Final Analysis by Kate Bulkley
In at the deep end
24 Feb 10 - From every angle, 3D looks good, at least so far. The record audiences for James Cameron’s hit movie Avatar prove customer demand for the ‘near-real’ viewing experience. Now TV manufacturers...
Pay-TV looks over the top
09 Dec 09 - A collective fit of jealousy is permeating the TV broadcasting business and where it is going to end is anybody’s guess. Free-to-air broadcasters are looking with envy at pay-TV operators’ revenue models...
Taking the high road
27 Aug 09 - The old mantra ‘content is king’ has taken a bit of a beating in the age of the internet. The quality of the content on the web has often underwhelmed, but in today’s always-on culture the capability of the technology platforms – Facebook, Amazon or Skype – to offer faster, cheaper and more connected ways to do all kinds of things from shopping to swapping photos has captured people’s imaginations...
iPhone effect hits pay-TV
28 Jul 09 - There is no getting around the fact that Apple’s iPhone has effected big changes in the mobile phone industry, but the iPhone effect is reverberating elsewhere, not least in the pay-TV business. In the mobile world, handset leaders including Nokia and Motorola have rushed to change the look and feel of smart-phones to compete against the slick and sexy iPhone...
Cable finds cash is king
04 Jun 09 - With it likely to be some time before capital markets loosen up, the highly-leveraged European cable business is going to face a rough 12 months. The combination of a slowing economy and debt-heavy companies that can’t raise necessary capital from tapped-out...
Cable caught in the web
01 May 09 - Cable is better at some things than others. With over-the-top video already being piped into TV sets, operators are now mulling over how to adapt.
Beeb fills in the Canvas
09 Apr 09 - These are difficult times in TV land. The plummeting TV advertising market brought on by the credit crunch and general downturn has forced TV companies to rip up their business plans, throw out their revenue targets and...
Sky: a sharper picture
16 Mar 09 - Never let it be said that UK pay-TV operator BSkyB doesn’t like to buck a trend. In the midst of one of the worst financial meltdowns since the 1930s, at a time when leading commercial TV operators like ITV are slashing jobs and...
Look on the bright side
29 Jan 09 - There is enough bad news in the financial world in general and the media world in particular to fill a dozen columns right now. So let’s buck the trend and see what’s going to be good about 2009, or at least what good opportunities there may be after the fallout...
BT and the future of fibre
31 Jul 08 - When BT makes an announcement about upgrading the UK broadband network, we all sit up and take notice. How the big telcos act in the next-generation network business has big implications for competitors from cable and satellite operators to ISPs and even mobile operators looking to expand their...
A private function
03 Sep 08 - The move by conditional-access and interactive TV technology specialist NDS Group to go private is not unexpected, and not without controversy. The technology company has been controlled by News Corp (with 72% of the shares and 95% of the voting rights) for many years, but in June News Corp and...
IPTV’s eastern promise
07 Oct 08 - At HanaTV, the IPTV service owned by South Korea’s SK Telecom, the most popular valued-added service – perhaps unsurprisingly – is Karaoke TV. In fact, Karaoke TV outsells TV games, e-learning and cartoon services on the platform. Customers who choose to pay the extra US$2 (€1.40) a month for...
