has a smart card located inside that is keyed to the subscriber, and actively participates in the decryption of the digital satellite video stream. However, considering Hughes decided on this technology when it was virtually in its infancy, they made several mistakes. The hacker community caught onto these mistakes, and there has been a war between DirecTV and the hacking community ever since. For the past two or more years, it was apparent the hacking community would win this war, completely opening the DirecTV signal. However, over the last 6 months, DirecTV has fought back with a vengeance, displaying the most extensive technical campaign against the hacking of their product..." Click through for the rest of the story.

"Allow me to give you some background.

"One of the original smart cards, entitled 'H' cards for Hughes, had design flaws which were discovered by the hacking community. These flaws enabled the extremely bright hacking community to reverse engineer their design, and to create smart card writers. The writers enabled the hackers to read and write to the smart card, and allowed them to change their subscription model to receive all the channels. Since the technology of satellite television is broadcast only, meaning you cannot send information TO the satellite, the system requires a phone line to communicate with DirecTV. The hackers could re-write their smart cards and receive all the channels, and unplug their phone lines leaving no way for DirecTV to track the abuse. DirecTV had built a mechanism into their system that allowed the updating of these smart cards through the satellite stream. Every receiver was designed to 'apply' these updates when it received them to the cards. DirecTV applied updates that looked for hacked cards, and then attempted to destroy the cards by writing updates that disabled them. The hacking community replied with yet another piece of hardware, an 'unlooper,' that repaired the damage. The hacker community then designed software that trojanized the card, and removed the capability of the receivers to update the card. DirecTV could only send updates to the cards, and then require the updates be present in order to receive video. Each month or so, DirecTV would send an update. 10 or 15 minutes later, the hacking community would update the software to work around the latest fixes. This was the status quo for almost two years. 'H' cards regularly sold on eBay for over $400.00. It was apparent that DirecTV had lost this battle, relegating DirecTV to hunting down Web sites that discussed their product and using their legal team to sue and intimidate them into submission.

"Four months ago, however, DirecTV began sending several updates at a time, breaking their pattern. While the hacking community was able to bypass these batches, they did not understand the reasoning behind them. Never before had DirecTV sent 4 and 5 updates at a time, yet alone send these batches every week. Many postulated they were simply trying to annoy the community into submission. The updates contained useless pieces of computer code that were then required to be present on the card in order to receive the transmission. The hacking community accommodated this in their software, applying these updates in their hacking software. Not until the final batch of updates were sent through the stream did the hacking community understand DirecTV. Like a final piece of a puzzle allowing the entire picture, the final updates made all the useless bits of computer code join into a dynamic program, existing on the card itself. This dynamic program changed the entire way the older technology worked. In a masterful, planned, and orchestrated manner, DirecTV had updated the old and ailing technology. The hacking community responded, but cautiously, understanding that this new ability for DirecTV to apply more advanced logic in the receiver was a dangerous new weapon. It was still possible to bypass the protections and receive the programming, but DirecTV had not pulled the trigger of this new weapon.

"Last Sunday night, at 8:30 pm est, DirecTV fired their new gun. One week before the Super Bowl, DirecTV launched a series of attacks against the hackers of their product. DirecTV sent programmatic code in the stream, using their new dynamic code ally, that hunted down hacked smart cards and destroyed them. The IRC DirecTV channels overflowed with thousands of people who had lost the ability to watch their stolen TV. The hacking community by and large lost not only their ability to watch TV, but the cards themselves were likely permanently destroyed. Some estimate that in one evening, 100,000 smart cards were destroyed, removing 98% of the hacking communities' ability to steal their signal. To add a little pizzazz to the operation, DirecTV personally "signed" the anti-hacker attack. The first 8 computer bytes of all hacked cards were rewritten to read "GAME OVER".

* Australian launch sites, Part 4,402

From [sat-nd] 26.01.2001

"Australia's fifth attempt at establishing a satellite launching station may
be saved from the scrap heap after a breakthrough in negotiations over the site
off Western Australia's north-west coast," reports the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation. The problem: the land on Christmas Island needed for the A$800
million facility is owned by a mining company. Now, Phosphate Resources Limited
(PRL) seems prepared to sell.

An agreement with Asia Pacific Space Station (APSS) is subject only to the
approval of PRL's directors and shareholders, PRL stated. The board of
directors is to decide next week. Territories Minister Ian Macdonald facilitated
a meeting between the proponents earlier this month in an effort to move
negotiations forward.

25/1/01

No Nokia yet hope it gets here Friday as we have a 3 day weekend with Monday being a holiday :-( Not much news or anything else today.

From my Emails & ICQ

RE: Subject: S band LNBF

Hi Craig
I can source those S Band LNBF. Just pass along my email address to whoever want's one.

Regards Dave Ross (Australia)

Craigs reply, those interested send me an email and I will pass Daves email address on to you.

RE: Cakrawarta 1 Reception

Indovision alive and well on 2.4 Solid.
Port Vila Vanuatu.
locks on 1.8m Jonsa as well

Andrew Harrison

Here a couple more shots taken with a digital camera

Perhaps a few shots of the receiver next?

G'day Craig
Just wondering what happened to your sat trader page. A google search led me
there (I'm after a rack-mounted IRD) but I just got a 404 error.


Alice

Craigs reply, The Sattrader page has been removed to be replaced by a more friendly message board based buy/sell swap forum. (Eventually) In the meantime anyone can send me adverts and I will put the up on the front page.

From the Dish

Nothing to report!

NEWS

B4U denies partners finalised for DTH project

From Indiantelevision.com

B4U Entertainment on Wednesday confirmed that it was exploring various avenues of entering direct-to-home (DTH) television but denied reports that the international partners had already been finalised.

"We are working towards it (DTH) but nothing has been decided as of now," B4U Entertainment CEO Ravi Gupta said. "We are only in the initial stages of talks with a possible parter," he added. He was referring to a press report that EuropeStar (a satellite company) and Mindport (provider of conditional access technology) were each to take 20 per cent stakes along with B4U for the project. The report also said talks were on to rope in a leading set top box manufacturer for the project as the fourth partner could provide finance if not technology.

Queried about the possibility of teaming up with Doordarshan for an alliance, Gupta said: "Everybody is talking to possible partners and DD is just one of them."

NZ Dollar and Olympics Hits Canwest Profits

From http://www.spectrum.net.nz

A weak New Zealand Dollar and viewers switching channels to watch the Olympics lead to a down turn in profits for TV3 and TV4 in the last three months.

A report released by parent company CanWest Global Communications said TV3 and TV4's net profit was down $C345,000 ($NZ510,000) from $4.7 million for the same period last year.

CanWest said its New Zealand operation was hit by an 18 per cent fall in the value of the New Zealand dollar over the period. The fall in the currency reduced earnings by $C5 million. TV3 and TV4's combined revenue for the quarter fell from $C22.6 million to $C16.9 million.

The network was also hit by the flight of viewers watching the Sydney Olympics broadcast by state-owned rival, Television New Zealand.

However, Spectrum understands CanWest made a profit from its recently purchased local radio interests. Profits from the More FM and RadioWorks networks were up from $C1.5 million to $C3.9 million.

Brent Impey, the head of CanWest's New Zealand operations, said that although the next quarterly result would also be soft, he expected a pick up in TV3's earnings during the March-to-May quarter.

CanWest reported a total operating profit for the quarter of $C108 million, up from $C99 million.

24/1/01

Several people are looking for a cheap source of Sband feeds and LNBF'S, Note CHEAP not the expensive ADL ones. If you can help send me details. Just a reminder there is no Chat tonight, its every Tuesday night 8.30pm Sydney time dureing Summer. Very small edition today not much happening!

I saw this in the satellite newsgroup anyone seen these tests?

"This message was spotted on the 9 network news feed channel on Optus B1".

------------------------------------

From my Emails & ICQ

A. Harrison in Vanuatu supplies a couple of digital camera screenshots, 2 channels off of Cakrawarta FTA on 2536

Swara and Quick channel off Cakrawarta 1 107.7E

Dear Sir,

I have a 1.2m solid, Ku band dish with a proper receiver. Is any program
watchable from either B1, B3, Pas2, Pas8, Palapa, AS3 or 701 in Auckland
with this equipment?

Regards
Eddie

Craigs reply, If you only have the KU lnb then that rules out reception from, Pas 2,Pas 8, Palapa, As3 and 710
There is not much to see as these Satellites are full with pay tv encrypted channels. On Optus B3 you should be able to get

12336V
Thai TV Global Network
Maharishi Open University Asia
TRT International
FEEDS

12407V (all channels here encrypted)
12532V (all channels here encrypted)
12657V (all channels here encrypted)

Optus B1

You will of course receive Sky NZ but encrypted, also there are feeds on this satellite see the Lyngmark site and my page for details

From the Dish

Nothing to report

NEWS

Satellite dish toughs it out in Australia

From http://it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/20010123/A15844-2001Jan23.html

A satellite dish, claimed to be the first designed specifically for the range of harsh Australian conditions, has been developed in Hobart.

SDT Australia general manager Paul Tapping said today his company's SATCOM 2.4 mesh dish combined strength with high transmission performance in demanding weather.

He said it would perform in 180kmh winds, temperatures of more than 60 degrees Celsius, and torrential rain.

Tapping said the key to the dish, which is 2.4 metres in diameter, was its rigid skeletal frame that would not flex whatever the conditions.

It would wholesale for about $1400, which Tapping said was several hundred dollars more than comparablysized imported products.

The dish will be unveiled to the industry at Broadcast World 2001 in Sydney on February 26.

23/1/01

Live chat tonight (Tuesday) 8.30pm Sydney time in the chatroom. Chinastar at 87.5E has been active the last few days nothing reported on Cband (covers most of Australia) perhaps someone with a Nokia should give it a scan see if anything is found. The beams from this satellite listed in the From the Dish section. I saw the end of advert on TV Sunday night for Telstra Saturn seems they are starting the advertising for their new TV/Phone/Internet services.

From my Emails & ICQ

Latest Soccer, schedule from our Indonesian Reporter

Italian Cup Soccer Semi-Final:(Coppa Italia Semi-Final)

24/01/01 - Udinese vs. Parma - 20:55 - Italian Time -
25/01/01 - AC. MIlan vs. Fiorentina - 20:55 - Italian Time

All in Rai International - in PAS 2 169 deg. East.

Regards.
Adi

From Mike Re: Cakrawarta reception

A 3 metre dish doesn't work in NZ on Cakrawarta .Its good in Fiji on a 3.7metre and some channels on a 2 metre (marginal)

(Craigs Note, it should be receiveable in Queensland then has anyone up there tryed it? the 2 Cakrawarta channels mentiond yesterday on the site are FTA currently.)

From the Dish

NSS 703 57E 4187 R "Sky News" has been replaced by TVNZ feeds

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3682 H "ETC and ETC Channel Punjabi" has left, many reported problems receiveing this transmission even though its on the global beam perhaps they will be back when they fix their problems.

Insat 2E 83E 3430 V "Kairali Channel" has left (Zone beam) (Still received on wide beam 3692V in Australia)

Chinastar 1 87.5E 12291 H "Koreatel" currently active here fec 5/6 other details unknown, also try 12474 H (reports needed, should be visable to some of our readers in Asia)

Chinastar KU beam here http://www.chinastar.com.cn/english/sate/ku1.html not likely to be visable in Australia
Chinastar C Band beam here http://www.chinastar.com.cn/english/sate/c1.html visable in Australia (not usesd often though)

Asiasat 2 100.5E 4020 V "Sky Racing Channels 1 and 2 have left , moved to Thaicom 3.

Cakrawarta 1 107.7E 2535 H "Quick Channel and Swara" are FTA at the moment (Sband 2.5GHZ)

NEWS

Shin Sat Goes Ahead with iPSTAR Project

From www.satnewsasia.com

Shin Satellite has awarded to Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) the contract for the design and construction of iPSTAR-1.

Shin Satellite Plc, Thailand's only satellite operator, said it would definitely launch iPSTAR, its new broadband satellite, in 2003 but would first establish a gateway in Australia to broaden the satellite's coverage of that continent.

The gateway would enable iPSTAR, which will cost over US$350 million, to cover all of Australia. A senior Shin Satellite executive said the company foresees a heavy demand for iPSTAR services in Australia, which has one of the most advanced telecom infrastructures in Asia.

Shin Satellite said it plans to establish another gateway in Australia and was looking for frequency allocations with other Asian countries to establish more gateways for iPSTAR..

iPSTAR is a low cost, high capacity satellite system designed to serve Asia's broadband Internet bandwidth requirement. The satellite will provide revolutionary satellite-based last mile broadband Internet services, serving all kinds of multimedia contents, applications and services

To support the simultaneous use by millions of users in Asia and Australia, iPSTAR is designed to provide combinations of multiple spot beams, shaped beams and wide beams for one-way and two-way communications and broadcasting.

iPSTAR is the fourth satellite in the Shin constellation. The other three satellites, all in orbit, are Thaicom (launched on December 17, 1993), Thaicom-2 (October 7, 1994) and Thaicom-3 (April 16, 1997).

The new satellite is the first specifically designed by the company to deliver broadband communications and interactive broadcasting services.

Export financing will finance 50 percent of the iPSTAR project with the balance of system cost met by selling advanced capacity to national service operators (NSOs) who will in turn sell it to their customers.

Deutsche Welle Plans New "European Bouquet" On AsiaSat 2

From www.satnewsasia.com

Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcast service, said it will launch what it described as a new "European Bouquet" in its Asian programming on January 22.

The new European Bouquet will be launched with TV feeds in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and German broadcasts of Deutsche Welle. There will also be radio broadcasts from Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland, Canada and Germany.

It will supply viewers and re-broadcasting organizations such as cable TV operators and hotels with a package of programs from top European TV and radio broadcasters.

The bouquet will be launched on the Asiasat 2 satellite with five TV stations and nine radio stations. Its share transponder 10B on Asiasat 2, a satellite of Asia Satellite Telecommunications Holdings Ltd., which is based in Hong Kong, and is owned by the Chinese government and other Asian investors. There are currently three AsiaSat satellites in orbit: AsiaSat 1, AsiaSat 2 and AsiaSat 3S.

22/1/01

Chat night is NOT tonight, It has changed to Tuesday nights one night a week dureing Summer. This avoids clashing with that "other chatroom". Very little else to report hopefully something better tommorow.

From my Emails and ICQ

Robert Anthoney supplies this very interesting website with a range of MPG decoder pc cards that do 4.2.0 and 4.2.2 mpg decodeing.

http://www.stradis.com/decoder.html

From the Dish

Does anyone in NZ or Australia receive Cakrawarta? Indovision ? though I think all the channels are encrypted of course the S band feeds difficult to get hold of as well

NSS 703 57E "TMG Enter TV" has left 4135 L (PAL), moved to Thaicom 3. (Asia beam, not receivable in Australia)

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3551 H "123 Sat and 69 X TV"are no longer transmitting here.

Asiasat 2 100.5E "TVSN - TV Shopping Network" has moved from 4033 V to 3845 V PowerVu Encrypted!
Sr 4300, Fec 3/4, Vpid 1160 Apid 1120

Cakrawarta 1 107.7E 2535 H "Swara" new encrypted, Sr 20000, Fec 7/8, Vpid 2305 Apid 2306
Cakrawarta 1 107.7E 2535 H "Quick Channel" new encrypted, Sr 20000, Fec 7/8, Vpid 2561 Apid 2562

Optus B1 160E "ABC TV Northern" formally on 12258 V moved to12331 V, Sr 5026 Fec 3/4

NEWS

VSNL targets DTH platform by July; alliance with Star on the cards?

From Indiantelevision.com

The Big Daddy is putting together its plans for direct-to-home (DTH) television and other aspirants can either try to beat them or join them.

The Hindustan Times reported on Saturday that Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) intends to be the first company in India to enter this segment with an investment in excess of Rs 2.5 billion. The proposal will be put up before the company board on 22 January for in-principle approval and VSNL hopes to be ready with a platform by July this year, the report says. VSNL's plans are very significant as a number of players like the C. Sivasankaran-run Sterling group in partnership with Zee TV, Jain TV, DD, Modi Entertainment Network and B4U have all announced that they would either invest in or set up DTH platforms themselves.

If VSNL achieves first to market advantage, it will be in a position to offer services to these companies. VSNL chairman and managing director SK Gupta did not comment on whether any tie-ups were in the offing, but hinted that he had an open mind on the issue.

A real possibility though would be an alliance with Star TV. It appears to be the only private player seriously putting together any plans to start DTH operations. According to published reports Star is willing to put in up to $ 500 million in its DTH project taking on as many as three to four partners. And the president of Star's Digital Group (responsible for all things connected to broadband, DTH and new media), Altaf Ali Mohammed, has been quoted as saying that Star is even ready to form some sort of association with VSNL if it makes business sense.

So will there be an alliance or not? Indiantelevision.com will put its neck out a bit on this and say quite likely.

21/1/01

Just a very small update today.

From my Emails and ICQ

From Bill Richards

Saturday night

Optus B3 12369 V "C7 Sports feed Paramatta Speedway Raceing" Sr 6610 Fec 3/4 Vpid 4096 Apid 4097

0030UTC
Thaicom 3 3551 H "123-Sat is gone no longer transmitting" Sr 13330 Fec 3/4 Vpid 2081 Apid 2082

This from our Indonesion reporter

Indonesian Channel Soccer transmission.


Premiere League (England)

SCTV

- Leeds vs New Castle - Saturday 20/1/01 - 22:00 - Jakarta Time
- Sunderland vs. Bradford - Sunday 21/1/01 - 23:00 - Jakarta Time

Seri A - Italian League

RCTI

- Lazio vs. Inter Milan - Sunday (morning) 21/1/01 - 02:15 - Jakarta Time
- Perugia vs. Juventus - Sunday 21/1/01 - 20:50 - Jakarta Time
- AC Milan vs. Roma - Monday (morning) 22/1/01 - 02:15 - Jakarta Time

All of those are in Palapa 2C

Also you can watch Guang Zou channel on Asiasat 2 - usually they also are
transmitting England Soccer on Saturday and Sunday night including the FA
Matches. SCTV only transmitting the league only not the cup matches.


