From the 04/04/94 issue of Broadcasting & Cable:

C-Cube Microsystems says it will build a video decoder chip capable of
decoding both MPEG and DigiCipher 2 video. C-Cube, which is licensing
the DigiCipher 2 compression from General Instrument in order to build
the chip, says it will make sample quantities available during the
second quarter. The company plans to market the chips for use in the
digital cable and direct-broadcast satellite set-top decoder market.
In preparation for the World Cup soccer tournament this summer, Comsat
World Systems is reserving seven global channels aboard five Intelsat
satellites. The U.S. Intelsat signatory expects the event to garner a
cumulative audience of 32 billion during its month of play. Comsat has
booked capacity for the Atlanta-based EBU Sports International to
deliver coverage of the games, and also is offering short term leases
of additional transponders. Company executives note that Comsat offered
five short-term leases during the Winter Olympics last month and say
they expect to sign a similar number for the soccer tournament. Coverage
of the event will travel from nine U.S. cities to the International
Broadcast Center in Dallas, where it will be transmitted to gateway
earth stations for uplinking to the Intelsat satellites. The soccer
tournament June 17 in Chicago and runs through July 17. AT&T will be
responsible for delivering the coverage from the various sites to the
broadcast center in Dallas.
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Joining Comsat in the World Cup soccer business is IDB Broadcast, which
is providing satellite and fiber transmission services for the event to
Italy's Telespazio and Germany's Deutsche Bundespost. IDB Broadcast, a
unit of IDB Communications Group, will take feeds from the Dallas
Broadcast Center and deliver them via fiber to the company's Staten
Island International Teleport for uplink to the Intelsat 601 satellite.
As many as 180 nations are expected to televise the tournament, which
will consist of 52 matches.
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With a satellite ready to go later this year, Orion Atlantic was looking
to book transponders at the NAB convention in Las Vegas. The satellite,
scheduled for launch during the fourth quarter on board a General
Dynamics rocket, will carry 34 Ku-band transponders. Orion Atlantic
President and CEO Neil Bauer says the company hopes to sign its first
lease agreements within the next few months and that Orion is marketing
the transponders to the satellite newsgathering business. He notes that
the satellite, in addition to spot beams, will have a high-gain antenna
that will reduce the required size of dishes. "That gives us a great
capacity for covering the SNG market," Bauer says. His company also
announced at the show the authorization of satellite landing rights
with three European countries: Ireland, Switzerland and Romania. Other
European countries that have granted landing rights to the separate
system venture include the UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany,
Italy, Luxembourg and Sweden.
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The Grand Alliance transmission system will take the field this week
for a series of early tests. Although the alliance HDTV system is still
under construction, participants in the FCC's Advisory Committee will
get a sneak preview of the system's transmission technology at the
committee's field testing facility in Charlotte, N.C.
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Fox Inc.'s planned cable network, FX, has reached new carriage
agreements with top MSOs Continental Cablevision, Jones Intercable,
Falcon, Sammons and others, giving it a potential reach of 38.5 million
cable homes. However, the network is not yet saying how many subscribers
will be on board at launch later this year, and at press time, top MSOs
Time Warner, Cablevision Systems Corp. and Comcast had yet to sign
deals. Time Warner sources say the MSO might sign a "token" retrans-
mission consent agreement committing 50,000-200,000 of its subscribers
to the new channel. And that agreement would not include Time Warner's
top market subscribers in New York City. Time Warner, as well as at
least one other top MSO that already has signed on to carry FX, has
held out for such "token" agreements because of the relatively high
price of 25 cents per FX subscriber. "Fox has to come to the conclusion
that they're not going to force it down a lot of systems' throats,"
said one top MSO source. An FX spokeswoman said the price of the
channel is firm, but negotiations are ongoing with the hold-out MSOs
over how many subscribers will be committed.
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Pay-per-view network Playboy TV will move from its 10-hour-per-night,
seven-night-per-week schedule to a 24-hour schedule May 1.
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