Business News Holding

Author: admin

  • Europe To See Presidential Inuguration in HD


    The upcoming US presidential inauguration will be broadcast in Europe in high definition for the first time ever following "unprecedented demand" from broadcasters.

    Eurovision is to offer European broadcasters access to full HDTV coverage of the ceremony, Barack Obama’s speech and motorcade beamed from cameras on location in Washington DC.

    US President-elect Barack Obama

    The company is better known for its eponymous annual pan-European song contest, which now attracts some 120 million viewers thanks to an eastern-led revival.

    Eurovision America’s president, Bill Dunlop, said they were more than trebling the number of circuits provided compared to the same event four years ago.

    "All over Europe, networks are planning special programming to bring this historic day to their viewers live," he said.

    Founded in 1950, Eurovision is a network grouping more than 75 national broadcasters in Europe.

  • Slingbox Founders' Departure Completes Transition


    Various members of Sling Media’s top management, including several founders, have announced their departure from the company.

    The move follows Echostar’s acquisition of Sling for USD $380 million in 2007.

    Among those departing are co-founders Blake and Jason Krikorian, who are leaving their positions as CEO and SVP of business development, respectively.

    Jason Hirschhorn and Ben White will also leave their posts as president and chief creative officer of the Sling Media Entertainment Group.

    Blake Krikorian, departing CEO Sling Media

    The vice president of sales, Greg Wilkes, is also to leave.

    Their departures signal the completion of the transition following Echostar’s acquisition.

    The Slingbox, developed by Sling Media, allows users to stream live or recorded TV from a set-top box to an Internet-connected computer or cellphone.

    Recent announcements include an iPhone app and a new SlingPlayer for Mac HD that allows Slingbox PRO-HD users to stream HD content to a Mac desktop or notebook computer.

    The service works in conjunction with the Sling.com web-based software.

  • New Chip Spells iPhone HD?


    Imagination Technologies has announced a new graphics processor IP core – the PowerVR SGX543.

    The UK-based company is the designer of the PowerVR MBX hardware used in the iPhone and iPod Touch.

    Its new four-pipeline SGX543 is expected to be able to support HD resolution video and graphics output.

    The chip is to be available in both single core and multi-processor solutions.

    The new design improves upon Imagination’s Universal Scalable Shader Engine (USSE) that was first incorporated into earlier PowerVR SGX designs.

    The company said the new technology – dubbed USSE2 – is a multi-threaded GPU shader processing engine that’s incorporated into each of the design’s four pipelines.

    It said USSE2 incorporates a major upgrade of the data path to deliver vastly improved vector processing performance and overall throughput.

    Imagination claims the SGX543 can achieve performance of 35 million polygons per second and a pixel fill rate of one gigapixel per second when running at 200MHz.

    The technology also provides advanced colour space handling and gamma correction to ensure that each of those polygons and pixels are displayed in vivid and accurate color.

    As with all members of the PowerVR SGX line, the SGX543 supports the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard for programmable 3D graphics.

    Last year Apple purchased a 3.6 per cent stake in Imagination for USD $4.8m.

  • Mobile WiMAX Revenues Grow – But Freeze Likely


    Worldwide mobile WiMAX infrastructure revenues nearly quadrupled in the third quarter of 2008 over the third quarter of 2007, according to the latest figures.

    Scott Siegler, senior analyst of Mobile Infrastructure research at Dell’Oro Group, said that with LTE still a couple of years away, WiMAX has become the first next generation technology with commercial service.

    “Mobile WiMAX revenues were very strong in the third quarter of last year, and we anticipate revenue for the fourth quarter to set another record," he said.

    "However, as we look into 2009, we expect the WiMAX market to be hit rather hard by the economic downturn."

    Siegler said building out brand new networks from scratch requires tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars of capital.

    He anticipate many network buildouts will be put on hold or delayed into 2010 as a result of the tightening in the credit markets, the increasing cost of capital and the decrease in demand for broadband data as consumer spending weakens.

    "With initial LTE rollouts coming in the 2010 to 2011 timeframe, these delays will shorten the time to market advantage WiMAX currently has over LTE,” he said.

    The report also shows that the top four Mobile WiMAX vendors in the quarter – Samsung, Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent and Alvarion – represented nearly 90 per cent of the total market.

  • Wehrs Named As New MMA President & CEO


    Former Nuance exececutive Mike Wehrs has been appointed president and CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association.

    The move follows the departure of Laura Marriott.

    Mike Wehrs, CEO MMA

    Wehrs joins the MMA from Nuance Communications, where he was vice president of Industry Affairs and Evangelism.

    He has also served on the board of directors and executive committees for a number of organisations, including the CTIA.

    In the new role Wehrs is to concentrate on promoting the MMA’s charter to "build a sustainable ecosystem for the mobile marketing industry globally, focusing on delivering benefits to MMA members, establishing guidelines and best practices for future growth, and driving mobile adoption worldwide".

  • Apple Signs USD $ 500 Million Deal With LG


    Apple and LG Display have agreed a deal that will see the South Korean electronics manufacturer supply flat panel displays for Macs and handheld products over the next five years.

    In exchange for a guaranteed supply of LCD screens until 2013, Apple will prepay USD $500 million to LG later this month.