Star Sport - analog on Asiasat 3S - every Monday (morning) alway
transmitting the Spanyol League.

regards.
Adi

NEWS

T S I C H A N N E L N E W S - Number 03/2001 - January 21 2001 -

A weekly roundup of global TV news sponsored by Tele Satellite International

Editor: Branislav Pekic

Edited Apsattv.com Edition

STAR TV ARRIVES IN THE UK

News Corp's Asian satellite platform Star TV, which this week launched two
channels in the UK, is also planning to introduce a British pay-per-view (PPV)
service for Hindi movies. The first two channels, Star News and general
entertainment programmer Star Plus, were launched at the beginning of this week
and initially will only be available on the BSkyB digital platform. James
Murdoch, Star's chairman and chief executive, said that while Star Plus and
Star News will initially only be broadcast to the UK, via spot beam satellite,
he said that the group is currently in discussions concerning carriage on
several cable networks in continental Europe. Arun Mohan, executive vice
president of News Television (India), said that the group is aiming to have 10
per cent of the UK's half million Indian households as subscribers within a
year. The package will be free until mid-March and then be charged for at £16
per month.

A S I A

DW LAUNCHES EUROPEAN BOUQUET

Germany's Deutsche Welle has launched a new European Bouquet on the AsiaSat 2
satellite. Dr. Burkhard Nowotny, DW's director of international distribution,
announced that agreements with 4 TV stations and 8 radio stations had been
finalised. The European Bouquet includes DW-TV stations as well as the French
language TV5 Asie; Italian RAI International; Spanish TVE Internacional, and
Portuguese RTP Internacional.

CHINA

YES TO LAUNCH PAY-TV TRIALS

On January 18, U.K.-based Yes Television announced it will launch trials for
its pay-TV services in Hong Kong by end-March, adding that a full launch will
take place mid-summer. Yes Television Asia hopes the service will cover 70 per
cent of Hong Kong's population and aims to sign up 200,000 subscribers by 2004.
Yes TV will charge a basic monthly subscription fee of HK$180 and will offer
2,000 hours of VOD programs every month, of which 65 per cent would be in
Chinese, plus 10 channels of news, sports and family-oriented programs.

INDIA

TITG TO SELL TODAY NETWORK STAKE

IT company The India Today Group (TITG) plans to sell up to 20 per cent of its
TV venture Today Network, according to India's Economic Times. Today Network
CEO, G. Krishnan, said his company was talking to various financial
institutions and strategic partners regarding the planned divestment. He added
that 10 per cent of the company had already been taken by (banking company)
ICICI, with negotiations for the other 10 per cent still ongoing.

NEW RELIGIOUS SERVICES PLANNED

Several religious and political groups are planning to launch new cable TV
services targeting India's southern audiences. A Christian group led by Asian
Bishops Synod and Catholic Bishops Council of India plans Jeevan TV in March.
The others are Vikasvani TV, promoted by Father Cyriac Thundiyil; Kairali TV,
with patronage from the ruling left government in Kerala; Indiavision, promoted
by India Muslim League's M K Muneer; Nila TV, promoted by ex-Federal broadcast
minister, C M Ibrahim; and Drishya TV, from Padmajya, the daughter of former
state chief minister K Karunakaran.

ZEE TV PLANS TO CHARGE FOR CHANNELS

Zee Network plans to begin charging for its three free-TV satellite services
(Zee TV, Zee News and Zee Music) this year. Zee currently charges Rs12.5 for
Zee MGM, Zee Cinema and Zee English, but the amount of new charges has not been
disclosed. The target date for Zee News is February 1.

SINGAPORE

SPH MEDIAWORKS TO LAUNCH TWO CHANNELS

Singapore Press Holdings television arm, SPH MediaWorks, has announced plans
to launch two of its new channels in May. The new services the
Mandarin-language Channel U and the English-language TV Works herald the end
of MediaCorp's monopoly of the local broadcast television environment. In the
first of two deals announced last week, MediaWorks snapped up a guaranteed 400
hours of drama programming a year from Hong Kong's Television Broadcasts Ltd
(TVB). The second strategic alliance, with Taiwanese terrestrial broadcaster
China Television Company (CTV), is for 156 episodes of the latest variety
programming from Taiwan. In yet another deal, MediaWorks acquired nearly 200
hours of celebrity and life-style-themed programming a year from the US-based
E! Networks. The shows will be aired on the English-language TV Works channel
from mid-2001.

The first family

From http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/21/national/national11.html

Terry and Sylvia Stephens made history yesterday when they turned on their new digital wide-screen television.

They are the first family in Australia to have one of the new generation TVs which receive a digital signal.
The digital wide-screen format is the first major change to television since colour broadcasts began in 1975.
"It really is amazing," said Mr Stephens as his 21-year-old daughter Nicole tried to figure out the controls.
"The picture is so clear and looks like the old CinemaScope movies," he said.
"I was one of the first to get a colour TV when they started in Britain and I was keen to get the new type of television.
"I think once you have seen one of these it is very hard to go back to the old standard type of TV."
TV networks will soon start broadcasting sport with multiple camera angles in wide-screen format which can be picked only up with the digital set-top box.

Since digital broadcasts began on January 1 only a handful of Australians have had the converters, mostly people in the broadcast industry.

The converter box costs around $700 to buy and the Orion wide-screen TV about $3,398.
But the Stephens family of Balmain did what overseas experience shows many people will be doing, and rented the new system.

They were first to get the digital box and 76cm wide-screen TV through Australia's largest rental outfit, Radio Rentals. It will cost them $24.90 a week for 12 months.

Scott Lorson, general manager of Thorn, which owns Radio Rentals, said 30 per cent of wide-screen TVs were rented when the broadcasts began in Britain in 1998.
"They are too expensive to buy for most people so this gives them a chance to try it out before they decide," Mr Lorson said.
"With this digital package you can choose the camera angle you want and freeze the picture as it broadcasts with absolute clarity. And the signal gives you information about programs on other channels."

The set-top box will have to be upgraded in about 12 months when the interactive TV signals come on line.

Ordinary TVs will continue to receive their normal signal as the digital broadcast is carried on extra channels which can be decoded only through the set-top box.

The much larger flat screen TVs that hang on walls cost about $20,000 and only a few are available in Australia.

By the second half of the year, high-definition, wide-screen digital TV sets will be on the market, bringing in even sharper pictures than the new set the Stephens family got yesterday. They will cost around $8,000.

20/1/01 2nd update

Minor update slight error in Bill Richards logging "wedding feed" was on B3 not B1 currently Speedway car raceing there. Also receiveable in NZ on a 60CM dish! Pictures tommorow

The following page have been updated

NSS 703, Screenshot Gallery added
Insat 2E, Screenshot Gallery added
Palapa C2, Additions made to screenshot Gallery
Palapa C2, Feeds Page, added Australian Open details
Thaicom 3 page, ETC and ETC Punjabi added with programming links (Both will stay FTA here)
Asiasat 3 page, Ekushey TV website seems to be overhauled, programming link added, live stream to come soon!
Page trimmed and added to History

FEED ALERT

This from Dave R. Saturday afternoon,

Palapa C2 113E 3936 H "TVNZ-TVC4 Australian Open feed" Sr 5630 Fec 3/4

Regards Dave

FEED ALERT

From my Emails and ICQ

This From Andrew Rajcher

If you tune into the ABS-CBN mux on PAS-8 now ( saturday Afternoon) , Studio 23 (FTA) is covering
live the upheaval going on right now in the Phillipines. By the time the
sun sets, that thug Estrada will gone (hopefully)!!

(Craigs note, also try Channel News Asia, and Metro News)

Bill Richards supplies

Optus B3 156E 12369 V "Australian wedding feed seen here!" Sr 6110 Fec 3/4 Vpid 4096 Apid 4097

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3682 H There is a new FEC for the ETC mux here 2/3

Optus B3 156E 12359 V "Australian Soccer Feed" seen Friday Night, Sr 6610 Fec 3/4 Vpid 1160 Apid 1120

Optus B1 160E 12369 V "Australian wedding seen here! Sr 66610 Fec 3/4 Vpid 4096 Apid 4097

19/1/01

I went to the bank this afternoon and transferred quite a sum of money for my new/used Nokia 9500-S that should encourage me to get the big dish up. Quite a few have been asking where the Tennis feed is for the Australian Open. Email me if you see it anywhere I expect it would be on a TVNZ transponder on I701. Or Pas 2 perhaps.

NSS 57E Page Updated Screenshots all added (Gallery to be added later tonight)

Pas 8 missing images added to Gallery (just 1 left if anyone can help)

Insat 2E and 2B Stuff up with these satellites pages fixxed and images added

Asiasat 2 page Hubei and Guangdong images added, also added to gallery

From my Emails & ICQ

Raj informs me via ICQ that he saw a movie on the Thaicom 3 "X69" channel (11.am Syd) programming is softcore porn. There was no audio.

(oh well Raj as long as you have the pictures  :-)

ADVERT

I have for sale a paraclipse 2.6M polar mount mesh dish im in Adelaide south Australia I have just put up a 3.8 M .

Regards
Martin & Tracy Mills

[email protected]

icq85955254

Friday Feeds Bit

Feedback and any sightings of sports feeds to the mailing list or my email , anon if necessary

Saturday 20th

6.00 a.m Syd Golf Senior PGA Mastercard Championship from Hawai (check Espn Pas 2 feeds)
10.00 a.m Syd Golf ,Telstra Saturn NZ Open, not sure where this one might show up keep an eye out for it.
10.45 a.m Syd Tennis Australian Open. ?????where is this one we need feedback if its around fta anywhere

Sunday 21st

10.00 a.m Syd Golf ,Telstra Saturn NZ Open, not sure where this one might show up keep an eye out for it.
10.45 a.m Syd Tennis Australian Open. ?????where is this one we need feedback if its around fta anywhere

2.20 p.m Syd Cricket Australia VS Zimbabwe World Series, (Optus B3 ,12359 V SR 6110 FEC 3/4 VPID 1120 APID 1160)

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3551 H "123 Sat (05-21 UTC)" and "69 X TV (21-05 UTC)" Sr 13333 Fec 3/4 Vpid 2081 Apid 2082 as reported yesterday, on Global Beam, porn on in the morning Aus time- 4pm Syd

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3682 H "ETC - Entertainment TV Channel" New FTA, Sr 6665 Fec 1/2 Vpid 100 Apid 104
Thaicom 3 78.5E 3682 H "ETC Channel Punjabi" New FTA, Sr 6665 Fec 1/2 Vpid 200 Apid 102 ,

All Above Thaicom 3 channels on Global Beams

Insat 2E 83E 3989 V "ETV Kannada test card" Started Sr 3000 Fec 3/4 Vpid 1110 Vpid 1211 (WIDE BEAM)

NEWS

Slow birth for world of digital TV

From http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/20010116/A13961-2001Jan16.html

Nine's digital TV channel is up and running, the promotional ads have started, and its guide to digital TV is out.

Still, Nine's director of digital services, Kim Anderson, is the first to admit there is much work to be done before digital TV becomes a mainstream medium.

The TV networks must agree on the style of their joint electronic program guide, the operating system that will drive TV interactivity (known as the application protocol interface) must still be chosen, and applications related to TV programs must then be developed.

In terms of return on investment, I suspect that will be a little way off, but in terms of investment in the industry and securing a viable future for freetoair broadcasters, it (the move to digital) has been a valuable investment, Anderson said.

It is also clear that although the media world continues to converge, Nine remains steadfast in its belief that the Internet and TV will remain separate, despite the likelihood of people soon gaining Internet services through the TV.

I'm a great believer in convergence, and that will definitely happen, but convergence of devices may not, said Anderson.

?I think if you are really clever you will provide the context for the viewer, so you will repurpose your website so it can be used elsewhere.

The objective behind the two services Channel Nine and its Internet sibling ninemsn also differed, Anderson said.

?ninemsn is very much a productivity and communication tool, whereas TV is the entertainment mechanism, she said.

I will want to do things over my TV, like purchasing and checking the weather, but I'm not going to sit there for hours typing emails.

While much is still to be decided on the digital front, Anderson has a clear view of the first important steps.

Initially, she believes the focus should be on educating consumers about the digital possibilities and likely changes to receiving equipment. She also wants to synchronise Nine's digital system with that of ninemsn.

If I'm a consumer, I don't want a different email account for my mobile phone, PC or any other device I may choose to use, she said. It's really important the (ninemsn) services the consumer currently uses are acceptable over the TV.

That means enabling users to access both ninemsn and Nine Digital's services with the same password, and further integrating Nine's programs with ninemsn and its various services, such as Ticketek.

As for the lure of interactive advertising, Anderson seems keen to play down its future effectiveness, saying some of the demonstrations at recent conferences were not really achieving the objective of the client.

We are not into technology for technology's sake, so I can't see myself wanting to click on a Kellogg's interactive button to read the cereal packet, she said.

And Nine does not intend experimenting on the consumer with whizbangery.

I'm not in favor of interrupting the viewer for the sake of technology, she said.

But what she does see eventuating is the ability to bookmark ads as people now bookmark Internet sites, and to provide clients with profiles of the people who have interacted with their ad (if users have given permission for the information to be used).

That requires the customer relationship management (CRM) backend system that Nine does not yet have. However, Anderson expects it to be operational by the time a common API has been chosen for the settop boxes.

While another of Nine's related companies, Acxiom, has CRM expertise, it is not guaranteed a position in the Nine Digital arena.

iom is not involved at this stage, but they have built a great deal of expertise in this area and we would no doubt talk to them about that, she said.

Anderson said Nine was already developing a number of (CRM) tools and relationships, but was initially concentrating on developing a privacy policy.

And while Nine has yet to begin testing the interactive preferences of viewers, she said ninemsn provided a large information source.

We know exactly what consumers want from (travel infotainment program) Getaway in the interactive area, based on what they do on the Getaway site on the Internet, she said.

Another necessity for successful interactive TV is the back channel that sends a viewer's instructions to the service provider through either a telephone line, cable or satellite connection.

Anderson does not have a preference for the back channel, saying that should be left up to consumers according to their individual circumstances.

As for becoming involved with an Internet service provider, Anderson said the idea had been put to Nine, but was rejected.

?That's not our core business, which is creating really good programming and giving people something else over their TV they presently can't get, she said.

Nine is also working on user interface issues so that emails and other information shown on a PC looks equally good on the television set.

As for program enhancements, the first one planned is multiple camera angles of the cricket.

Strung out over digital TV changeover

From http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1608947%255E462,00.html

If America's experience is any guide -- and Australia does tend to mirror its take-up of gadgetry -- digital TV won't be an overnight success Downunder.

AS SALES of digital TV sets continue at a sluggish pace, the US Federal Communications Commission will consider new rules this week aimed at spurring broadcasters' switch to the new technology that provides crystal-clear, high-resolution pictures and CD-like sound.

The agency will consider requiring all new TV sets to include a digital TV tuner, which will let consumers watch the over-the-air digital broadcast stations even if they don't buy an expensive new digital set.

The FCC also will reaffirm the existing technical standard used to broadcast digital stations, in a move to give greater certainty to consumers concerned that changes could make today's digital sets obsolete.

Three years into the digital TV transition, fewer than 800,000 sets have been sold. While the pace of sales picked up five-fold last year, consumers aren't embracing the new technology as fast as industry groups, Congress and the FCC would like.

Reasons include a price of $US2500 ($4800) and up, lack of digital programming and uncertainty over technical issues.

The proposal to include digital tuners in all sets is embraced by the broadcasters, who say it'll help ensure stations meet a 2006 target to complete the change.

Congress four years ago gave the 1600 TV stations in the US a new chunk of spectrum to begin digital broadcasting. While they make the switch, stations will air programming on both the analog and digital channels.

A smooth transition to digital TV affects other communications companies that want extra spectrum to offer a range of new services, including e-mail and news alerts to mobile phones and personal digital assistants.

Congress requires the FCC to auction the spectrum now being used for analog TV in 2002, even though they won't get the licenses until broadcasters complete the transition. Few will be interested in buying the spectrum if it won't be available for several years.

Consumer electronics companies are fighting a requirement to include a digital tuner in all sets, which they say could increase the cost of sets anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $US1000.

Most digital sets sold today don't have tuners and can't receive over-the-air broadcast signals. Consumers who buy them often subscribe to satellite TV service, which offers the most digital programming available.

Broadcasters say there's no point in spending millions of dollars for original digital programming because few consumers even see it. One reason is 80 per cent of TV households have cable, yet cable systems have agreed to carry just a handful of local digital stations nationwide.

CNN beefs up Asia operations

From indiantelevision.com

Asia is looming large on CNN's screens as it puts into place plans to boost its international operations.

Two integrated newsgathering and production centres are being set up in Hong Kong and London as part of a review of its global operations. Hong Kong, alongside CNN's other regional headquarters in London, will become a fully integrated regional newsgathering and production hub for the bureaus operating within the region.

The introduction of a new Asia focused CNN web site, to be launched in February, means that CNN's ability to report from the region will be significantly enhanced.

The changes taking place internationally are part of the major review of newsgathering, production facilities and operations worldwide, and at CNN's headquarters in Atlanta. Part of which involves the integration of the television and web newsgathering operation and the creation of a newsgathering 'super desk' manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week and providing the focal newsgathering point for CNN's 34 different services.

"The new 'super desk' and newsgathering operation will provide faster, smarter editorial decision making, enhanced cross platform communications, better prioritisation and collaboration across all platforms," said Eason Jordan, chief news executive and newsgathering president for CNN News Group.

Regulators thwart Packer's India push

From http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/15/business/business1.html

Australian media magnate Mr Kerry Packer's push into India has received a setback with broadcasting regulators blocking his bold expansion plans in the lucrative new market.

