Posts Tagged: beijing-olympics

Eurosport could be returning to UK screens after a three year gap if negotiations currently being held with Sky are succesful.
The sports network is expected to add its HD channel to the Sky HD platform within the next few days.
It is understood to be currently testing at 28 degrees East alongside Eurosport News.
A Eurosport spokesman said: “We’ve been negotiating with Sky and are very keen to launch our service in the UK.”

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NBC has made no secret of the fact it plans to use the Beijing Olympics as a campaign platform for HDTV.
Now the US network has announced that the summer games will also act as a research lab to guage how viewers use different media platforms.
The network hopes its research will reveal how people combine, for example, high def TV coverage of an event with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones.
Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s research chief, said the company would publicly issue a TAMi (Total Audience Measurement Index) for the first time.
“An event of this magnitude requires the biggest and most sophisticated research effort to measure it,” he said.

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The US’s NBC network is to broadcast both the women’s Wimbledon final between the Williams sisters and the men’s match between Nadal and Federer on its HD channel.
The addition of this year’s Centre Court battles is just the latest addition to a growing selection of sporting events being shown in high def.
Sports programming is perfectly suited to high definition because of the fast motion and action in sports.
The 16:9 aspect ratio of HD provides a vastly better perspective and coverage of a game than SD.
Viewers can see, for instance, the entire ice in a hockey game or the baseball field in a baseball game.
So impressive are the results that they influenced an estimated 2.4 million high-definition television sales prior to this season’s Super Bowl in the US.



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It’s billed as America’s biggest birthday party and one that even those not able to attend in person will be able to enjoy on HDTV.
Demand from viewers has led to coverage of this year’s Capitol Fourth celebrations from Washington DC being given extended coverage on the US public broadcast network PBS.
The Independence Day fireworks will be captured live by 18 cameras positioned around the capital as national landmarks such as the US Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials are silhouetted on the skyline.
An estimated 100 million homes in the US own HDTVs – around 41 per cent of TV owners.
Jerry Colbert, executive producer of Capital Concerts, said that if you couldn’t be in Washington, DC for the event, watching it on HDTV would be the next best thing.







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The UK’s BBC has begun testing the transmission of high def services over Freeview in a move that could see the introduction of full HD terrestrial by the end of 2009.
The broadcaster has started transmissions from a Guildford-based transmitter using the second-generation DVB-T specification DVB-T2.
Justin Mitchell, leader of the DVB-T2 modem development team at the BBC, said the trial could enable the introduction of HD onto Freeview by December next year.
DVB-T2 is said to offer 30 per cent more data carrying capacity as DVB-T under the same conditions.
Across the Channel, the HD version of public channel France 2 has been launched on several platforms, including CanalSat DTH and Numéricable.
As has been the case with other broadcasters across Europe, including VRT in Belgium and Nederland 1 in The Netherlands, France 2 will show sport events such as the Tour de France and the Beijing Olympics in HD.

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Sales of LCD and plasma TVs showed a 53 per cent year-on-year increase in the US for the first quarter of 2008, with more than 7.5 million units sold.
This represents a 7 per cent increase over industry projections for the period.
While analysts in Japan have attributed a 35 per cent increase in flat-panel TV sales during the first half of June to the upcoming Beijing Olympics, industry executives in the US are being more cagey.
But what those attending the DisplaySearch TV Supply Chain Conference in San Diego did agree on was that despite the state of the US economy, the North America TV market remains robust – so far.

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The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has signed a multi transponder deal with Intelsat Ltd for the video carriage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to Europe.
C-/Ku-band cross-strap capacity on the Intelsat 706 satellite, located at 50.2 degrees East, will be used to distribute the all high definition event to EBU members.
Intelsat is the only global satellite operator to have provided coverage of every Olympic Games since 1968.

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Sales of high definition Blu-ray recorders are increasing rapidly in Japan as consumers take to the new generation of home movie entertainment.
Last month the more expensive Blu-ray recorders topped the old generation recorders in the value of sales for the first time.
The research firm BCN Ltd said that around a third of machines sold now carry the new format.

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MediaRecall is to represent a collection of more than 1,100 high quality HD clips shot in Beijing for licensing in advance of this summer’s Olympics.
The subject matter of the clips is diverse, ranging from Beijing lifestyle to footage of the venues and is being made available as stock footage for use in news and editorial programmes.
Taneoka Hiroaki, President of Contents Gate, a Japanese content aggregator and MediaRecall partner for Japan, said the cameramen had created something very special.

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