    LG, which is the world’s second-largest maker of flat panel displays behind Samsung, presently supplies Apple with 70 per cent of its LCD panels.

    Prices for the parts, which have been falling rapidly during the recent global slowdown, are expected to begin rising again in the near future.

    In 2005, Apple made a similar deal with five memory suppliers which ensured the iPhone maker established a competitive edge in the digital media player and cell phone markets.

    In that agreement Apple prepaid a total of USD $1.25 billion to secure its supply of NAND flash memory.

    This type of strategic deal allows better prices to be obtained for components and can put pressure on competitors’ margins.

  • Motorola to cut mobile staff by half


    Motorola is considering reducing the workforce in its mobile devices group by as much as 50 per cent.

    The company is reportedly set to start major layoffs this week that would reduce staff levels by half and is said to be dramatically scaling back its phone development as a whole.

    Nearly all development for smartphones is already believed to be switching exclusively to Android while Motorola’s own phone introductions may scale back to as few as 12 devices per year.

    The company is also reportedly shelving plans to have a booth at the CTIA show in April despite its being the premier cellphone event in the US, according to Phone Scoop.

    The cutbacks if accurate suggest increasingly desperate attempts to revive the company’s fortunes.

    In the last quarter, Motorola had a USD $397 million loss and phone sales by the American cellphone producer dropped by a third in just 12 months.

    Much of the blame for this has been put on substantial drops in high-end phones as well as the lack of a compelling low-end product.

    The company’s popular RAZR recently lost its top ranking in the US to the iPhone and BlackBerries.

  • Palm Unveils New Pre smartphone


    Palm finally revealed its new smartphone, the Pre, along with an exclusive partnership with Sprint to distribute it.

    The new touch-screen device and operating system, WebOS, received a positive welcome at CES in Las Vegas.

    Much has been made of the importance of the new device’s success if Palm is to resurrect its fortunes in the highly competitive smartphone market.

    Initial positives for the Pre include its emphasis on fast Web browsing and efficient multitasking.

    The handset will be available in the first half of the year. No pricing information is available as yet.

    The Pre has a sophisticated interface and can be charged on a special platform without the need to attach a cable.

    It comes comes with eight gigabytes of storage, GPS navigational capabilities, Wi-Fi networking and a slide-out keyboard.

    A possible hurdle in Palm’s path to renewed success could be apps for its new device.

    Software developers are now concentrating on RIM’s BlackBerry devices and the iPhone because they represent a large and growing market.

    Apps are seen as crucial to the success of smartphones because of the functions such as games and navigation services that they provide.

  • Digital Realty Wins Datacentre Leaders' Award


    Digital Realty Trust, the world’s largest wholesale datacentre provider, has been recognised for "Innovation in an Outsourced Environment" by the prestigious Datacentre Leaders’ 2008 Awards.

    Digital Realty Trust received the honor for a Turn-Key Datacentre that Digital Realty Trust delivered to IBM to support growth of the company’s hosting business in France.

    The Datacentre Leaders’ Awards recognise innovation and reward excellence in facility design and operations in the UK and across Europe.

    Bernard Geoghegan, senior vice president at Digital Realty Trust, said it was an honor to receive the award, particularly for the IBM project.

    "By establishing its new datacentre in our Turn-Key Datacentre facility in Paris, IBM was able to eliminate capital requirements and meet all of its rigorous technical and financial objectives for the project," he said.

    The Turn-Key Datacentre facilities provide state-of-the-art environments for supporting mission critical infrastructure, with advanced cooling, power, redundancy, and sustainability features to ensure that critical applications are available while optimising energy efficiency.

  • ATTO Adds Industry-first 8-GB Fibre Channel To RAID Storage Controllers


    ATTO Technology has announced the release of the industry’s first 8-Gb Fibre Channel-to-SAS/SATA RAID storage controller.

    FastStream SC 8500 is an independent external RAID Storage Controller that provides 8-Gb Fibre Channel host connectivity to multiple tiers of low-cost, off-the-shelf SAS/SATA disk storage enclosures.

    ATTO says the SC 8500 is well-suited for mid-range storage solutions.

    It is the highest performing RAID controller in its class delivering up to 1400 MB/sec. access to data while providing parity RAID protection to multiple tiers of disk enclosures.

    FastStream RAID Storage Controllers are designed to sit between workstations or a SAN and low-cost JBOD disk storage providing users the ability to scale their performance and storage capacity without purchasing a RAID controller every time expansion is needed.

    The FastStream is well-suited for applications in DVA and IT infrastructures including digital film production, high-definition video post-production, imaging, digital prepress, disk-to-disk backup, audio production and transaction-based environments.

    Tom Kolniak, director of products for ATTO Technology, said the FastStream SC 8500 Storage Controller was ideal for customers looking to improve workflow performance and add RAID protection in a collaborative environment.

    “The 8500 allows those currently using Direct Attached Storage to move to an affordable Storage Area Network solution providing them with the benefits and savings realized from a lower total cost of ownership for storage and increased efficiency in workflow production,” he said.

    He cited performance, scalability, and ease-of-use of the FastStream SC 8500 as key elements for customers looking to implement a solution that fits their needs while remaining within their budget.