Officials at Mr Packer's Indian joint venture, HFCL-Nine Broadcasting India, accused the authorities of restrictive trade practices after they blocked them from bidding for program slots on the country's national Metro network.

The Packer subsidiary has already paid $50 million for a nightly three-hour prime time slot on the network and wanted to expand into late-night television. Branded as "Nine Gold", its formula of locally-made Hindi language potboilers has been a big success, accounting for 26 of the country's top 50 entertainment programs since its launch in September.

The national broadcaster, Doordarshan, received a badly needed cash injection and Nine provided technical assistance to boost broadcast quality.

In return, the joint venture company got sole rights to sell advertising time to an audience of 33 million people.

However, it appears that sensitivities about the amount of public broadcasting time rented out to private interests has caused a rethink at Prasar Bharati, the authority which regulates the national broadcaster. "The authority has been getting flak for allowing private interests in and it understands the threat of allowing one such operator to monopolise the channel," media analyst Mr Sunil Kalra told the Herald.

The notification issued by the authority specifies that producers who already provide more than seven hours of programming a week need not apply for the five 30-minute late-night windows. The notice was issued last month but on Thursday the Indian Express newspaper quoted HFCL-Nine officials as saying they had sought clarification of the move to block the company from bidding.

"We are surprised at our exclusion. It is a restrictive trade practice and the grounds specified can't be justifiable," said a company official, Ms Ravina Kohli.

A spokesman for Mr Packer's Australian flagship, Publishing & Broadcasting, could not be contacted last night for comment on the Indian setback.

Nine's tie-up with Door- darshan is seen as a marriage of convenience by two powerful media players whose interests may not converge for long. The tie-up with Mr Packer is initially for one year.

Mr Packer's entry to the potentially lucrative Indian market came in March last year, when he visited the country to announce investments of $640 million in media and information technology ventures.

The belated entry meant he found cable TV virtually locked up by rivals, including Mr Rupert Murdoch's STAR TV.

Although expensive, the unrivalled reach of the national broadcaster is crucial to Mr Packer's efforts to gain brand recognition for his product.

Nine Gold's programming, which comes heavily branded with the distinctive Nine logo, is also being heavily promoted in magazines and newspapers across the country.

The decision, if upheld, would allow Packer rivals to piggy-back off the big audience HFCL-Nine has established in prime time.

"We see ourselves as the best partners for Doordarshan to make Metro an entertainment powerhouse and to fully realise the channel's potential. We had spent huge money on promotions. By excluding us from bidding, the identity of Metro as a brand will become unclear," Mr Kohli told the Express.

But it is identity which appears to be of most concern to the broadcasting authorities. Giving Mr Packer seven hours a night on the public broadcaster is too much even for Doordarshan's cash-hungry management to consider. "They want to jazz up their image but they've already had their fingers burnt. The Discovery channel established a name for itself in India by airing its programs on Doordarshan, then set up its own satellite channel."

Whoever controls the airtime, the chase for funding is inevitably driving India's national broadcaster downmarket.

Sentiment expected to remain negative on Zee scrip

From indiantelevision.com

Down, down, down with no end in sight at least in the near term is the verdict that media sector investment analysts have given regarding the beleaguered Zee scrip.

The Zee Telefilms Ltd (ZTL) stock has taken a continuous beating over the past few months with the last week being particularly painful. The share has dropped to it touch 52 week lows thrice at Rs 240, Rs 235 and Rs 216. It is currently trading at Rs 228.

A foreign securities firm has put a 'sell' recommendation on ZTL. Market sentiments are working against the scrip. To get a handle on the mood in the the market we talked with a couple of analysts and took their perspective.

The weakness in the scrip, they revealed, is attributed to many reasons. The principle contributor being "not so good programming."

"The Television business is becoming more and more visible in the sense everybody watches TV and knows fairly well as to which are the channels providing good entertainment," said a senior analyst in a multinational securities firm. "High TRP ultimately converts into revenues for channels. Zee doesn't have any good shows, not a single blockbuster and more than that for their prime time (9:30pm) slot what they are showing are reruns of earlier shows which is bound to affect advertising revenues."

In the coming months there seems to be no special programming in the pipeline which could draw viewers back to the channel. The onslaught on Zee TV's revenue, the bread and butter for the network, by Star and Sony has had a negative impact on the scrip said an analyst with another foreign securities consultant based in Mumbai. "Further highlighting this is the debacle that was Sawaal Das Crore Ka which showed programming incompetence. The third quarter results will show how much the channel has spent on that front which will further hit the share price," he said.

"Repeated announcements of plans which were finally not implemented has affected Zee's credibility and also raised questions about the cash flow situation of the company. This was apparent in its failed FM bid, the cancellation of the Zee Sports channel and Siti Cable's failure to go through with its Net on cable plans," opined an analyst attached to a leading merchant banker.

Predictions for the company's third quarter results, which will be out in a few days, are negative and they will take a further toll of the share price. Some discounting for the weak results is already taking place. Analysts believe that the price will remain weak for at least the coming two months as nothing positive is in the pipeline.

"The company should really put its act together and has to come out with concrete solutions. Only then can it arrest the downward slide as competition in the television industry is really heating up and better and better options are available for viewers as well as advertisers," said one analyst. "We really can't predict where the price will reach, but definitely the movement will be in negative territory."

The first analyst we spoke to believes that the price may touch Rs 200 in the coming month or two depending on the company's results. As ZTL Chairman Subhash Chandra is taking a serious review of his programming as well as overall business the recommendation is to wait and watch.

At the Rs 200 level it is a good buy for the medium term. At the present level of Rs 225 the P/E is around 35 which most analysts are comfortable with but it is the future earning expectation that is affecting the price. The volumes on the BSE as well as the NSE are high enough given the high liquidity of the scrip even though it is much lower compared to its earlier trading volume.

The AT Kerney recommendations on restructuring are apparently being implemented by Zee but to what extent and whether it will actually improve the functioning of the company is the Sawaal Dus Crore Ka (100 million rupee question).

Star Plus, Star News launched in UK, Europe; KBC not part of package

From indiantelevision.com

The Star TV network is having a grand party in London on Thursday to celebrate the launch of the Star Plus and Star News channels in the United Kingdom and Europe. The channels began airing on 14 January on Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB platform.

Star Plus viewers will, however, have to do without India's daily fix, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC). Star has failed to reach a licencing agreement to screen it from Celador, which holds the rights to the original which spawned KBC - "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire".

This hasn't deterred Star from flying out Amitabh Bachchan - Bollywood superstar and celebrity host of KBC - for the bash. His, after all, is the face that reflects Star's present pole position in India's channel wars.

Star News newscaster and New Delhi Television boss, Pranoy Roy, Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi, and society presenter Simi Garewal are among the other prominent personalities who will be there.

The strong south Asian community in Britain in particular is what Star hopes to hook with the launch of these two channels, says News Television India Ltd's corporate communications head Yash Khanna. While the Star News feed in Britain will be exactly the same as that in India, Star Plus will be slightly different. KBC will obviously be a hard act to cover for but Star hopes that its other hit soaps and serials, as well as programmes from Channel V bunged in for good measure, will hook the viewer.

18/1/01

Sorry about the late update been busy, The chat did not go well last night so I think we will shift it to once a week on Tuesday nights to avoid clashing with the Mosc chatroom. Thanks to Alex and Bill R supplying various screenshots today. Question ? who is looking for a music channel ?? Hitchannel102 was also seen on 3551H a few months ago

From my Emails and ICQ

Raj reports via ICQ XTV69 on Thaicom 3 3551 H Sr 13333 Fec 3/4 Vpid 2081 Apid 2082

They share with "Sat-123" music channel hours for Sat-123 are (UK 9-21) for 69 XTV (UK 21-9)

NOTE "XTV 69" changed to "Sat 123" at 4pm Sydney time

XTV69 also has a live video stream which dosnt work very well

http://www.69xtv.com/Media/69XTVLive.asx

Sat 123 music channel (Click for fullsize) screenshots off Thaicom 3 3551H

69 XTV Screenshots (Click for fullsize)

Alex supplies many missing screenshots! A couple shown below

Guangdong and Hubei off Asiasat 2

Hi Craig,

My name is "Jamal" and living in Melbourne, I find your site very helpful, please Craig I need some help I am new in satellite reception I want to install system to receive arabic and french channels, the satellite guy are going to install me a "Coship CDVB2000BA" digital receiver and 2 meters Motorised dish+positioner and C band LNB for 2200 AU $.

can you help me to know if that is good or not ?

many thanks Jamal

-------------------

You can get these Arabic channels FTA these are all DIGITAL signals

(There usesd to be a lot on Asiasat 2 but they all encrypted)

Asiasat 2 "Saudia Channel 1
Panamsat 2 "LBC"
Panamsat 2 "ART"

You can get these French channels FTA in DIGITAL

Asiasat 2 "Fashion channel"
Asiasat 2 "TV5-Asie"

Palapa C2 "TV5-Asie" this one analog! but the same as on Asiasat 2

There are some other French RFO channels on Intelsat I701 but they need a much bigger dish, although there are some on Ku band you could get with a 1.2M KU dish. The system the satellite guy is going to install sounds fine if it includes installation but the dish seems a bit small a 2.3M or 2.4M mesh dish could be a better option. Sorry I do not know much about that receiver you mention. The channels you want to watch are all digital so it should be fine.

-------------------

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3551H "Sat-123" music channel was seen here Sr 13333 Fec 3/4 Vpid 2081 Apid 2082
Thaicom 3 78.5E 3551H "69XTV" Porno FTA shareing with "SAT-123" Channel same pids also there on Audio pid 2065 is Italian Classic Rock radio station.

NEWS

Nothing to report today sorry

17/1/01

Live Chat tonight 8.30pm Sydney time onwards in the chatroom. Nice to see lots of reader contributions! Not much in the news section today though.

From my Emails & ICQ

From Stew RE: Telkom 1 108E

This is receiveable on the east coast Qld clearly. Using 3.0m mesh, 17deg LNB
with 2 CNBC Channels on 3580 H and 3620 H

From Bill via the mailing list

Does anyone know if you can use a radio scanner through a satellite dish??
And if so which satellite

Bill

From Bill Richards

Yes I can confirm Optus B1 ABC Northern is on 12331 Vert. on the Nokia

Others report its on 12330 or 12334 V Sr 5026 Fec 3/4

ADVERT

I am selling a 3.6 m mesh dish with 2 actuactors, a positioner, C band LNB, and a digital receiver
(C and Ku bands) for 2000 dollars (Aust). In perfect conditions I can
watch channels from PAs 2 and Pas 8, A huge tree does not let me receive
asiasat etc. Regards Art. I am in Wollongong

Email [email protected]

From "Siam Global"

ATER READING YOUR (AND LYNGSAT'S ) REPORT THAT THE STI CHANNELS ALL NOW ENCRYTED I THOUGHT I WOULD CHECK MEGA MOVIES AND THE PROMO CHANNEL ON 3509H. BOTH STILL FREE TO AIR AT 1300HOURS ON 16 JAN.

BEST WISHES AND HAPPY VIEWING

UPPER CASE BANGKOK

(Thanks St1 Page changed again)

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3551 H "123 Sat" Sr 13333 Fec 3/4 (any reports on this one??)

Telkom 1 108E 3580 H "CNBC Asia" FTA here Sr 20000 Fec 3/4 Vpid 33 Apid 32.
Telkom 1 108E 3620 H "CNBC Asia" FTA here Sr 20000 Fec 3/4 Vpid 33 Apid 32.

Palapa C2 113E 4089 H "Metro Business" started here Vpid 515 Apid 652

Panamsat 2 169E 3981 H "MBC" is currently FTA

NEWS

Australian journalist appointed CNN International's first US based correspondent

From indiantelevision.com

CNN International has named Australian journalist John Darren Vause the network's first US based correspondent, it was announced on Tuesday. Vause will report from the United States and file special reports for CNN's international viewers in 212 countries and territories worldwide.

His first assignment is to cover the inauguration of the new US President, George W Bush on 20 January.

Vause joins CNN International from Seven Network Australia, where he was bureau chief for their only US office.

16/1/01

Thank you to the those that turned up for the un announced chat it went ok considering it was a spur of the moment decision to hold it. We will be on for the chatroom Wednesday night. Perhaps we will hold the chat each Wednesday night untill the weather cools down a bit? Not much in the news section today. A bit of Indian news and a bit about Ihugs planned 2 way satellite service. Which they will launch in NZ and Australia

From my Emails & ICQ

Hi Craig,

Your comments were:

Agila 2 146E 3712 H "ESC 1 has started" Sr 3000, Fec 3/4, Vpid 1110 Apid 1211 (this sat difficult to receive in Australia)

I thought it is impossible to receive it in Australia, but you gave my some hope by saying it is difficult. Did you really mean difficult? If it is not possible - what dish size is required to get it?


Regards,
Mahmoud

(Try for the Analog signal of GMA on 3890 H (This frequency is a new one for this service) I don't know if this freq has improved the signal to Australia its usually very weak as the signal dosn't cover Australia properly it should be ok the furthur north you are. As for digital well if you can't get an excellent picture on the analog then it will need a very large good quality dish 5M+ Probably 7.5M or so for digital preferably 10M but like I said the signals better the furthur North you are as the beam dosn't officially cover Australia and NZ)

This also from Mahmoud

Folks,

I can see that all the TARBS bouquet (all channels in the mux.) in AsiaSat2 Tuesday Afternoon, (3640, H, Symbol Rate 27850) is FTA.

Can someone please re-confirm that.

Regards,
Mahmoud Hashish

Someone else says its not?? perhaps on then off for a short time.

From the Dish

St1 88E The MMBN package here has changed from Nagravision to Viaaccess encryption the channel lineup has changed also. No channels here are currently FTA. (See ST1 page for details)

Telkom 1 108E 3580H "TURBO TV" Sr 2000 Fec 3/4 (Reports wanted of this one, receiveable in NT and Alice Springs)

(reported as TVRBO probably misspelled Turbo TV thats been seen here before)

Panamsat 2 169E 4148 V "Hong Kong Jockey Club" seen here, Sr 24430 Fec 3/4 with raceing feeds

NEWS

Ihug hoping to loosen Telecom grip

From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=168536&thesection=technology&thesubsection=general

Ihug plans to beef up its satellite-based Ultra broadband internet connection to a two-way wireless service, removing the need for a Telecom telephone line.

The Ultra service now has high speed wireless downloads, but uploads go through a phone line.

If the plan succeeds, the company believes the service will help close the rural "digital divide" and will loosen Telecom's grip on "local loop" telephone lines to New Zealand homes.

"We believe it's the Holy Grail that we've been searching for ever since we started our satellite service four years ago," said managing director Nick Wood.

Details of the new service are sketchy, but the new two-way Ultra service will offer an upstream speed of up to 512 kilobits per second. This alone will be a big improvement on both the terrestrial and satellite-based versions of Ultra, which rely on slow dial-up connections delivering 56 kbps at best for the uplink.

Ihug has also yet to select its main equipment manufacturer - it is negotiating with three possible suppliers - but the two-way service will be available to users of the existing satellite and terrestrial-based services, who will not have to replace their respective 90cm or 45cm dishes.

Mr Wood said the service would be delivered by a standalone "black box" which will contain an amplifier to transmit the upstream signal.

Ihug is also planning to offer internet protocol telephony, but Mr Wood admits further testing is necessary to be sure this will work on the satellite service.

"We are 100 per cent sure we can offer this on the terrestrial service and we are pretty sure we can do it via satellite."

The problem is latency or transmission delays.

On the terrestrial service, the latency of less than 100 milliseconds is well within acceptable limits, but the half second delay caused by the round trip to a satellite in geo-stationary orbit above the earth may not be acceptable.

With a unified messaging system, which will enable voice mail messages to be stored in a similar format to emails and allow advanced functions such as sending voice mail as email.

"It will offer everything you would expect and more - 2001 is going to be the year that the internet will become much more useful."

Ihug is a long way from deciding on the price it will charge for the new service, but it would be launched in three to five months at "an affordable price in the usual ihug style," said Mr Wood.

Sky dips out of rugby battle

From http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,593781a10,FF.html

(This is Interesting Telstra Saturn grabbing Rugby their 1st step in gaining some popular programming)

Fans may still get to see all the All Blacks' rugby matches this year - albeit delayed - despite a scrum over broadcasting rights between Telstra Saturn, Sky TV and TVNZ.

Rival pay television operator Sky believes Telstra Saturn has won the rights to broadcast the team's tour to Argentina, Ireland and Scotland at the end of the year, but today Telstra Saturn refused to deny or confirm it.

Sky confirmed yesterday it had pulled out of bidding once the tag rose to $US1.3 million ($NZ2.93m), saying the price was too high.

The package included the All Black tour, the Six Nations competition and the European rugby club championship.

TVNZ was adamant today it had not bought the rights, which leaves Telstra Saturn and makes earlier reports of a satellite hook-up between it and TVNZ the most likely.

Telstra Saturn has about 24,000 subscribers to its pay TV service - all in the Wellington region.

Spokesman Quentin Bright said Telstra Saturn was building networks in Auckland and Christchurch.

That meant people living in those centres would also be able to subscribe to its pay TV service before the end of the year.

"We are in discussions with a number of service providers at this stage. We are a diverse company."

TVNZ spokesman Liam Jeory said he believed Telstra Saturn had secured the rights to broadcast the matches live. Telstra Saturn has plans to launch a satellite-based national pay TV operation with TVNZ. Mr Jeory said TVNZ hoped to gain the rights to broadcast delayed coverage of the matches.

"We would do a deal with them for the free-to-air rights," he said.

Broadcast Worldwide denies defaulting on payments to Thaicom

From Indiantelevision.com

Broadcast Worldwide, which runs the Tara group of regional language channels (Thaicom 3), has denied reports that it had defaulted on payments to Thaicom, the satellite beaming the channel over India.

