Pace to pick up Philips’ STB division
By Mike Robuck
Pace Micro Technology inked a conditional agreement yesterday to acquire the set-top box (STB) and connectivity solutions business of Royal Philips Electronics.
The $135 million deal, which is subject to Pace shareholder approval and other conditions, would make Pace one of the world’s top-three set-top manufacturers. Once the deal is complete, Philips will have a 23 percent stake in Pace, in exchange for 70 million Pace shares.
Pace CEO Neil Gaydon, in a prepared statement, predicted that the deal would create a company with revenues of more than $1 billion in sales that would produce approximately 8.5 million STBs a year.
“There is a strong strategic fit from customer, product, geographic, culture and scale perspectives,” Gaydon said. “We have minimal customer overlap, and the combined group will have a significantly enhanced technological position.”
Philips’ STB and connectivity business unit has approximately 335 employees who are primarily based in France. The company sells set-tops to cable, satellite, IPTV and terrestrial service providers. As part of the transaction, Pace will be able to use Philips’ brand in retail distribution for the next three years.
Pace’s customers in the U.S. include DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, while overseas customers include BSkyB and BT.
TWC sells cable systems in Charlotte area
By Mike Robuck
Time Warner Cable announced today that it has completed the sale of cable systems – with approximately 14,300 basic video subscribers – located in the Charlotte, N.C., area.
The subscribers are based in Mecklenburg County, and in the towns of Mooresville, Davidson and Cornelius. Those four entities formed MI-Connection Communications System, which TWC sold the systems to for $51 million.
MI-Connection Communications System, representing local governments in Mecklenburg and Iredell counties, exercised its right of first refusal under local franchise agreements after TWC acquired the cable systems from Adelphia Communications Corp. last year. Two other municipalities, which had similar rights of first refusal in their original Adelphia franchise agreements, opted not to acquire systems under their jurisdiction.
TWC continues to be the largest cable provider in North Carolina. At the end of September, the MSO served more than 446,000 basic cable subscribers in the Charlotte area, including subscribers now being transferred to MI-Connection.
Nielsen, Invidi join to share data, measure personalized TV ads
By Traci Patterson
The Nielsen Company and Invidi Technologies Corp. have entered into a multi-year agreement to share data and discover ways to measure personalized TV ads that are targeted to specific viewers.
Nielsen will provide Invidi with demographic data, enabling Invidi to add the ability to track addressable advertising to its advanced software engine – Advatar.
“Nielsen is anxious to create metrics for measuring targeted advertising, and this agreement with Invidi is an important step forward,” said Scott Brown, Nielsen’s SVP of media product leadership for digital platforms. “The new digital landscape is changing the way advertising is placed. Working with the industry, we expect to discover more effective ways to measure and confirm advertising success, which is increasingly critical to the needs of both ad buyers and sellers.”
In 2007, Nielsen introduced standardized ratings of TV commercials that enable clients to measure the impact of commercial viewing on consumers with digital video recorders (DVRs) and other time-shifting technologies.
This year, Nielsen also launched DigitalPlus, which works with set-top box (STB) data from cable operators and satellite providers, to create new insights and services for clients by integrating STB data with other Nielsen information, the company said.
Invidi’s Advatar system is a scalable, enterprise-level headend or digital STB application that delivers addressable ads and marketing messages to individual viewer demographics. Last week, the company completed a $25 million third round of financing.
FTC clears Google’s buy of DoubleClick
By Brian Santo
Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick was finally approved after an eight-month review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The deal cannot go through just yet, however; Google awaits approval from the European Commission.
The FTC concluded that the deal would have no negative impact on competition. As for consumers’ objections about the potential for DoubleClick’s behavioral advertising market to violate consumer privacy, the Commission said the problem is not unique to the Google-DoubleClick combination.
The FTC determined Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick is just another in a series of similar combinations, including Yahoo’s acquisition of Right Media; AOL’s acquisition of Adtech AG and Tacoda; WPP Group’s acquisition of 24/7 Real Media; and Microsoft’s $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive and purchase of AdECN Inc.
But since the potential for privacy violations is endemic, the FTC simultaneously released a set of proposed principals that it hopes the advertising industry will adopt in a fit of self-regulation.
The proposed principals are included in a document that can be found online here.
“For us, privacy does not begin or end with our purchase of DoubleClick,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “We have been protecting our users’ privacy since our inception and will continue to innovate in how we safeguard their information and maintain their trust.”
Privacy concerns are clearly justified, however, as the recent flap over FaceBook’s Beacon advertising program proves.
