* Finnish provider picks Net Insight
Digita of Finland has selected the Net Insight Nimbra platform to expand its digital terrestrial television (DTT) service.
Digita will use Nimbra for its DTT regional and national transmission network. Initially, the company tapped the system to support northern Finland.
* Brasil Telecom downloads Widevine deal
Brasil Telecom has tapped Widevine Technologies to provide downloadable conditional access and digital rights management systems for the telco’s IP-based video service.
Brasil Telecom will launch the service on set-tops and media gateways, with plans to expand access to PCs and other IP-capable video devices, as well.
Brasil Telecom has more than 10.8 million fixed lines installed.
* EchoStar vet joins New Frontier
Scott Piper has been named to the new post of chief information officer at adult programmer New Frontier Media Inc.
Piper, who will head up New Frontier’s monetization of new and emerging delivery technologies as well as VOD, joins the company from EchoStar Communications, where he held executive positions, including acting CIO. Most recently, Piper was the exec in charge of launching EchoStar’s “DISHonline” broadband portal.
* Alpha elevates Spée
Powering specialist Alpha Technologies has promoted Dr. René Spée to executive vice president. Spée joined Alpha in 2001.
* Towerstream, Speakeasy form wired/wireless partnership
Towerstream and Speakeasy have signed a distribution agreement that marries the former’s wireless pre-WiMAX network with the latter’s fiber-based network.
Both companies focus on the small and medium business (SMB) market. Speakeasy will be able to sell services on Towerstream’s wireless networks in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and the greater Boston, Providence and Newport, R.I. areas.
To seal the deal, Towerstream bought Speakeasy’s wireless network in Seattle, one of the first WiMAX testbeds. The purchase price was not disclosed.
* STMicroelectronics has new dual-tuner chip
STMicroelectronics announced a new high-definition decoder chip for set-tops, digital video recorders and DVD players. The STi7200 system-on-chip (SoC) supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats, in addition to HD satellite and cable TV standards.
The dual decoder can simultaneously decode two high-definition video streams; supported coding standards include H.264/AVC, MPEG-2 and VC-1. Dual transport stream processors allow up to four-channel recording alongside two-channel viewing or time-shifted playbacks. System connectivity includes two Ethernet ports, dual SATA (Serial ATA) disk drive interfaces, and three USB ports.
The chips are priced at $30 each in high volume.