A report published on Friday had said that Broadcast Worldwide had six months dues outstanding.

There has been no default, Sonali Shroff, vice-president, corporate communications Broadcast International, said on Saturday. "Payments are made on a mutually agreed schedule. In fact, it is Thaicom's policy to discontinue service to any channel in arrears of more than a month," Shroff said.

Padmashree PS joins Nine Gold as programming director

From indiantelevision.com

In a bid to strengthen its programming content, HFCL-Nine Broadcasting India Ltd. has appointed Padmashree PS as director-programming for Nine Gold.

Padmashree will be responsible for conceptualizing new programming and running the current shows of Nine Gold on DD Metro.

Padmashree comes to Nine Gold after stints in Zee and Sony TV. She will be working in consort with creative consultant Anuradha Tandon and CEO Ravina Raj Kohli in developing new programmes for Nine Gold.

15/1/01

Livechat tonight in the chatroom 8.30pm Sydney time onwards, let catchup on all the happenings!

I have been doing some testing with a friend who has Saturn cable and Sky Digital Satellite streaming video lots of fun and good testing for a future streaming project. If you're online this evening I may page you to see if you want to connect to the streaming server to help "load test" it. Site updates a bit late as I had the pc open to install a thermistor cable (measures CPU temp) my p3-450 is 43C and system temp 49C hope thats not to hot.

From my Email & ICQ

Alex Confirms the Following via ICQ 4.00pm Syd

Optus B3 12720 V "ABC TV SA" FTA Vpid 816 Apid 817
Optus B3 12595 V "ABC TV WA" FTA Vpid 800 Apid 801
Optus B3 12595 V "ABC TV NT." FTA Vpid 832 Apid 833

Alex reports Optus B1 12334 V "ABC Northern" FTA Sr 5026 Fec 3/4

Alex Confirms, Optus B1 12258 V "ABC Northern" has gone from here

From the Dish

Note these are on the Zone Beam so not receivable in Australia, odd thing 2 freqs for the same channel perhaps something planned for future use?

Agila 2 146E 3712 H "ESC 1 has started" Sr 3000, Fec 3/4, Vpid 1110 Apid 1211 (this sat difficult to receive in Australia)

Agila 2 146E 12664 H A new mux has started here, this beam is aimed at the Philipines only, Sr 25582, FEC 3/4,
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "PTV" Vpid 160 Apid 80
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "GMA Network" Vpid 161 Apid 84
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "RPN 9"Apid 162 Vpid 88
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "Videoke Channel" Vpid 163 Apid 92
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "MTV Asia" Vpid 164 Apid 96
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "Star Sports" Vpid 164 Apid 100
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "Channel V International" Vpid 166 Apid 104
Agila 2 146E 12664 H "CNBC Asia" Vpid 167 Apid 108

NEWS

From www.aajtak.com

Welcome to Aaj Tak 24 Hours, India's premier news channel from the India Today Group. After captivating viewers for the last 5 years as a daily habit on Doordarshan Metro, Aaj Tak is now a news-channel that is, quite simply, different.

With a revolving format of News On The Half Hour and News On The Hour, followed by Business News, Technology News, Sports News, and Entertainment News, Aaj Tak broadcasts news as it happens. Our mission: to capture the drama of change anywhere anytime, and deliver it to the people--first.

Incorporating state-of-the-art technology for news-gathering, this TV Today Network channel deploys a 250-strong team of journalists. Besides, Aaj Tak is complemented by the expertise of India's No. 1 content company, the 25-year-old India Today Group. Remember: you haven't seen the news till today if you haven't seen Aaj Tak!

* India lifts Ku-band reception ban

From [sat-nd] 15.01.2001

The Indian Government has removed the prohibition on establishment,
maintenance, possessing or dealing of equipment capable of receiving Ku band
television broadcast signals directly from satellites.

A gazette notification was issued amending the Radio, Television and Video
Cassette Recorder Sets (Exemption from Licensing Requirements) Rules, 1997
removing the prohibition for use of such equipment in frequency bands above
4,800 MHz. The measure, which paves the way for direct-to-home satellite
broadcasting, comes into effect immediately.

TSI CHANNEL NEWS - Number 02/2001 (14.01.2001)

(Apsattv.com edited edition)

CHINA

BBC GRANTED BROADCAST LICENSE

The British Broadcasting Corp. has been granted a license to broadcast in China
seven years after being switched off by Rupert Murdoch's Star TV network,
according to a report in the Financial Times. The newspaper said the Chinese
government had previously been hostile to the BBC by obstructing its
correspondents in China and jamming its radio transmission into the country.
Beijing's State Administration for Radio, Film and Television had now granted
the BBC World television news service a license for broadcast in three-star to
five-star hotels, guest houses and foreign apartments in China. Murdoch chose
in 1994 to drop the BBC news service from his News Corp-owned Star TV network
to please China's political leadership.

INC CHOOSES TANDBERG FOR DIGITAL TV

TANDBERG Television, a leading supplier of open solutions for digital
broadcasting, announced on January 9 that together with its Chinese business
partner NDT, it has secured a significant contract with China's Information
Network Center (INC). INC will use TANDBERG Television's evolution 5000
contribution and distribution solution, including encoders, multiplexers,
decoders and telecoms interface in China's first national digital TV network.
The competitively fought contract, valued at over $2 million, will see TANDBERG
solutions deployed by June 2001 to carry TV content from CCTV and all
provincial TV stations to Beijing and 30 provinces and cities. INC, a
state-owned organisation operating under the authority of the State
Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), operates a fibre network
linking 30 provinces and major cities across China and expects to continue to
expand to full national coverage. The platform will contribute and distribute
digital TV and will replace the existing analogue transmission link on a
national scale. INC is the sole organisation given authority by the central
government to unify technology used by TV systems and to facilitate delivery of
programming between digital systems within the national network.
Internet - http://www.tandbergtv.com

INDIA

BROADCASTERS CONSIDER DTH VENTURES
The Indian government's decision to license direct-to-home (DTH) satellite-TV
services has provoked major interest among both terrestrial broadcasters and
cable and satellite networks. STAR TV will launch a digital direct-to-home
(DTH) platform in India despite its firm opposition to the government1s 20 per
cent cap on its equity stake in the new satellite environment. The government
is also standing firm on its 10 per cent revenue sharing arrangement. Zee
Telefilms has signed a memorandum of understanding with Sterling Infotech, a
technology company and the two are in discussions with the powerful southern
India-based programmer Sun TV, which has six channels, about partnering with
them in the planned platform. Zee also is reported to be talking to several
foreign networks that may invest in the service. Other potential DTH players
include public broadcaster Prasar Bharati Corp. (PBC, known formerly as
Doordarshan), which is in discussions with Malaysian DTH provider Measat.
PanAmSat also has approached several Indian TV programmers about forming a DTH
partnership. Jain TV, a news and current affairs channel has already set up an
earth station in New Delhi and is talking with two foreign players about
investing in his platform. Reliance Industries, a major Indian petrochemical
company, also is believed to be considering a DTH investment. The Hindujas
Industrial Group, which owns cable-channel owner IndusInd Communications, is
another company preparing a DTH blueprint.

NEW WOMEN'S CHANNEL TO LAUNCH IN JUNE

A 24-hour women's channel targeting the 13-49 age group is expected to launch
in India in June 2001. The bilingual Hindi-English channel will also target
expatriate Indians in North America and Europe. Investors in the Rs1,800
million project include US production house Delaney Productions with a 20 per
cent stake, and Delhi based broadcast solutions provider Digital Broadcasting.
Consumer goods companies have also been approached for equity participation in
the new venture.

INDIA TODAY SEEKS BUYER FOR NEWS CHANNEL STAKE

The India Today Group, which launched its 24-hour Hindi news channel, Aaj Tak
TV, late last month, is looking for a buyer for a 10 to 15-per cent stake in
the satellite project. India Today's holding company, Living Media, has a
90-per cent stake in the TV project, and investment bank ICICI holds the
remaining 10 per cent.

JAPAN

WOWOW REPORTS 2,6 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS

Japanese satellite service Wowow has succeeded in signing up 2.6 million
subscribers barrier. The broadcaster recorded 1.7 times more new subscriptions
in December than in the same month the previous year. Wowow is expected to
benefit from the highly publicised launch of digital broadcast satellite
services on December 1. The company recruited 42,708 subscribers to its digital
service, while analogue subscriptions rose 17,565 over the previous month, to
2,560,397

14/1/01

No site update today, lack of activity and I am takeing a break from the site for today.

13/1/01

The Scat India online magazine has updated, it mentions a few new channels comming soon Sky-b Bengali (Not related to The SKY TV) Al-Hind and Falak FTA Urdu channels. AAJ-Tak News (already started on 83E) and news tv today which will be on Insat 2e. It seems theres a new channel nearly every week for Indians. a pity we don't have as much activity in our part of the world. Very small update today not much happening.

Panamsat 8 page has been updated with Boomerang TV since its on and off FTA at times.

From the Dish

Asiasat 2 100.5E 3864 V "Beijing TV is now encrypted." hopefully not the start of a new trend for the Chinese channels!

Agila 2 146E 12665 H "The mux for the Philipines is currently FTA" Sr 25585 Fec 5/6? Not likely to be visible in Australia, Mux includes, GMA, PTV, [V] , STAR-SPORTS, MTV ASIA, CNBC-ASIA

NEWS

BENGALI CHANNEL SKY-B TO LAUNCH

SKY-B, a 24-hour Bengali satellite channel, ( not affiliated to Murdoch ) plans to launch on January 26, India's Republic Day. According to industry sources, the West Bengal state government-owned Webel and private construction group Senbo are funding the project, while Mr Ramesh Gandhi promoted Rainbow Production will develop the software. RPG will handle the marketing, for which it will receive 25% of the revenues.

The industry sources believe that Senbo, Rainbow, Webel and RPG - are close to West Bengal's government, who will wield substantial clout in the channel. The government, however, denied it will have any role in the channel. The state govt. has plans of its own. "We are thinking of launching a channel with the help of the Films Development Corp. " said Mr Subrata Mukherjee, Managing Director of the West Bengal Films Development Corp. "We seek an existing Bengali channel that can give us four-hour slots." Mr Mukherjee said.

Sky-B will feature news and current affairs, programmes on education, information and entertainment. Another locally-tuned channel, Broadcast Worldwide's regional wing, TARA (Television Aimed at Regional Audience), has deferred

12/1/01

While theres not a great deal going on at the moment how about some more users supplying info to go on the user page it can have as much or as little information as you like you don't even have to use your real name.

From my Emails & ICQ

Subject: INTELSAT 704 AT 66 DEGREES EAST

MAY I MAKE ONE CORRECTION, PLEASE. BEAR IN MIND THAT FOR BRITS OUT IN ASIA , UK LOCAL NEWS IS HARD TO COME BY. THE SKY NEWS PROG ON 3905 IS INDEED ENCRYPTED........ BUT NOT TOTALLY.

THE AUDIO IS FTA AND ENGLISH NEWS IS AVAILABLE 24 HOURS A DAY WHICH IS A BOON FOR EX-PATS AND PERHAPS YOUR CHART SHOULD MENTION THIS.

BEST WISHES FROM "UPPER CASE" IN BANGKOK

Keith sends a couple of missing images for the gallerys

TVRI Palapa C2

TV Brunei Analog useing threshold extension, 3M mesh dish in Nelson, NZ (Click for full size)

Friday Feeds Bit

List of possible feeds to search for this weekend

Saturday 13/1/01

10.00 a.m Syd Tennis ATP Heineken Open from Auckland NZ
11.30 a.m Syd Golf PGA Tour Mercedes Championship
1.00 pm Syd Golf ANZ Tour, Victorian Open Championship, (live on Sky NZ, check B1, B3 for feeds) Try last weeks golf freqs

2.20 pm Syd Cricket WI vs Zimbabwe ODI

Sunday 14/1/01

6.25 a.m Italian Serie A soccer (Try the indonesion chanells for this SCTV usually if you can get it)
1.00 p.m Golf ANZ Tour, Victorian Open Championship
2.20 p.m Cricket Aus vs Wi ODI
11.30 a.m Syd Golf PGA Tour Mercedes Championship

From the Dish

Insat 2E 83E Kairali Channel has moved from 3685 V to 3692 V Sr 3185 Fec 3/4 Vpid 1160 Apid 11201160/1120.

Optus B1 160E 12258 V "Abc Northern" reportedly left this frequency

Optus B3 156E 12595 V "Abc Northern" seen FTA here in Aurora service.

Panamsat 8 166E "All Boomerang channels" reported FTA Thursday night

NEWS

Digital TV network needs rethink, says Internet industry

From http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/20010110/A12690-2001Jan10.html

The Internet industry today called on the Australian Federal Government to rethink the setup of the digital television network, arguing it denies all Australians access to the technology.

The government's decision to choose high definition television, or HDTV, for the use of digital television meant people would not be able to use the spectrum for other services, such as the Internet.

'fair enough, we understand there is a time for introduction of these things but let's acknowledge that this thing could have been done better and have one last shot at this before we move too far down the track and exclude for all time diversity and competition from the new media, Internet Industry Association executive director Peter Coroneos told ABC radio.

'I'd say almost immediately is the time to revisit this.'

HDTV gave high quality pictures and greater clarity but locked out other services from using the spectrum, he said.

That's where we see the mistake being made that all Australians are entitled to more than just television.
And since the spectrum is a resource that belongs to all Australians we are saying why confine people to only receiving television through that.

People are not going to buy two and three settop boxes because the first settop box they receive won't receive new and additional services.

What we're arguing for actually is a level playing field here. We're not arguing that anyone's interests should be protected.

The government should encourage competition, as was the case in the telecommunications industry, the association said.

*ustralians are entitled to the best and that will only come about through competition, Coroneos said.

We've seen that in telecommunications, where we've had more diversity and lower prices.

but for some strange reason we're not seeing the same competitive pressures being introduced into the media stakes.

11/1/01

A request from me, I am thinking of purchaseing a Pheonix 333 CI, I would like to hear user feedback on the good and bad points of these recievers. Via my email please, please include if you want your email to be published on the site or not.Not much else happening today.

From my Emails & ICQ

Someone sent me a big fax 25 pages long? whoever sent this could you please email me and let me know what its about?

Raj reports the new channels from RTV are to be broadcast with Lashkara and Gurjarti some time in Mid February, at the same time they will encrypt on Thaicom 3.

Phone RTV, 1300 302 245 for furthur information.

From the Dish

Nothing happening a report in the newsgroups says ABC Western and ABC Northern are currently FTA on B3

NEWS

Australian Digital TV a big HOAX?

From http://www.tvnewsweb.com/newstalk/2001/01/10sydney.shtml

In accordance with state law, digital television began transmitting in Australia on January 1, 2001 - although to viewers, the reality may have seemed a little different.

The Television Services Broadcasting (Digital Conversion) Act of 1998 required all Australian broadcasters to begin providing digital services. But at the time of writing consumers were not even able to buy the A$699 set-top boxes essential to decode the signal.

The first batch of 10,000 digital receivers will not be available to the public until the end of January and only those rich enough to invest in a digital television have been able to view any pictures.

"It's the biggest hoax that has ever been pulled in Australian broadcasting," exclaimed Professor Bill Childs. "There's barely a digital receiver in the country and there's no set-top boxes because none of the manufacturers were prepared to commit their production lines until the standards and the legisation came into play."

Bill Childs is a bit of an expert on the whys and wherefores of Australian broadcasting. After 14 years as director of broadcasting policy at the Federation of Australian Commercial Broadcasters (FACT) he "retired into academia" and is now a professor teaching communications law at the University of Technology in Sydney. He has been following the transition to digital broadcasts very closely.

"The broadcasters are transmitting and they've put their transmitters up and they've caused terrible inteference to analogue transmissions, while were been rejigging their transmitter towers, but the bottom line is that digital TV hasn't happened. It's a nonevent. People in their homes wouldn't know a thing about it," said Bill.

People have been told by the networks to call a hotline if they get picture interference. On the day of the "launch" Channel 7 reported minor problems in Sydney and there were also some complaints in Brisbane, a city expected to be badly affected by the transmissions.

But according to Bill, the real swindle was perpetrated long before the January launch, at the government level:

"Over the years the Australian government has pretty much been the victim of lobbying by the broadcasters and the job the broadcasters did on the digital conversion was absolutely superb. It was a total razor-gang, toe-cutting job. The commercial broadcasters achieved virtually every objective they set out to achieve. They have a comfort zone of unbelievable proportions and they've ticked off no end the newspaper proprietors and the potential datacasters."

But why would newspapers care about networks securing digital rights?

According to Bill, the broadcasters set out to block the newspapers because they wanted in on the excess bandwidth that would become available when digital television arrived. For five years the broadcasters put together a concerted and carefully orchestrated lobbying effort to lock out potential datacasters - people using VHF televison bandwidth frequencies to transmit data.

"It was right up the nose of Murdoch and the Angel Herald organisation - our second biggest newspaper chain - but it also got up our telco's nose - because it shut out national operator Telstra and Cable and Wireless," said Bill. "They really did a superb job of shutting the world out and saying 'no you're not going to get your hands on our bandwidth until at least 2008, or 2012, if we play the game properly'."

The practical implications of the "digital deal" are that each Australian network gets free and exclusive access to seven megahertz of VHF frequency band, while denying new players access to the market.

"The price they paid, if there was a price, was that those that have the free seven megahertz are not allowed to multichannel."

Two government funded companies, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), were caught up in the same deal and were also banned from multi-channelling, but after much lobbying from various sources they can do so now. "What they do will be of extreme interest, "says Bill. "Unfortunately they lack the funds to develop the multi-channelling end."

Historically, says Bill, commercial broadcasters in Australia have never paid for their bandwidth. It was given free of charge in the beginning, and the licence could be renewed each year. The networks got the same package for digital by arguing that they were providing a public service. "But in essence it was just to try and replicate their original seven megahertz of analogue tranmission, for digital."