RGB presents privacy mode encryption for VOD apps
By Traci Patterson
RGB Networks is offering privacy mode encryption licensing and technology for video-on-demand (VOD) applications, enabling cable operators to encrypt their VOD programs so that the content can only be viewed by authorized subscribers.
RGB will enable the simultaneous bulk encryption of hundreds of VOD programs on two of its products – the Universal Scalable Modulator (USM) and the Dynamic Bandwidth Manager (DBM) – and RGB will apply privacy mode encryption to the VOD programs as they are processed.
The company’s USM is a high-density universal QAM modulator, and the DBM is a VOD bandwidth optimization platform that enables cable operators to deliver more SD and HD VOD programs.
“Privacy mode encryption and the industry-leading processing density of the USM and DBM are ideal combinations, giving cable operators what is needed to dramatically expand their deployments of VOD services while continuing to add more HD VOD offerings,” said Jef Graham, CEO of RGB Networks.
SCTE approves record number of standards
By Brian Santo
The 1972 Dolphins. The 1995 Bulls. The 1998 Yankees. And now, the 2007 Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers. This year, the SCTE set a record for the approval of standards.
The SCTE Engineering Committee, a nine-member panel chaired by Charlie Kennamer of Comcast, approved 67 standards, a 34 percent increase compared with the previous record, which it set last year.
The most recent was SCTE 128 2007 – AVC Video Systems and Transport Constraints for Cable Television.
Developed by the SCTE Digital Video Subcommittee (DVS), the standard defines the video coding and transport constraints on joint document “ITU-T Recommendation H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10 Advanced Video Codec” for applications in cable-system carriage of broadcast and linear programming.
The committee provided a translation in English: the new standard describes the transmission of AVC-coded digital video in MPEG transport streams. AVC is a more efficient coding scheme than the currently used MPEG-2 standard and uses less bandwidth, resulting in greater network capacity.
SCTE 128 2007 is available for download at the SCTE’s web site, along with complete details about the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited SCTE Standards Program.
Sprint settles court dispute; Qwest must give info to court
By Traci Patterson
Sprint Nextel has reached a preliminary settlement of tax litigation involving more than 350 municipal governments in Missouri.
The telco will pay $52.2 million in back taxes and legal fees to end the litigation. Sprint customers in the state will see an increase in their monthly invoices in Q1 2008.
And the Montana Supreme Court has ruled that Qwest Communications must offer information to state regulators about profits earned from its telephony subscribers in the state, according to the Associated Press.
The decision may lead to an investigation by the state Public Service Commission on whether Qwest has been earning excessive profits in Montana. Qwest has 300,000 customers in the state.
Broadband Briefs for 12/20/07
* Motorola snags gear deals in South Korea
By Mike Robuck
Motorola has landed deals with two South Korean cable operators for its BSR 64000 Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) and Surfboard cable modems.
C&M and CJ CableNet will use the Motorola gear to provide broadband services with 100 Mbps download speeds to their respective customers later this month. The increase in download speeds is the result of channel bonding, which is a key feature of DOCSIS 3.0.
* DirecTV adds public TV stations to HD lineup
By Brian Santo
DirecTV will carry public television stations in high-definition (HD) after cutting a deal with the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The company and the two organizations said that they will work together to develop new video-on-demand (VOD) programming. DirecTV will also carry two national standard-definition (SD) channels of public television programming.
* Cisco wraps up acquisition of Navini
By Brian Santo
Cisco has completed its acquisition of Navini Networks, a specialist in the mobile WiMAX 802.16e-2005 broadband wireless industry. Navini is a pioneer in the integration of “Smart Beamforming” technologies with Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) antennas, a combination that improves the performance and range for WiMAX services and lowers the overall deployment and operational costs for service providers.
* STMicroelectronics bows new SD chip
By Mike Robuck
STMicroelectronics has unveiled a new low-cost set-top box (STB) decoder chip – the STi5202 – intended for standard-definition (SD) terrestrial, cable, satellite and IPTV applications, and for both retail and operator-supplied boxes. It shares the same architecture as STMicroelectronics’ STi7109 single-chip H.264 high-definition (HD) decoder, and it is also software compatible.
The STi5202 comes with a video decoder that supports the H.264/AVC coding standard and MPEG-2, along with a flexible multichannel audio decoder that handles all broadcast audio standards.
* AOL finishes up Quigo deal
By Traci Patterson
AOL has completed its acquisition of Quigo, a site- and content-targeted ad company. The acquisition allows AOL to expand the use of contextual advertising – which matches ads to the contents of a Web page – across AOL’s own Web pages, as well as its third-party networks.
Quigo is the fourth ad-related company that AOL has acquired this year. AOL also purchased Third Screen Media, Adtech and Tacoda.