The networks said they needed the bandwidth to get into high definition TV, but as everyone knew this innovation was still a long way away. "The price the commercial broadcasters are paying for these seven megahertz of free bandwidth until 2008, is to be able to deliver 20 hours of high definition broadcasting, per week, by January 1, 2003. That was the deal," says Bill.

The government's justification for stopping the networks from multi-channelling was to prevent undue competition with Australia's infant cable TV industry. Unsurprisingly, Australia's two cable companies, Foxtel (owned by Telstra and News Ltd) and Optus (owned by Cable and Wireless) had lobbied hard to stop the networks from gaining the multi-channel option.

"But when it is right, the broadcasters will change the agenda and they'll push to get into multi-channelling," Bill affirmed, "which is the classic Australian approach to commercial broadcasting regulations."

"It's a con job of the highest order and the Australian press haven't cottoned on to it yet. If I were Murdoch I would be running the story, but he isn't," Bill declared.

B4U co-promoter Bharat Shah arrested

From Indiantelevision.com

In a sudden move, the Bombay police on Monday arrested top Bollywood financier and co-promoter of B4U Entertainment, Bharat Shah. He has been charged under the Maharashtra Organised Crime Control Act. At the time of posting, he was being questioned in court.

In a related development, a special court in Mumbai has granted judicial custody to film producer Nasim Rizvi till 19 January. However, Judge P Bangale remanded Abdul Rahim Allah Baksh, the co-producer to police custody till the January 15.

Both of them were arrested last month for their alleged links with underworld don Chhota Shakeel in the production of the Bollywood potboiler "Chori Chori Chupke Chupke" and conspiring with him to kill film personalities. Shah was the financier of the film.

Ravi Gupta, MD, B4U, said he was still awaiting further details when questioned as to the repercussions the arrest would have on the channel's fortunes.

10/1/01

Not much happening today just a small edition, if you have some news or information to share about anything send me an email.

From my Emails & ICQ

Raj reports Indus Vision on Asiasat 3 Testing with Hindi music video Wednesday 4pm Sydney time.

Alex in Perth supplies a log of reception from his 3M mesh dish

He also reports Optus B1 12735 H Analog testcard Optus BOC

57 Deg E NSS 703

Analog
3750 R	Sun TV	P5
3808 R	Udaya TV	P5
3890 R	Suraya TV	P5
4178 L	MTA TV	P3
Digital
3900 R	Sun TV
	Sun News
	Sun Cable Vision
	Gemini TV
	Teja TV
	Ushe TV
	Feeds
3709 L	TVNZ Feeds		Encrypted
3718 L	TVNZ Feeds		Encrypted
4055 R	Worldnet		Same package as Asiasat 2

64 Deg E Intelsat 804

Digital
3651 R	NDTV Feeds		Consisting of 2 Chs, one carrying Star News India feeds, most traffic 1100 UTC The other ch carries sport feeds but is weaker, ths ch requires 4.5mt dish to receive
4084 L	AFTS		2 Chs Encrypted

66 Deg E Intelsat 704

Analog
3760 R	ETV Kannada	P5
Digital
3805 R	British Telecom		4 chs Encrypted
4055 R	Globecast		The Transponder was very strong into Perth but recently the data stream has been modified and can not always be received. usually now pixilated similar to Mpeg 4.2.2 tests.
	TV5 Asie
	CFI Asie Pro
	Route 66 Feeds

Thanks for that I have updated those pages concerned and filled in the gaps!

From the Dish

Insat 2E 83E 3685 V "Kairali Channel" has started, Sr 3185, Fec 3/4 Vpid 1160 Apid 1120 (Wdie beam should be visible in Australia)

Optus B1 160E "Imparja mux" has moved from 12367 H, to 12360 H SR 5424, FEC 3/4.
Optus B1 160E 12735 H "BOC Analog Optus testcard" reported here

NEWS

Digital TV's bad reception continues

From http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/dailynews/story/0,2000013063,20108084,00.htm

Australia's Internet industry body has dubbed the government's digital TV policy an "anti-competitive" fiasco that falls well short of what the public expects.

It's a week since digital TV's debut in Australia and it has been nothing short of a debacle since day one.

Firstly, the all important set-top box is still only available for demonstration advertisement
in stores and is not likely to be available for retail until the end of the month. Some argue that the AU$699 price tag is too costly for the average consumer, and the device will become redundant within 12 months.

There's also concern that digital TV in Australia is too restrictive in content.

The Shadow Minister for Communications, Stephen Smith, has attacked the federal government, accusing it of implementing the regime in a "lacklustre fashion".

"We think in terms of the design of the scheme there are clearly a couple of major failings," the shadow minister's spokesperson, Simon Banks, told ZDNet.

Datacasting falling short?

Of particular concern is datacasting under the government's digital regime.

"In terms of providing a datacasting service that would be attractive to consumers, the government has been deficient in that regard," Banks said.

"If you opened up the datacasting regime and made content more attractive, Australians would be more willing to take up the technology, the regime would be a success and it'd bring down the cost," Banks said. "It'd be a win-win for everyone involved."

He says the government has failed to make digital TV attractive in the face of a range of alternative products, including pay-TV and Sony playstation which are competing for the consumer dollar.

"If Australia is seen to be lagging behind the rest of the world in the content-based industry we will lose export dollars and jobs," Banks said.

The IIA agrees

The Internet Industry Association (IIA) agrees that there are serious flaws in the government's datacasting policy.

"The government has mistaken datacast interactive television for 'television by the back door'," the IIA said.

"In a less restrictive environment there would be more incentive for competition, lower prices and more diversity of content," IIA executive director, Peter Coroneos said.

"The future of wireless interactive services for all Australians has been seriously compromised to protect established broadcasting interests."

The Opposition says another failure is the availability and cost of set-top boxes.

"You still can't walk into a store and buy a set top box," Banks said.

"Inevitably they've made equipment for the digital TV market more expensive through lack of supply. If they'd got the regime right, digital set top boxes would be cheaper."

The IIA supports the comments.

"A week into the new regime, what have we got?" Coroneos said. "Precious little. Boxes costing AU$700, virtually unobtainable by the average viewer, and a public recommendation that consumers not buy them."

Government stands firm

In retaliation, the government claims that the shortage of set top boxes is no fault of its regime.

"It's a matter of timing," according to a spokesperson for the Communications and Information Technology minister, Senator Alston.

"There's a queue in terms of people who want to get hold of them."

Commenting on the cost of a set-top box, Alston's office said decoders were in their infancy and consumers were under no compulsion to buy them.

"AU$700 is the initial starting price, as demand increases it will go down," Alston's office said. "Obviously it is not petty cash but it's not a massively exorbitant price."

The Opposition also condemned the government for the interference caused by the transmission of digital signals, "which in the government's own words, it has known about right from the beginning," Banks said.

"It's unacceptable that well after the [launch] date these issues haven't been sorted out," Banks added.

Open standards

According to the IIA, by failing to mandate an open standard, the government has left consumers unprotected from increasing upgrade costs.

"Many people will not buy the upgrades and will miss out on the real potential of the technology. Every way you look at the regime you see 'anti-competitive' written all over it," Coroneos said.

However, the government claims to supports open standards but "it would be premature to mandate any particular standard," Senator Alston's spokesperson said.

"What do we do? Preempt the market? Mandate an open standard which will effectively by made redundant?"

Alston's office says it would be premature to make changes. "We're only two weeks into it," the spokesperson said. The first policy review is not scheduled until 2003.

"We would obviously prefer that they review it much sooner," Coroneos said. "Our concern is that each day that goes by the present regime will become more entrenched and all the problems we're pointing to will become harder to fix down the track."

BBC wants Chinese authorities to be happy

From [sat-nd] 10.01.2001

The BBC has announced it's been granted a licence to broadcast in China
nearly seven years after it was dropped from satellite service. However, under
the deal signed with the China International TV Corporation programming will
only be available in high class hotels, guest houses and foreigners' apartments.

The Chinese government was angered by the BBC's coverage of the student
demonstrations and subsequent bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Under this kind of pressure, media mogul Keith Rupert Murdoch kicked a BBC news
channel from its Star TV satellite bouquet in 1994.

In recent years Chinese authorities have reportedly obstructed BBC
correspondents in China and jammed its radio transmissions into the country.

BBC World sales and distribution director Jeff Hazell: "It's good to be able
to regularise our relationship, and if the Chinese authorities are happy with
how it works out, we hope it could lead to other things."

The Beeb gets Chinese nod

From Indiantelevision.com

The Chinese government has decided to award the English news service, BBC World, a broadcast licence. Seven years ago, it had been thrown off the Star TV network by global media baron Rupert Murdoch to calm down a jittery Chinese regime, alarmed by the BBC's coverage of the student protest against it.

With this licence, the Beeb will now be able to telecast over China and be received in hotels and foreign residential compounds. Additionally, it will also be received by the thousands of satellite dishes and cable systems in China.

The clearance is being seen as a major coup for BBC boss Greg Dyke and BBC Worldwide CEO Rupert Gavin. Gavin had been part of a trade mission led by culture secretary Chris Smith in 1999 which met up with Chinese authorities.

"This is the first time the Chinese authorities have positively granted us permission to broadcast," says Jeff Hazell, director of sales and distribution at BBC World. "It's good to be able to regularise our relationship and if the Chinese authorities are happy with how it works out, we hope it could lead to other things."

Now to wait and watch what fare the Beeb dishes out for China. Hopefully it will not be a repeat of the early nineties.

Turner Broadcasting restructures Asia Pacific operations

From Indiantelevision.com

As part of its expansion of programming and new media initiatives,Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, Inc. (TBS) is restructuring its regional advertising sales operations.

This new move involves creating separate sales forces for the entertainment and news divisions to build on the strength of its international brands - CNN, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies - across multiple platforms.

Jennifer Fletcher has been promoted to senior vice-president, advertising sales for Turner Entertainment Networks Asia Inc. (TENA). Reporting to Dave Dickman, who relocated to London in January, and Steve Marcopoto, President and Managing Director of TBS, Fletcher will look after advertising sales for Cartoon Network, TCM, HBO South Asia and the company's new CETV venture in China. Fletcher was previously vice-president for TBS advertising sales.

Mark Whitehead, Vice President, News Network, Asia Pacific is relocating from Singapore to Hong Kong and expands his responsibilities to manage CNN's sales operations in Hong Kong, South East Asia and Korea.

Monty Ghai takes on the new role of Director, Global Client Solutions, Asia Pacific. As TBS's first Director for Global Client Solutions in Asia, Ghai will be responsible for working with advertisers to build marketing partnerships which leverage the corporate capabilities of Turner and other Time Warner properties to build new revenue streams.

9/1/01

A big news edition hope you find something to read thats of interest, those JVC Digital vcr's sound interesting.There is also write up about Satlindo who operate the Palapa satellites

From my Emails & ICQ

A PRESS RELEASE

Canal Calédonie is please to announce the appointment of Nationwide Antenna Systems of Brisbane
as the exclusive importer and wholesale distributor in Australia of their Pioneer TS serie IRDs.

These decoders are made exclusively for the reception of L B F, a product of Canalsatellite Calédonie,
from Intelsat 701 at 180 degres.

They are for sale as a package complete with a smart card and a choice of 6 or 12 months subscription to L B F,
an australian power cord, a Scart to RCA leed, a French/English user manual, instructions and a contract.

The first shipment has arrived in Brisbane and will be released soon.

Nationwide Antenna Systems carry also stock of universal LNBs and LNBFs to suit the frequency used (11610 MHz).
If you are interested, please contact Nationwide Antenna Systems for details and pricing, directly on 07 3252 2947.

L B F, Le bouquet français

Alain CORROY, Commercial Agent
GOLD COAST, QLD, Australia

Tel: (07) 5539 5488, Mobile: 0414 590 233
Mobile Fax: 0414 236 601

Email: [email protected]

Raj informs me via ICQ,

I rang up RTV in Sydney today, they said that their new channels should be on Thiacom 3 by mid Feb, but the guy said that it was very likely that they will be encrypted together with Lashkara and Gurjari which are currently FTA.

This Re: Stewart M's enquiry about Digital tv compatibilty with Satellite receivers.

Dave R writes,

Hi Craig

DVB-S uses QPSK modulation While DVB- T uses QAM The receiver will have a different front-end.

Dave..

From the Dish

Apstar 5 is scheduled to launch with Long March in February 2003, will
replace Apstar 1 at 138 East.

ST 1 88E 3509 H "TTV, FTV, MMBN Info and CTV are now encrypted.

Asiasat 3 105.5E 4060 V "Indus Vision" has started regular transmissions.Audio 6.60/7.20 MHz (I need info on this one programming and website?)

Asiasat 3 105.5E 4180 V "An analog Pal test card has started here" Audio 6.60/7.20 MHz

Optus B1 160E 12367 H "Imparja mux is still here"

NEWS

Don't buy digital TV for a year

From http://www.sundaytelegraph.com.au/common/story_page/0,4511,1584539%5E907,00.html

CONSUMERS are being urged not to buy digital televisions or set-top receivers for at least 12 months to allow prices to drop to realistic levels.

And research by one of Australia's biggest importers of television sets shows there is still widespread confusion about digital TV that will "significantly delay the uptake of the technology for up to 12 months".

Australia entered the digital TV world with a whimper last week, when the commercial free-to-air stations started broadcasting programming on the new frequency.

But few, if anyone, watched.

That's because consumers first have to buy expensive set-top boxes (STBs) enabling them to receive digital-quality images on their existing analog sets. The boxes will cost up to $700, while digital antennas will set households back a further $60.

Consumers, however, are being warned that the first-generation "dumb boxes" will not only be expensive, but are likely to be superseded within 12 to 18 months when new versions are released with interactive features.

Up to 10,000 of the boxes, which have been underwritten by the free-to-air stations, are on their way and should start arriving in electrical stores next week.

There has been a minor problem obtaining enough STBs because there are only a few markets overseas currently broadcasting digital TV, including Spain, Britain and the United States.

"Unless you're desperate to get a new set because the old one is fast on the way out then we wouldn't advise anyone to do anything for a while," Australian Consumers Association spokesman Norm Crothers said. "There's no point in doing anything right now as things will only get cheaper and better, as happens with all new technology. But if you're getting a bad signal now and are thinking of upgrading ... then it might be a worthwhile investment."

Digital will mean areas with poor reception and ghosting will receive crystal-clear reception. Even so, consumers are wary of making any large investment in the new technology.

Thorn, Australia's biggest supplier of rental goods, said consumers would wait for prices to drop before making decisions about expensive digital purchases.

Channel Seven, which spent more than $150 million upgrading its network to accommodate digital, said viewers would be amazed at the possibilities, but first they had to be patient during the next few months' "settling in" period.

Public tunes out to digital

From http://www.australianit.com.au/common/storyPage/0,3811,1589577%5E442,00.html

RETAILERS are having difficulty selling the virtues of digital television to a confused public.

Yesterday, many shops were still waiting for promised display-only units to be delivered, and others were having problems setting up the equipment.

A number of retail stores The Australian IT contacted had received their set-top boxes but could not tune them properly.

Others who successfully displayed digital television programming reported little enthusiasm from customers.

In Sydney, Harvey Norman's Auburn store received its $700 display box a week ago, but no one had placed a purchase order.

"Consumers are saying they will wait," HN Auburn electricals franchisee Wayne Campbell said.

"Digital television has been on display since last Tuesday, but consumers are not convinced there is any major change in quality over the current transmissions.

"The picture is clearer, but not $700 clearer," he said.

After all the hype, consumers expect a massive difference with digital, but they are disappointed, he said.

Mr Campbell said customers also noted a one or two second time delay in digital transmissions, and that the store had difficulty tuning all channels.

Stores at Chatswood in Sydney and Preston in Melbourne had not been able to obtain reception to tune the set-top boxes.

Another Sydney television salesman said his store had orders for four set-top boxes, but that most people had found it hard to justify the expense for only slight improvements in picture quality.

Those with analog reception problems would be the most likely early purchasers of set-top boxes, he said.

Bing Lee merchandising director Lionel Lee said the retail group's set-top boxes from Thomson were being installed yesterday and stock would be available for sale by mid-February.

"The promotions have included a lot of hype, but there has not been much meat in terms of the benefits," he said.

"It does give you a slightly better picture, but Joe Punter does not know what they are getting.

"Realistically, the $699 price tag is not viable."

He said stores in high-income areas were more likely to sell first-generation set-top boxes.

The first shipment of set-top boxes for sale is scheduled to reach retail stores in about a week.

Thomson Multimedia managing director Laurie Ruddock said 500 boxes were now in retail stores, but would be used for demonstration only.

He said 4500 set-top boxes would be available for sale from January 15.

Another delivery would be shipped to Australia in February, with others later in the year depending on consumer demand.

Since its introduction on January 1, digital television has suffered from bad publicity and concerns about interference to existing analog transmissions.

But Mr Ruddock was confident consumers would eventually understand the advantages offered by digital television.

"That is just a matter of time," he said.

"You have to take a long-term view of digital television because analog television has been around for more than 50 years."

Thomson was contracted by Australia's commercial television stations to provide the set-top boxes required to allow digital broadcasts to be viewed on conventional television sets.

APT orders Apstar V

From [sat-nd] 09.01.2001

Hong Kong-based APT Satellite Ltd. has ordered a new satellite, Apstar V,
worth US$230 million from Space Systems/Loral Inc. for launch in February 2003
aboard a Chinese Chang Zheng [Long March] 3B. Apstar V is to replace Apstar I
at 138 degrees East, which is due to retire in mid-2004. Separately, Singapore
Telecommunications has signed up for 15 C-band transponders on Apstar V for the
satellite's life time in a US$112-million deal.

Under the Apstar V contract, which requires SS/L's receipt of the necessary U.
S. government export licenses, SS/L will also provide customary pre- and
post-launch support services. China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC)
will separately provide the launch services for Apstar V, to be launched aboard
a Chang Zheng 3B from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in February 2003. Apstar V
is to commence commercial operation in the first quarter of 2003.

Apstar-V is a high-powered C/Ku-band hybrid satellite based on SS/L's 1300
platform, similar to Apstar-IIR, which is currently on orbit serving the
Asia-Pacific region. Apstar-V will have total beginning-of-life power of 10.6
kW with a separated mass of approximately 4,845 kg, and 9.5 kW of end-of-life
power. The new spacecraft will operate a total of 54 transponders, 38 in the C
band at 60 watts, and 16 in the Ku band at 141 watts. Based on SS/L's 1300
platform, Apstar-V is designed for a mission life of 13 years.

The US$230 million total project cost of Apstar V, which includes the costs
of the satellite, launch service, launch insurance, ground facilities for
telemetry, tracking and control, related expenses and capitalised interest,
will be funded by bank loan and internal resources of the APT Satellite Holdings
Limited, PT Satellite said.

APT and the Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) separately signed
an agreement for the leasing of 15 C-band transponders of Apstar V for the
mission life of the new satellite. Through the US$112-million deal, Singtel is
to double its satellite transponder capacity. Upon completion of the lease
agreement, SingTel can either use the transponders' capacity itself or lease it
to its customers. The lease price will be payable by an initial payment in
cash, followed by annual payments in cash.

In a news conference, SingTel chief operating officer Lim Toon said the
company does not rule out the possibility of acquiring further stakes in the
APT group. SingTel has a direct interest of 5.43 percent in APT Satellite
Holdings and a 28.57 percent interest in APT Satellite International Co Ltd,
which holds a 51. 89 percent interest in APT Satellite Holdings.

Half of NSS-6 transponders for India

From [sat-nd] 09.01.2001

Netherlands-based company New Skies Satellite plans to dedicate 26 of 52
transponders aboard its US$250 million satellite NSS-6 to India, according to
New Skies Asia regional director Sanjay Kumar. NSS-6, scheduled for launch in
2002, is to supplement New Skies' NSS-703 (formerly Intelsat 703.)

Kumar was quoted as saying, "NSS-703 produces a total of 1500 Mbps bandwidth
out of which 100 Mbps is already exhausted by Indian companies." Satyam
Infoway, for instance, uses 60 Mbps for its six Internet gateways. In addition,
New Skies has reserved two NSS-703 transponders for DTH services. Among the
possible customers New Skies is currently talking with are Doordarshan and Star
TV

Korean Ministry Announces Digital Broadcasting Master Plan

From www.satnewsasia.com

South Koreas Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) announced a master plan for digital broadcasting involving a massive changeover to the new system by 2005 and the phasing out of analog broadcasts by 2010.

MIC said that more than 200 channels and four million digital broadcasting receivers will be provided by 2005. Digital satellite services are to begin operations in 2002.

South Korea is expected to export some US$10 billion worth of digital receivers and US$20 billion worth of other related equipment until 2006. Commercial satellite broadcasting will be available nationwide by 2005, ending analog broadcasts by 2010.

South Korea is now developing a long-term plan to develop commercial satellite broadcasting by 2003. A digital high-definition television center will be opened in 2002 that will offer digital technology training and broadcasting equipment rental..

MIC said South Korea would focus on commercial satellite broadcasting to nurture broadcasting services and related equipment businesses.

To avoid redundant investments, a committee has been organized to facilitate the joint operation of digital relaying facilities by commercial satellites.

Digital VHS Takes On DVD

From http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,41045,00.html

LAS VEGAS -- The DVD, which has plenty of problems already, could be dealt a further blow from a new format that comes in a package we're all familiar with: VHS tape.

Now, with DVD bogged down in legal problems surrounding DeCSS and copy protection, and the failure of the industry to come to an agreement on a single standard for recording, JVC is hoping lightning will strike twice with its VHS format through a new Digital VHS, or D-VHS.

JVC introduced the new D-VHS tape at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) along with a high definition television (HDTV) set that protects high definition content from being copied. Video on D-VHS tapes is uncompressed, so it's enormous. A 75GB hard disk would only hold around 30 minutes of the video, according to company officials, making the trading of HD content over the Internet impossible.

D-VHS can record and play back up to four hours of video in high definition mode -- up to 1,080 lines per screen width, or more than double the resolution of DVD, according to Allan Holland, national product specialist in the consumer video division at JVC. It can also record at the standard VHS resolution of 240 lines per screen width.

JVC was originally the Victor Company, which developed the VHS format in the mid-1970s and was bought out by Japanese investors that renamed it Victor Company of Japan. It won a format war in the early 1980s with Sony's Betamax technology to become the de facto home video recording and playback standard.

With twice the resolution of DVD and a high definition recording option, D-VHS could give DVD a major run for its money, since the recordable standard for DVD still isn't set and now DVD discs are vulnerable to piracy.

D-VHS also has the benefit of full backwards compatibility with VHS tape. "You could have one piece in your stereo for everything with D-VHS," said Holland. "Of course, as the developers of VHS, I'd like to think we're going give DVD some major competition."

A new Macrovision copy protection system prevents the duplication of tapes by copying from one digital deck to another. The content is encrypted with a High Definition Copy Protection (HDCP) system JVC developed that is similar in function to the Content Scrambling System (CSS) on a DVD.

The HDCP system can't be broken, however, because only high definition sets will have the HDCP decoder, according to Dan McCarron, national product specialist in JVC's color TV division.

JVC's high definition television set uses the Digital Video Interface (DVI) that Intel developed for PCs and high definition television sets. DVI ports on PCs will not have the HDCP decoder, so PCs can't be used to break HDCP like it did with CSS.

So, with the combination of massive video size and the fact that HDCP decoders are only in high definition sets, McCarron thinks it has the answer to Hollywood's concerns over content protection.

"One of the reasons Hollywood studios support this is because the video is uncompressed," McCarron said. "By compressing it, it's easier to transmit over the Internet because it's smaller. Because of its size when uncompressed, it's harder to trade or copy."

JVC is mustering Hollywood support. Fox Home Video, Universal Pictures and New Line Cinema have already agreed to support D-VHS and JVC claims more are looking to jump on board.

But don't declare your DVD player obsolete just yet. The JVC D-VHS deck, which should be available around May, will sell for approximately $2,000, while blank media will cost between $10 and $15. JVC's only TV to support HDCP is the D'Ahlia system, which will sell for a whopping $10,000 when it ships this summer.

SATELINDO: providing facilities for integrated telecommunications services nationally, regionally and internationally

From www.satnewsasia.com

Satelindo was established under the Indonesian government's deregulation in telecommunications industry that allows private sector companies to operate and invest in the telecommunications services. Satelindo was instituted on the 29th January 1993 through a strategic partnership of state-owned telecommunication companies, together with domestic privately-owned and international privately-owned company. Since its establishment, Satelindo has concentrated on three main line of business: Satellite Communications, GSM Digital Cellular Telecommunications and International Telecommunications Services with its 008 access code.

The mission of Satelindo is to nurture the development of telecommunication services by providing one-stop shopping telecommunication services to our customers. It offers a variety of high quality services that are readily available, reliable and affordable while remaining highly competitive in telecommunications business and to efficiently represent Indonesia, as a whole, in the international field on telecommunications and satellite services.

Satelindo aims to provide facilities for integrated telecommunications services nationally, regionally and internationally, using the most state of the art, reliable, and cost effective telecommunications systems available on the global market. The company is fully committed to the entire process of telecommunications development encompassing planning, engineering, construction, operation and maintenance of all services and facilities including customer care.

The Palapa System

Palapa C spacecraft.

Palapa satellites are central to the formation of Indonesia's domestic satellite system; 'palapa' means 'fruit of labor'. Palapa satellites role is essential role by providing an irreplaceable communications link for the thousands of inhabited island that form Indonesian archipelago. Furthermore, the Palapa system provides coverage for most of Asia and some coverage of Australia, New Zealand.

Originally operated by government owned company, PT Telkom, the Palapa system was handed over to PT Satelit Palapa Indonesia (Satelindo) when the company was founded in 1993. The system began with the launch of Palapa A-1 on 8 July 1976 following with the second satellite on 10 March 1977. The first series of Palapa satellites, namely Palapa A1 and Palapa A2, focused on covering the Indonesian archipelago. The two satellites were phased out of service in June 1985 and January 1988 respectively, following the introduction of the Palapa B series.

The second series of satellites, Palapa B, was designed to increase the system's coverage to include the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Therefore, Perumtel became one of the first regional operators of Southeast Asia. The first of the new series, Palapa B1, was deployed in orbit on 19 June 1983. Palapa B2, launched in February 1984, failed to reach orbit. However, the spacecraft was subsequently retrieved in November of the same year.

Following the failure of Palapa B2, Perumtel ordered an identical replacement satellite, Palapa B2P which was launched on 21 March 1987. In the meantime, the retrieved Palapa B2 was being refurbished. The satellite was then successfully re-launched on 14 April 1990, known as Palapa B2R, which replaced Palapa B1. Palapa B4 was launched on 14 May 1994.

The third series of Palapa satellites was initiated with the launch of Palapa C1 on 31 January 1996, Palapa C1 replacing Palapa B2P, which service ended in February 1996. The second satellite, Palapa C2, was launched on 15 May 1996. Both satellites carry 24 standard C-band transponders, 6 extended C-band tranponders and 4 Ku-band transponders , and are operated by Satelindo.

Palapa C2 is a Hughes manufactured HS-601 type spacecraft, which was launched on an Ariane-44L rocket and now is positioned at 113 degrees East. The spacecraft has an estimated operational life of 14 years. Satelindo operates Palapa C2 for television broadcasting and telecommunications.

Services

Transponder Lease & carrier by carrier lease

Satelindo provides full or partial or small carriers for telecommunication and video broadcast application.

Network Services

As Indonesia' s largest private satellite, GSM network and international gateway operator, Satelindo provides total network solutions and services such as:

VSAT network operations (DAMA/TDM/TDMA) for domestic and regional users
Data Broadcast (one way)
International Leased Lines
Multimedia and Video Conference

Palapa DigiBouquet

SATELINDO Digital Platform is an open and neutral technical platform based on DVB compliant, which enables service and content provider to rapidly and cost-effectively distribute video and data content via the Palapa-C Satellite System directly to PCs or set top box in businesses and homes. This platform allows service and content providers to offer many kinds of services to their customers such as:

DTH Channel Video

Distance Learning
Shopping channel
Video on Demand
Streaming Multicast
Package Delivery
High Speed Internet
E-Commerce
PalapaNet

PalapaNet is a high-speed network access for the IP community through PALAPA-C satellite. This service will broadcast Internet content and will distribute information using the latest technology of satellite network.

PalapaNet will be able to provide you the ultimate package of Internet access with the following services:

PalapaNet i - Link:
PalapaNet i - Link will provide bandwidth based Internet link directly from the USA to regional ISPs. The wholesale Internet link service will also provide 24 hours supports for quality service to ISPs.

PalapaNet i - Cast:

PalapaNet i - Cast will provide high bandwidth Internet service access. The customers will require a TVRO antenna on their roof and a PC card/set up box that will decode the Internet or video signal.

PalapaNet VAS:

PalapaNet VAS service is a value-added service that can deliver high-speed bandwidth specific to be delivered to their desktop at their request. This services for such a specialised content delivery service such as newspaper, brochure distribution, video training and or large data delivery to multiple branches.

AsiaLink (Telecast Service)

Using Satelindo's Satellite capacities on Palapa C2 (113 0E) both C-Band and Ku-Band, the company offers Regional Occasional Use Network from Teleport in the following countries; Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Some of the company services are;

Satellite Uplink, Downlink and Turnaround
Digital Video Compression System
Video Tape Playback
OB-Van
Video Conference System
Launch Support and TT & C

To support the launching of other satellite which owns and operates by other satellite operator. Satelindo offers also back up operations with any other operators in this region.

Additional information on Satelindo could be found at www.satelindo.co.id/.

WSG-Nimbus looks to close Sri Lanka cricket telecast deals

From Indiantelevision.com

National broadcaster Doordarshan has made a written offer to WSG-Nimbus Pvt. Ltd for telecast rights of international cricket in Sri Lanka, Nimbus Communications Chairman Harish Thawani said on Friday.

WSG-Nimbus is a 50:50 joint venture between the UK based WSG plc and India's Nimbus.

Thawani said that while talks were on with other broadcasters too, both primary and secondary, the final decision would cover not just financial considerations but also the kind of exposure that would be achieved.

In this context, a package arrangement involving Doordarshan and a private broadcaster was a possibility, he said.

Thawani added that Nimbus had already finalised a title sponsorship deal for the 14 international tours to be played in the emerald isles over the next three years.

His comments were in response to questions raised about the saleability of the tours. Satish Menon head of Buddha Films, the sports ventures spin-off of Zee Telefilms, had earlier told indiatelevision.com: "Three-year exclusive broadcast rights for international cricket played in Sri Lanka had fallen through because Nimbus' asking price of $25 million was much too high." Thawani retorted that Nimbus had rejected a written offer for telecast rights from Zee Telefilms because of doubts over payment security.

Zee was not in the picture at all at present he said, adding that discussions were still on with other channels whose bids were "more secure".

Sushma firm on 20% sectoral cap for DTH platforms

From indiantelevision.com

The government is sticking to its guns as far as the issue of a sectoral cap of 20 per cent for setting up a Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV platform is concerned despite all pleas from broadcasters.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday was quite categorical in an interview to the Financial Express that there would be no changes made to the original DTH guidelines.

Swaraj's consistent refrain on the subject despite strong lobbying indicates that entry into the DTH club will prove virtually impossible for most aspirants. There is a distinct possibility that when DTH does take off, there may be only one or at the most two competing players.

And with the government's own Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) announcing the formation of a five-member panel to chalk out its entry into DTH it all seems pretty well sewed up on that front. Who else if at all any remains to be seen.

Indian fashion will be loser if Govt. bans Fashion TV

From indiantelevision.com

Indian fashion will be the loser if the government follows through with Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj's threat that fashion channel FTV will be banned unless it "synchronises with Indian culture", B4U Managing Director Ravi Gupta said on Wednesday.

"If it (FTV) does not synchronise with our culture... I am getting it monitored for a week. After that we will show the highlights to the parliamentary consultative committee so that a joint decision can be taken," she told PTI on 31 December, 2000.

"FTV is a channel for the fashion industry. And should be seen as such. What is aired is actual ramp action both in India and across the fashion capitals of the world. It has nothing to do with pornography, Gupta stressed. He clarified that as there had been no direct communication from the government on the matter till now, whatever was being debated was purely speculative.

He also made the point that FTV provided a platform to bring Indian fashion to a global audience through its daily 10pm screenings devoted to the Indian fashion scene. "If the channel goes off the air Indian fashion stands to lose a great deal," he warned.

So how will B4U respond if there are moves to ban the channel? "We will seek legal redress," said Gupta. He however added that B4U did not plan to get into a dogfight with the government on the matter if it was adamant in its stand. "If they insist we will simply take FTV off. We won't make an issue of it, he said.

8/1/01

A big issue today, everything since Thursday to catch up on. In the news section we have some more digital tv news, a new global MRTV 3 channel comming on Thaicom 3. I will try and get the news section up todate tommorow

I will be in the chatroom tonight if anyones around.

From my Emails & ICQ

Is there any reason that a DVB FTA receiver cannot be used with digital television in association with a simple freq. downconverter. That will enable the sat receiver to tune directly to the digital broadcast on say ch 36 UHF. It is only a thought....

Stewart M

( Craigs, Note I don't know much about the formats but I don't think its practical)

Re: Telemann Ihug Internet cards, This from Rolly Whitehead

Try this:
http://www.telemann.com/index.html

then select the second news release in the list "HDTV PC card"

Regards Rolly

These loggings from Bill Richards over the past couple of days

0755UTC 5/01/01

Pas 2 4040 H Sr 10850 Fec 3/4 Vpid 1160 Apid1120 "ABC USA News" Feed including US ads

1025UTC 5/01/01

Pas 2 3888 V Sr 6610 Fec 3/4 Vpid 308 Apid 256 "NewsForce Basketball" Feed

2330UTC 6/01/01

Pas 2 3767 H Sr 6620 Fec 2/3 Vpid 308 Apid 256 Golf Feed "SNG Broadcast Services"

Pas 2 3957 V Sr 6620 Fec 2/3 Vpid 308 Apid 256 News Force Aust Golf Feed "NEWSFORCE AUST"

Pas 2 3966 V Sr 6620 Fec 2/3 Vpid 308 Apid 256 News Force Aust Golf Feed "ACCENTURE MATCH"

0025UTC 7/01/01

Optus B1 12706 V Sr 6110 Fec 3/4 Vpid 308 Apid 256 Text 273 Golf Feed "ASTRALINKS SNG"

Regards
Bill

From the Dish

Happenings from the 4/1/01

Asiasat 2 100.5E 3640 H "ESC 1" is encrypted again.

Asiasat 3 105.5E 4060 V "Indus Vision started , PAL/clear, 6.60/7.20 MHz.

Palapa C2 113E 3790 H "ETTV Shopping" has started on Sr 3050 Fec3/4 Vpid 33 Apid 34

Apstar 1A 134E 3840 H "CCTV 1, 2 and 7" have stopped testing .

Agila 2 146E 3787 H "GMA Network" left (NTSC).
Agila 2 146E 3835 H "CN TV" has left.
Agila 2 146E 3853 H "Miz TV has left.

Happenings from the 5/1/01

Asiasat 3 105.5E 4060 V "Indus Vision", left

Palapa C2 113E 4000 H All channels here encrypted except Cha Cha channel
Palapa C2 113E 3760 H "Tzu Chi TV" is now encrypted.
Palapa C2 113E 3760 H "TTV, CTV, CTS and FTV" left, replaced by test cards.

ST 1 88E 3550 V "Tzu Chi TV" is now encrypted.
ST 1 88E 3632 V "All channels are now encrypted, except Cha Cha Channel".

Happenings from the 6/1/01

Palapa C2 113E 3760 H "TTV, CTV, CTS and FTV" are back
Palapa C2 113E 3760 H "All TV channels here are now encrypted.
Palapa C2 113E 4000 H "Cha Cha Channel" is now encrypted.

Agila 2 146E 3890 H "GMA Network has started" NTSC/clear, 6.20:6.80 MHz.
Agila 2 146E 3836 H "A new mux has started here" Sr 6426 Fec 3/4
Agila 2 146E 3836 H "CN TV" Vpid 34 Apid 35
Agila 2 146E 3836 H "IBC 13" Vpid 32 Apid 33

ST 1 88E 3550 V "All TV channels in the MMBN mux are now encrypted.

Panamsat 8 166E 3740 H "MTV Asia" has encrypted.
Panamsat 8 166E 12580 H "Sun TV has left"

Happenings from the 7/1/01

Asiasat 2 100.5E 4007 V "EMTV" has left here (Moved to Pas 8)

Asiasat 3 105.5E 3880 H "Phoenix Chinese" has started in digital here in the Star BQ but fta. Carefull this service can upset some IRD Sr 28650 Fec 3/4 Vpids are 515 Apid 652.

Panamsat 8 166E 3808 V "EM TV" Power Vu Encrypted Sr 5632 Fec 3/4,

Panamsat 2 169E Occasional feeds on 3767 H, 3958 V and 3968 V,Dig , Sr 6620, Fec2/3.

Happenings from the 8/1/01

ST 1 88E 3509 H "CTV" has replaced "Bloomberg Asia" here Vpid 449 Apid 450

Apstar 1A 134E 3840 H "CCTV mux is still here CCTV1,2,7" Sr 27700 Fec 3/4 (weak power)

Panamsat 8 166E 3740 H "MTV Asia" has been replaced by a test card.

Optus B1 160E "Imparja mux" has moved from 12367 H to 12360 H Sr 5424 Fec 3/4

NEWS

Digital TV fails first test

From http://www.heraldsun.com.au/common/story_page/0,4511,1579385^662,00.html

MELBURNIANS have had their first glimpse of digital TV - and they can't see any improvement.

A few of the $700 set-top boxes, which allow analogue televisions to receive digital signals, were delivered to stores yesterday.

But curious shoppers slammed the digital technology, saying it offered no improvement on the analogue system it will eventually replace.

Traders also criticised the digital system, which has been dogged by controversy since it was introduced to Australia on January 1.

One retailer with 27 years of experience described the boxes as a viewer's nightmare.

"Even with all my experience in the business, it took me 40 minutes of sheer hard work to tune the box in to the digital system," said Charlie Crazy, manager of Encel Stereo's Doncaster store, Loewe Lifestyle.

"It would be a nightmare for the average viewer, trying to set up the box. Even retailers will have problems. I can see why one technician wrote to us quoting $200 to set a box up."

Each of the three Melbourne Encel Stores received a set-top box on Wednesday.

The digital picture quality at two stores was poor compared with the analogue picture. The third store said picture quality remained about the same.

Also bound to irritate viewers is the two to three second delay of the digital picture and sound, which lags behind the analogue transmission. Anybody watching the cricket on digital while listening to the commentary on radio will be bewildered that the sound doesn't match the picture.

"As it stands at the moment it's going to be hard to convince customers to spend $700 on the new boxes when boxes with more advanced facilities are bound to come later," said Mr Crazy.

Work on the Mt Dandenong TV transmitters to accommodate the new system has already inconvenienced viewers.

The ABC warned the work could disrupt or interfere with its analogue transmission.

"We are liaising closely with our transmission services provider to ensure the minimum impact on our audience," said ABC state director Murray Green.

Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations general manager Tony Branigan conceded there were problems with reception on analogue channels.

"Some viewers in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide are experiencing temporary interference to television reception because of upgrade work on television transmission towers," he said.

One industry source, who did not want to be named, said the digital TV hotline set up by the authorities to handle interference queries was struggling to cope.

"I spoke to an insider who says they have been swamped by complaints," he said.

On New Years Day alone, about 1500 Australians made complaints.

Most of the Victorian problems are caused by digital signals spilling over and interfering with adjacent channels.

Viewers with reception problems should call 1800 016 009.

South Korean Master Plan for digital satellite TV

From [sat-nd] 04.01.2001

The South Korean Information and Communication Ministry announced a master
plan for commercial digital satellite broadcasting, saying that over 200
channels and 4 million digital TV receivers will be provided by 2005. Analogue
broadcasts are scheduled to be phased out by 2010, according to Yonhap news
agency.

The digital satellite service is to begin operations in 2002. Before that, a
test bed for data and digital radio broadcasting will be established with 6
billion won (US$5 million) provided by the government. An official was quoted
as saying, The ministry will focus on commercial satellite broadcasting, which
would create 100,000 jobs and foster broadcasting services and related
equipment businesses.

The ministry estimates that South Korea will export US$10 billion worth of
digital receivers and $20 billion worth of other related equipment over the
next five years.

Intersputnik 100M plans

From [sat-nd] 04.01.2001

Intersputnik has published details about the future usage of its 15
geostationary slots in the Intersputnik-100M project. Some observers see the
project, which aims at launching up to one hundred small satellites into
geostationary orbit, as a move to secure the rights to those slots. In
addition, there are plans for bi-directional Ku-S-band Internet services.

Under current plans, four of the 15 slots would be used as parking slots
from which satellites can be dispatched to operational slots on demand. The
two western parking slots are 32.5 degrees and 23 degrees West, serving the
following five operational slots: 97, 83, 16, 6, and 3 degrees West. In the
East, 64.5 and 67.5 degrees East have been designated as parking slots. The six
operational slots are 17, 27, 59.5, 75, 114.5, and 153.5 degrees East.

In related news, Intersputnik plans to offer bi-directional Internet access
via small Intersputnik 100M satellites using return capacity in the S-band.
According to the organisation, Intersputnik enjoys priority over other
international organisations and administrations with regard to filings for
S-band satellite networks (2655-2690 MHz) across a major part of the
geostationary orbit.

Users would need an additional uplink antenna for the S-band, a modulator and
a power amplifier, which are expected to cost about US$200 in total.
Intersputnik also noted that the operation of S-band uplink equipment did not
require any authorisation because that part of the spectrum is allocated for
mobile satellite services.

T S I C H A N N E L N E W S - Number 01/2001 - January 7 2001 -

A weekly roundup of global TV news sponsored by Tele Satellite International
Editor: Branislav Pekic

Apsattv.com (Edited Edition)

FRANCE

CANAL PLUS TO SELL EUROSPORT

French pay-TV group Canal Plus on January 2 confirmed reports it would sell its
stake in the Eurosport TV channel and set up its own, rival sports network. A
spokeswoman said the recent changes in ownership of Canal, which was taken over
last month by Vivendi to form the new Vivendi Universal media and telecom
group, give other Eurosport shareholders the right to buy out Canals sts stake.
TF1, the highly profitable channel controlled by Bouygues that already owns
50.5 per cent of Eurosport International, will thus be able to negotiate the
right to acquire Canals 49s 49.5 per cent stake. TF1, with 26 per cent of
Eurosport France, will also acquire part of Canals 39s 39 per cent. The remaining
25 per cent belongs to Havas Image, a unit of Vivendi Universal. According to
French press reports, the transaction could value the channel at about E500
million. Canal Plus said it would continue to distribute Eurosport programmes
to its own subscribers, although its planned sports channel would compete with
it to some extent. Canal said in a statement it would suggest to TF1 that the
two continue their ;inteintelligent co-operation over broadcasting rights for key
sporting events such as the rugby world cup.

INDIA

STAR TV SEEKS APPROVAL FOR DTH VENTURE

According to a report in the Economic Times, Star TV will apply to the Foreign
Investment Promotion Board next week for approval for its DTH venture. The
company is likely to choose firm the Ispat Group as its Indian partner in the
venture. The Indian government gave the OK for DTH services late last year, but
set a 20 per cent cap on foreign investment.

JAPAN

STAR CHANNEL MERGES WITH SKY MOVIES

Japan;s las largest all-movie cable and satellite service, Star Channel, has merged
with Sony and News Corps Sks Sky Movies. The merged company will retain the name
Star Channel and source films from six Hollywood majors. The service will have
a library of nearly 1,000 titles. Star Channel owners Itochu and Tohokushinsha,
which each own a 35.3 per cent share, are to sell half their stock to Sony and
News Corp, Sky Movies? leading shareholders. Each of the four companies will
have a 17.65 per cent stake in the entity. Star Channel was broadcasting to
183,000 cable and 238,000 satellite subscribers at the end of October. It has
output deals with Warner, UA, Paramount and Universal. Sky Movies has been
operating on the Sky Perfectv communications satellite since 1998 and sources
films from Fox and Sony Pictures.

MYANMAR

GOVERNMENT PLANS TO LAUNCH GLOBAL CHANNEL

According to a report in The Myanmar Times, the Burmese government plans to
launch an English-language television channel, MRTV3, which will be beamed
around the world via satellite. A senior official of Myanmar Radio and
Television told the Myanmar Times that the channel will mirror the style and
presentation of some of the best known international news and current affairs
cable broadcasters. The digitalisation of the MRTV transponder on the
Thaicom-3 satellite opens up the bandwidth necessary for this new
English-language channel. The footprint of the transponders reaches from Europe
to Japan.

SOUTH KOREA

DIGITAL TV PROJECTIONS

Korea will host more than 200 digital TV channels by 2005, according to the
countrys dis digital broadcasting master plan released by the Information and
Communication Ministry (ICM) on January 2. The ICM estimated Korea would be
home to more than 4 million digital broadcasting receivers by 2005 as well as
building a healthy export market for digital receivers and related equipment
worth $20 billion over the next five years. Korea plans to launch some
commercial digital satellite broadcasting by 2003, with nation-wide coverage by
2005. Analogue broadcasts are scheduled to end by 2010.

7/1/01

Here we are all fixxed up hopefully after a big cleanup, the size of the site dropped from 35 megs down to 20! but the odd thing is I actually added stuff so if you notice anythings disapeard then let me know and I can salvage it from the backup. Its not the actual redesign just an overhaul as to file and folder nameing etc. You won't see much of the actual changes. The regular update will start Monday.

6/1/01

Hopefully things will back to normal updates on Monday! Everything thats happen since will be included in Mondays update.

5/1/01

No update due to site mainteneance

4/1/01

For various reasons Apsattv.com will be down untill Sunday night. I am having a huge cleanup and fix up hopefully by Sunday night everything will be fixxed and reuploaded.

8.40pm progress report, things are going well there is a LOT of work still to be done.

NOW is the chance to email me if you want some other satellites added, easiest for me to do it now rather than later use the mailing list or my email address.

3/1/01

Busy today with various things thats why the sites so late. Also I am trying a new method of uploading the site useing Adobe Golive 5's built in Ftp software rather than manually upload files, should make things much faster for me.In the news section there is more info on the introduction of Digital TV to Australia and its problems. Other Item of interest Zee TV has dropped plans for "Zee Sport" I picked up 2 Dish mounts plus 2 spare mount brackets for $6 at the local recycling center no idea how they ended up there but they had a bin with about 50 of them in it!

From my Emails & ICQ

Alex reports via ICQ , Hophman Cup Tennis from Perth is on
Optus B1 12316 H "ABC Feed" reported Tuesday

Bill Richards spotted it on Wednesday on
Optus B1 12336 H "ABC Feed" and supplied the screenshot

From Mark Fahey via the mailing list

So the MTV 2 hour repeating loop continues! All around the world people are
taking down their Christmas decorations but still on PAS8 the MTV bug in the
top right hand corner is still draped in Christmas wrap. I wonder what this
loop is up here for?

My fave song on the loop is Everclear - Wonderful followed a close second by
Fat Boy Slim - Sunset (Bird Of Prey). But now after seeing the same clips at
least 20 times I am back to MCM as my background noise at home!

Happy new year.

Mark

Also via the Apsattv mailing list this from Sungadi

I own a HUMAX IRCI 5400, I wonder where i can get a Nagravision Cam and
Viacess Cam in Australia or NZ ??


And how much is the price ??

Thanks

Email Sungadi [email protected]

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3551 H "Channel of Hope International" has left this satellite and several others

Optus B1 12316 H "Hophman Cup Tennis from Perth"
Optus B1 12336 H "Hophman Cup Tennis from Perth"
Optus B1 160E 12458 V "Network 10 analog feeds have stopped"
Optus B1 160E 12480 V "Network 10 analog feeds replaced by Testcard"Optus B1 160E 12689 H "WorldNet and all the radio channels have left" just some temp test?

NEWS

Australians flood digital interference hotline

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/nat/newsnat-2jan2001-53.htm

Approximately 10,000 Australians as at Tuesday have already called a hotline for advice on interference to their television reception, since the introduction of digital television on Sunday night.

Queenslanders have reported the most cases of interference, with less than five per cent of calls coming from Victoria.

Tony Brannigan, general manager of the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations, says the most common complaint from Victorians is a snowy interference pattern on commercial stations.

"Where it does happen it's not something that's user fixable, it requires a visit from a technician," he said.

"It tends to be the televisions themselves. We've found problems with some European designed sets. Generally speaking most TV receivers can cope quite well."

Meanwhile, ABC TV reception in Victoria is also suffering interference, due to works on its Mt Dandenong transmitter.

Lessons from Australian Digital Free-to-Air Launch Fiasco?

From http://technology.nzoom.com/story.html?story_020101_digitaltv.inc

By Matt Moran, with reporting from Australia by Sampath Soysa

Australia saw in the New Year with the launch of its digital free-to-air television service, months ahead of the launch of a similar service in New Zealand.

The new service sees the major Australian networks re-broadcasting their existing analogue content on a new digital transmission system, which offers improved picture and sound quality. At present, however, almost nobody can appreciate the improvement - the set-top boxes needed to receive digital transmissions are not currently available for sale, and are not expected to be for at least a fortnight.

The introduction of the new digital service has taken three years of sometimes acrimonious debate between Australia's competing networks over transmission standards. The DVB standard, used throughout Europe and chosen for deployment in New Zealand, was eventually settled on. The new standard offers the potential for widescreen broadcasts, DVD quality pictures, cinema surround sound and interactivity. Alternatively, the networks could opt to offer more channels, requiring a trade-off with improved picture quality.

Exactly what will be done with all of this potential has yet to be decided, with the networks still struggling to come up with business models to take advantage of the new technology.

"I can't see they are going to be developing a lot of new revenue streams until they see there is real revenue potential and I think that's years away as you need (digital TV) penetration of 20 to 30 per cent before they seriously develop those other opportunities," UBS Warburg media analyst Tony Wilson told The Age.

The digital environment is also becoming increasingly competitive, alarming the incumbent networks which successfully lobbied for a regulatory environment very much in their favour, at least in the short term.

Alternative digital content providers based on the Internet threaten to offer increased competition as high-speed Internet access rolls out across Australia, aided by the opening up of Telstra's network to competing Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) providers. DSL technology provides the potential for television quality video as well as high-speed Internet access, with the combination of the two allowing true Interactive television content, well ahead of when the television networks plan to roll out their own interactive offerings - at least five years away by some estimates.

In the meantime, the networks will be struggling to convince people to spend the AUS$700 (NZ$881) necessary to purchase a set-top box in order to watch exactly the same content they get now, albeit with some improvement in quality.

While less pondering was involved in the rollout of free-to-air digital, it may have the potential to be more successful. The digital initiative that TVNZ is now running with was not the broadcaster's first choice - the change of government late in 1999 saw a more commercial first option dropped. The subsequent scramble for a second option became something of a race against the diminishing viability of any potential digital initiative.

The lack of lengthy consideration has meant that, unlike Australia, digital free-to-air has not been co-ordinated between incumbent broadcasters. TVNZ is the only broadcaster involved in the free-to-air service, while the TV3 network's channels have been available through Sky Television's subscription digital service for some time now.

On the other hand, the increased enthusiasm of the Government - and therefore TVNZ - for local content will see additional channels offered with the new digital service, providing viewers with a more reason to buy a new set-top box than just a better picture. At this stage, a new 24-hour news channel and a Maori content channel are anticipated.

The digital environment is potentially no less competitive in New Zealand, but the Government and TVNZ seem less afraid of it than their Australian counterparts. TVNZ's partner in it's digital initiative is in fact a potential competitor, Telstra-Saturn. Some months prior to the initiative's announcement Telstra-Saturn chief executive Jack Matthews had already unveiled plans to roll out a half-billion dollar high-speed network throughout the country, including high-speed Internet access and digital television.

The threat from the Internet has similarly been co-opted, with TVNZ launching its own Internet channel nzoom.com, to the extent that nzoom is already offering interactive video content - exactly the stuff the Australian networks are so terrified of.

However, until the launch of digital free-to-air in New Zealand, expected April or May this year, no one really knows whether it will be more successful than the Australian's New Year fiasco.

Australians denied benefits of high-definition digital: expert


From http://it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/20010102/A10965-2001Jan2.html

The Australian federal government's high-definition option for digital television denied Australians the real benefits of the new technology, communications expert Jock Given said today.

Digital broadcasts began in state capitals yesterday but digital TV sets or set-top boxes to receive the digital signal are still unavailable.

``Some of the benefits are not available from the start and we have been critical of some aspects of the way the government has gone about introducing digital TV,'' Given, of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, told ABC Radio.

He expected to see further changes to digital TV policy to make extra benefits available.

``Australia has put more emphasis on high-definition TV than anywhere else in the world. A lot of people are very sceptical about the likely market for it,'' Given said.

He said high-definition digital was part of the package networks offered the government in return for favored treatment in allocation of spectrum.

Given said digital TV's most successful launch in the past couple of years was in Britain but it still had nothing like a majority of consumers racing to embrace it in the way colour television was adopted.

``Some would argue that consumers who jump into digital TV at any stage are not going to be getting terribly much more than with analogue,'' he said.

``Some of them are going to stay rightly sceptical about what they're getting for their money when at the moment they can pay $400, get a nice TV set and watch five free-to-air channels and 40 or 50 pay channels if they choose to subscribe.''

Nine Network digital spokeswoman Kim Anderson said yesterday's switch-on was smooth and denied high-definition lacked benefits such as interactivity.

She said consumers would eventually have email access, multiple views of programs, program enhancements, the ability to download recipes from cooking shows or to purchase products, and instant on-screen messaging.

Anderson likened the start-up to electricity.

``In 1888, the lights went on in the exhibition hall but really electricity didn't roll out for some time and I think we have to think of it as the same thing,'' she told ABC Radio.

``People who have poor reception will notice a significant difference if they purchase a set-top box.

``Unlike analogue television, if you get a digital signal you get a perfect picture.''

Digital supporters say be patient

From http://it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/20010103/A11171-2001Jan3.html

Digital television supporters are urging viewers to be patient as the new technology makes a less than auspicious beginning.

Around 1500 people contacted two digital television hotlines with most complaining of interference caused by the new broadcasts.

Brisbane was the worst affected as viewers got snow and static rather than their desired cricket or daytime soap coverage.

But Nine Network digital spokeswoman Kim Anderson said the switch-over to digital broadcasts had gone smoothly.

Although almost no one is yet able to view digital television because of a lack of technology, Ms Anderson said benefits like multiple views of programs would soon come.

Communications Minister Richard Alston told the ABC's 7.30 Report the advent of digital television would be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

``I think the time to make the judgement will be in three to four years time,'' he said.

Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (FACTS) general manager Tony Branigan said most of the problems so far were in homes where the VCR was being used as the broadcast receiver.

He said he was happy with the way the digital switch-over had gone.

``The interference that's been experienced is a lot less than we feared and the education campaign that we've been running seems to have been effective,'' Branigan said.

FACTS has just released maps detailing where people should be able to pick up digital transmissions.

At the moment, all transmissions are confined to capital cities, apart from Canberra.

Digital snowshowers affect hundreds of TV viewers

From http://it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/20010103/A11169-2001Jan3.html

Hundreds of television viewers were finding summer snow on their screens since the introduction of digital transmission, the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations said yesterday.

Around 1500 people yesterday called two interference hotlines set up by FACTS to deal with problems caused by the new transmission which began testing in early December.

That is an increase of about 50 per cent compared to the days before yesterday's official start to the digital system in the mainland capital cities.

Brisbane was worst affected, where the new digital channel for SBS is 36, a channel commonly used by viewers for their video cassette recorders (VCRs).

``A lot of people find they are getting interference,'' FACTS general manager Tony Branigan said.

``If they are using the VCR as a receiver they may be finding they can't get any TV at all.

``Most of the calls to our hotlines are VCR related.''

The interference from digital transmission appears as snowing or a sort of sparkly effect.

The time of year was also compounding the problem, Branigan said.

Atmospheric conditions in summer often meant television signals that usually travelled less than 100km could go further.

For example, televisions in Launceston were often subject to interference from Victorian transmitters in summer, causing ghosting, Branigan said.

Outside of Brisbane, the problem was much less frequent.

``It's a very rare problem in other cities,'' he said.

And even in the Queensland capital, the interference was usually easily fixed by reprogramming the VCR to use a channel other than 36.

``The interference that's been experienced is a lot less than we feared and the education campaign that we've been running seems to have been effective,'' Branigan said.

Interference is just one of the criticisms of the new technology that will eventually deliver high-quality pictures to home screens - when people are able to buy the equipment necessary to receive the digital signal.

Communications expert Jock Given said the federal government's high-definition option for digital television denied Australians the real benefits of the new technology.

Digital TV sets or set-top boxes to receive the digital signal are still unavailable.

``Australia has put more emphasis on high-definition TV than anywhere else in the world,'' Given, of Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology, told ABC Radio.

``A lot of people are very sceptical about the likely market for it.''

Nine Network digital spokeswoman Kim Anderson said Monday's switch-on was smooth and denied high-definition lacked benefits such as interactivity.

She said consumers would eventually have e-mail access, multiple views of programs, program enhancements, the ability to download recipes from cooking shows or to purchase products, and instant on-screen messaging.

Anderson likened the start-up to electricity.

``In 1888, the lights went on in the exhibition hall but really electricity didn't roll out for some time and I think we have to think of it as the same thing,'' she said.

News provider NDTV wants entertainment channel

From indiantelevision.com

Another player is eyeing the entertainment segment. This time it is the Prannoy Roy-promoted New Delhi Television (NDTV) which is quietly working on a plan to launch a channel of that ilk by mid- to end 2002. The name has not been decided as yet, (though daily Business Standard says it has been called NDTV World but the idea is to start the content aggregation for the channel by mid-2001. Currently, NDTV is in talks with financial institutions to fund the foray. NDTV is a partner of Rupert Murdoch's Star TV in Star News and provides it with the daily news that has become synonymyous with Prannoy Roy.

NDTV has little experience in entertainment programming though it is producing two shows for Star TV along with BBC based on the Yes Minister! and Yes Prime Minister series. This apart it also showcases developments in the glamour and tinsel world on its news channels.

The move is being seen by observers as a preparatory move by NDTV to have its own media vehicle for carriage of its content should its relationship with Star TV for Star News not last out its full course till 2003. Star TV chief Peter Mukerjea has reportedly not been too happy about the manner in which the agreement betwen the two tilts in favour of NDTV.

Zee TV recasts sports rights acquisition arm, drops ideas for sports channel

From indiantelevision.com

It's a strategic retreat. Pummelled by the investment community for its wild expansion (its Re 1 face value share has plummetted from Rs 1600 to below Rs 300 in just nine to 10 months), Zee Telefilms Ltd yesterday announced that it was spinning off its sports content provider subsidiary, Buddha Films, into a separate company.

At the same time it closed the doors for the near term on plans to launch its long-talked about sports channel, Zee Sport. The decisions form part of the company's plans to restructure operations in line with AT Kearney's recommendations.

Satish Menon, head of Buddha Films, said sports content will be acquired by Buddha Films and the carriage will be provided by a Zee channel till the separate sports channel is ready for launch.

Asked whether there was any target time frame for the launch he replied in the negative. "When we feel we have all the ingredients in place to make it a success we will go ahead," he said.

Menon said his focus would be on promoting soccer in a big way. "There is a massive scope for developing soccer-centric programming but it has to be tapped," he said. Agreements have already been reached with football federations in Goa and West Bengal and talks were on with the Kerala authorities too, he added.

Discussions were also in progress with All India Football Federation chief Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi for an agreement at the national level. Buddha Films will follow a multi-pronged approach which will go beyond just telecast rights. It will help soccer federations and associations create brands out of their properties besides acquiring club grounds, reports the Business Standard.

Menon said Buddha Films was looking at a three year development schedule. This was an effort which was long-term in its perspective, he stressed.

On the cricket front, Menon said talks WSG Nimbus Pvt Ltd of Singapore for three-year exclusive broadcast rights for international cricket played in Sri Lanka had fallen through. Nimbus' asking price of $25 million for a three-year deal was much too high, Menon said.

Whether Indian couch potatoes, for whom cricket seems to be perfectly suited, will be able to digest soccer only time will tell. Menon certainly is confident he's on the ball in the matter.

2/1/01 2nd Update, NEWS added in the NEWS section about digital tv.

2/1/01

Sites late so much behind the scenes fixing and additions being done it takes a long time, Started adding more content last night, It will take a while, its a lot of work. I added St1 but would you believe it today Lyngsat reports many more channels there are fta at the moment so it means I will have to add more to the St1 page later. I have found a number of programming links for the channels there. Of course many can't receive this satellite but the same channels are on Jcsat 3 and Palapa C2 usually FTA at the same time.

From my Emails & ICQ

This one in from John Kahler via Apsattv mailing list Tuesday

All channels in the Boomerang TV package on PAS 8 are currently FTA again.

Details -

12726 H (tp 24) Sr 25728 Fec 7/8

- CNN International
- Cartoon Network / TNT
- CNNfn
- ESPN
- Animal Planet

Regards,
John.

Thanks to the quick work of Bill Richards we have screenshots of them all except TNN

Mike H reports "The Spice Channel" will start today on Sky NZ

(I Don't think its cooking related..its located on position 43 on the Sky remote and needs to be subscribed to)

From Bill Richards he supplies some Screenshots of Testcards seen on Palapa C2

FTV, TTV and China tv (CTV) (These also on St1 and Jcsat3)

This one from another Bill (Sydney) via the mailing list Tuesday

All taiwanese channels on 4000 and 3760 are FTA
on Palapa C2.

Bill (sydney)

From the Dish

Thaicom 3 78.5E 3680 H "MRTV" NSTC analog has left.

ST 1 88E Many Channels in the MMBN package are currently FTA includeing

TTV
FTV
MMBN Info
Bloomberg Tv Asia
Open tv
Casa TV
Tzu Chi TV
Taiwan Entertainment
Mega movie
CTV
CTS
STV-MTV
BTS
CHA CHA Channel
TNN
SBN
HuaXia TV
Scholar Movie TV
Global TV

Asiasat 2 100.5E 3864 V "Beijing TV" FTA Sr 4420 Fec 3/4 Vpid 32 Apid 34

Palapa C2 113E Many Channels in the Space Tv Package are currently FTA includeing

Open Tv
Casa TV
Taiwan Entertainment TV
TTV
CTV
CTS
FTV
STV-MTV
BTS
BBC World
TNN
SBN - Scholar Business Network
HuaXia TV
Scholar Movie TV
Global TV

Palapa C2 113 E 3790 H "Mystery" unknown reported here Sr 3050 Fec 3/4

Optus B1 160E 12689 H "WorldNet" Sr 6100 Fec 3/4 This one reported on Lyngsat and at Satfacts but Bill Richards has been monitoring the frequency and found nothing.

NEWS

Lucky few witness start of new TV era

From http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/02/national/national11.html

The digital television broadcast era officially began in Australia yesterday - at least, it did for the lucky few who had the technology to receive the signals.

While test broadcasts have been under way since July, Federal legislation set January 1, 2001, as the official starting date for digital transmissions by the television networks.

But it wasn't quite as revolutionary as Bruce Gyngell's first appearance on the black and white box.

With the first 10,000 digital reception kits yet to go on sale to the public, the only people who went digital yesterday were those able to sneak a box early - or those who had already been able to afford an expensive digital television.

Some viewers have experienced problems with their analog reception since digital testing began last year.

The networks have told people to contact a hotline - 1800 016 009 - if they suddenly have fuzzy pictures. The stations will pay for technicians to fix problems caused by digital transmission.

Channel 7 reported minimal complaints in Sydney yesterday and only about 100 complaints - including 30 requiring a technician's presence - in Brisbane, where problems were expected.

Digital set-top boxes allow old analog televisions to receive digital signals, offering ghost-free reception, widescreen viewing and soon multi-view programming.

Network spokespeople said while the first of the 10,000 set-top boxes would be in store from today, they were likely to be used as demonstration models. The bulk of the 10,000 will be available to consumers by the end of the month for a recommened retail price of $699.

Michael and Naomi Day, of Lane Cove, were among the early beneficiaries. The Days - Mr Day is an engineer with Channel 7 - have endured poor reception since moving into their apartment nearly two years ago.

While some channels are clearer than others, their television reception has been less than perfect.

Supplied with a set-top box so he could test it, Mr Day was a happy man yesterday, watching a crystal-clear broadcast.

Although Mr Day's set-top box will have to go back to its manufacturer, he doesn't think he'll rush out to buy another one soon, as he will hold out for later models with additional features.

Despite the beginning of digital transmission, hard-core sports fans will have to wait for added features like multiple views.

Provided there is sufficient on-screen action to warrant it, Channel 9 plans to introduce multi-view during the coming one-day cricket series. Channel 7 hopes to use multi-view from January 22 during the second week of the Australian Open.

Analog broadcasts will continue until at least 2008.

Digital TV starts with a whimper

From http://www.australianit.com.au/common/storyPage/0,3811,1570710%5E442,00.html

THE digital television revolution officially began in Australian lounge rooms yesterday, but almost no one was able to see it.

An absence of digital receivers, and a delay in the decoder boxes which allow analogue receivers to deliver digital images, meant the biggest revolution in Australian viewing habits since colour went by quietly.

The best most people will be able to do is visit electrical stores which have a small number of decoder boxes to show off the merits of digital television.

Test digital broadcasts have been run in Sydney and Melbourne over the past fortnight.

A spokesman for the Australian Broadcasting Authority said it appeared the tests had gone smoothly with few complaints.

TV stations are preparing for possible interference caused by the closeness of the new digital channels.

There is also concern about the retuning needed for VCRs that are tuned for analogue rather than digital transmissions.

The ABA is not expecting any real problems until digital transmissions are extended in May to Newcastle and Wollongong.

Interference may then be caused because of the number of stations operating in NSW's three largest cities so close to each other.

A hotline has been set up by the Federation of Commercial Television Stations to answer questions about digital broadcasts and their possible impact on existing television services.

The freecall number is 1800 016 009.

The cost of fixing problems will be covered by the digital broadcasters.

Digital's little fuzz and bother

From http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/01/01/FFXYCFK0FHC.html

With the Y2K crisis failing to materialise, the television industry reported few problems with fuzzy reception after digital TV was launched on Sunday night.

Robert Osmotherly, the Melbourne general manager of Network Ten, said only four people had called the station by mid-afternoon.

He said most recent complaints (Ten has been testing its digital signal since November) were due to the networks broadcasting from another transmitter at Mount Dandenong while the major transmitter was upgraded for digital.

The other transmitter is only 200metres away, but it does have an impact on the propogation of the signal, he said.

Mr Osmotherly is also the chairman of TX Australia, the company jointly owned by the TV networks which owns the transmitters.

A free telephone hotline was set up by the stations to provide recorded advice on interference matters. The greatest problems were expected to be in Brisbane. But more problems are expected in Melbourne, particularly in the outer west, when Ballarat's WIN TV starts broadcasting on UHF Channel 36 on January 15.

Mr Osmotherly was one of the few people able to see the new digital signals yesterday, as the set-top boxes needed to see the channel on existing sets are not yet on sale.

Mr Osmotherly said Ten, which broadcasts its digital signal on Channel 11, was calling its new service Ten Digital. Ten Digital is the only one of the commercial network's digital channels to feature a new service an electronic program guide that can be added or removed from the screen.

Seven's watermark on its digital channel six differs from its analogue version, with the new logo saying 7d.

Nine's digital channel, shown on Channel 8, was the same as its analogue channel.

But all digital channels feature programs in a boxed form, as few have been reformatted for the wide-screen digital viewing.

But most promotional broadcasts created by the networks were in the wide-screen format, and Mr Osmotherly said they were encouraging advertisers to produce wide-screen commercials.

T S I C H A N N E L N E W S - Number 53/2000 - December 31 2000 -

A weekly roundup of global TV news sponsored by Tele Satellite International

Editor: Branislav Pekic

Apsattv.com Edited Edition

* We wish all our readers a Happy New Year *

AUSTRALIA

DIGITAL TV ARRIVES ON NEW YEARS DAY

TV watchers will be unable to view digital TV when it launches on
January 1, since suppliers of set-top boxes confirmed they would not be
for sale until mid-January. This will be a blow to the free-to-air TV
networks, which underwrote the first shipment of boxes to ensure their
delivery before January 1. French company Thomson-Multimedia won the
contract offered by the free-to-air networks to supply the boxes, but
managing director Lawrie Ruddock said that only demonstration boxes
would be available by New Year. Mr Ruddock said the underwritten
shipment of 10,000 boxes had been fully pre-sold and another shipment
was planned for between March and May, with the greatest demand coming
from Victoria and New South Wales.

INDIA

INDIAN TV CHANNELS BACK IN NEPAL

Indian channels returned to Nepali cable networks on December 30, with
major cable networks beginning to air Indian channels, which were taken
off around Christmas, when violence gripped the country over an alleged
anti-Nepal statement by Indian actor Hrithik Roshan. The violence
claimed at least five lives and denied the Himalayan country of its
massive tourist inflow during the new year once again.

JAPAN

HISTORY CHANNEL AROUND THE CLOCK

The History Channel launches its 24-hour branded service in Japan on
January 1. The channel began broadcasting in Japan as a five-hour
branded block on the Lets Try channel, distributed by Super Network, in
January 1999.

THE PHILIPPINES

MYX REPLACES MTV

Studio 23, a subsidiary of broadcaster ABS-CBN, will launch music video
channel, MYX, on January 1. The new four-hour block airs in the space
vacated by MTV Asia, which has set up a 24-hour UHF station with the
National Broadcasting Corporation. MYX falls under the ABS-CBN
Narrowcast Group, which also handles cable channels, such as Lifestyle,
Knowledge, FYI and ANC. Programming will include pop, rock, adult
contemporary, urban, dance, world and alternative. Syndicated
international shows and local productions (chart shows, requests, talk
shows) will be introduced later.

SOUTH KOREA

KDB WINS SATELLITE LICENSE

The Korea Telecom (KT)-run Korea Digital Broadcasting (KDB) consortium
has been awarded a satellite broadcasting business license, beating out
a rival platform supported by News Corp. The decision was announced in
Seoul following recommendations by the Korea Broadcasting Commission.
Digital direct-to-home (DTH) services are scheduled to start in October
2000 with more than 70 channels. By 2005, this could increase to 114
channels. According to local reports, the consortium has promised to
invest US$2 billion over five years, and expects a net profit in year
five. KT owns 18 per cent of the consortium. The other shareholders are
KBS (10 per cent), MBC (7 per cent) and SBS (3.2 per cent), plus other
smaller shareholders. The license gives KDB virtual control over the
commercial digital direct-to-home satellite landscape.

1/1/01

hmm checkout the date ..normal transmissions will resume here Tuesday