This news is provided free of charge to on-line users by TELE-satellit magazine and TS News Service GB. IT IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. It may not be reproduced for commercial reasons by any means what so ever. If you wish to reproduce this news or redistribute it for non commercial use please contact the email address below. Der TS Nachrichtendienst ist ein Service fuer die Freunde von TELE-satellit und TS-TV und ist nur fuer persoenliche infromation freigegeben. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This newsletter is now available direct via email. See the end of the file for details of how to sign up. When you sign up you should receive a welcome message within a few minutes. If you don't something has probably gone wrong. Most likely the return address in your email that majordomo uses is invalid and it attempts to send you a message but it bounces back to me. If you get no response try subscribing by typing your email address into the message. If that still fails to work email me and I'll sort it out ! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't forget even though the mailing list is one way TELE-satellit news is not ! Please send us any news or observations on satellite broadcasting in your part of the world. This week we welcome new friends in Mozambique and Iran. TELE-satellit news now reaches subscribers in 32 countries worldwide. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TELE-satellit EUROPE'S SATELLITE MAGAZINE International Satellite Broadcasting News Number 64, Week ending 13 August 1995 By Martyn Williams News Desk : Internet martyn@twics.com or CompuServe 100025,1637 (c) TELE-satellit Magazine TVB TAKES CONTROL OF CHINESE CHANNEL LONDON, England (TS) -- TVB International (TVBI), a unit of Hong Kong's Television Broadcasts Limited, has bought a 52% stake in The Chinese Channel. TVBI buys the controlling stake from Pacific Media PLC who previously held 80% of the channel, the remaining 20% is held by Shaw Media. Before the deal, The Chinese Channel already has close ties with TVBI with which it held exclusive European rights for its programmes. TVB is the largest maker of Chinese language programming in the world. TVBI currently operates satellite and cable television services in Taiwan and North America. The purchase of an equity stake in The Chinese Channel will allow TVBI to broaden its satellite distribution network and maximise the potential of the sizeable Chinese speaking audience in Europe. NHK STICKS WITH FRANCE TELECOM, NEW SATELLITE TO EUROPE TOKYO, Japan (TS) -- NHK and France Telecom this week announced that they are extending the seven year old relationship between the two companies with the signing of an agreement to supply NHK Television to bureaus in Europe via the new PanAmSat 4 (PAS-4) satellite. Use of the new satellite, located at 68.5 degrees East, means programming from NHK in Tokyo will no longer travel to Europe via the United States, beaming into the continent from PanAmSat 1. Instead a single satellite, PAS-4, will be needed to connect Tokyo with NHK's European bureaus meaning a better quality picture for viewers of Astra's JSTV service. France Telecom has permanently leased a transponder on the new satellite for the service which will start later this year. The European bureaus are also linked back to Japan via a reverse path on PAS-4. To ensure permanent service for NHK, France Telecom will provide the uplink and downlink for transmissions on PanAmSat 4, as well as the uplink for PanAmSat 1, and a dedicated microwave link between Paris and London. In addition, France Telecom downlinks the images transmitted from Japan for JSTV programs. These images are then broadcast via Astra from London by Maxat, a 100% subsidiary of France Telecom. UK UNVEILS DIGITAL TV PLANS LONDON, England (TS) -- The UK government revealed plans for future digital broadcasting this week paving the way for up to 24 channels of digital terrestrial broadcasting. The plans are for licences to be awarded to the companies providing the digital multiplexing services rather than to the channels. Six channels will be available for digital TV services in which three or possibly more compressed channels could be squeezed. The current terrestrial broadcasters, BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channel 4 and S4C are all guaranteed space with other space available to new channels, current satellite broadcasters or additional channels from the terrestrial broadcasters. BT CONFIRMS HOT BIRD 3 LEASE LONDON, England (TS) -- British Telecom has confirmed it will lease a transponder on the upcoming Hot Bird 3 satellite to Central European Media Enterprises (CME), a company based in Bermuda with headquarters in London. The lease, previously reported by TS-News, will allow CME to digitally distribute programming to its terrestrial television transmitters as well as cable television systems, providing a low-cost method of distributing the programmes in different languages. SKY RESULTS WILL LOOK GOOD LONDON, England (TS) -- British Sky Broadcasting will announce its full year results for the first time this week. Previously, as a non traded company it did not release detailed financial results. Speaking this weekend analysts said they believed the results would be good with increased profits being reported. BRITAIN'S NTL, APTV, BEGIN WORLDWIDE MPEG NETWORK LONDON, England (NTL) -- APTV and NTL have introduced the first global MPEG-2 digital video network, with plans for it to reach all continents by the end of the year. On 1 August APTV began distributing its TV news feeds digitally via the Eutelsat II-F1 satellite using NTL's 'System 3000' MPEG-2 video compression technology. Over the coming months the service will be extended to a further five satellites. This is in addition to the recent announcement of APTV's 24-hour digital service to Asia. NTL has supplied three complete systems: one for PAL feeds, one for NTSC feeds, and a reserve system as a back-up for either. SSVC MOVES TO DIGITAL SYSTEM LONDON, England (TLI) -- Teleport London International is providing a packaged satellite transmission service for SSVC TV, the full-time television service for the British armed forces, using Transponder 1 on the Columbia/TDRSS satellite. The SSVC Television service will start from TLI on 1 September, transmitting to multiple locations throughout Europe. SSVC TV is produced and edited by TLI's parent company, SSVC, using the studio and post-production facilities located at the same site as the teleport. TLI is providing SSVC with a turnkey service that includes digital video compression, uplinking satellite transmission services including transponder capacity, and involves management of the transmission path from the studio to the receive terminals and links to the TV transmitters in the overseas locations. SSVC TV will be launched as an encrypted analogue service that will be migrated to a digitally compressed format in October 1995 using Philips MPEG 2 Digital Video Compression Equipment. FAXCAST REACHES AGREEMENT WITH NBC PERTH, Australia (FAXCAST) -- NBC and Australia-based Media Technology Corporation Limited (MediaTech) signed a series of agreements that both finalize a previously announced agreement regarding the utilization of NBC's Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) capacity. Under the agreement, MediaTech, parent of the U.S.-based Faxcast USA, Inc., has been granted U.S. rights networks for a minimum of five years to utilize NBC's over-the-air and cable broadcast signals as part of MediaTech's global Faxcast network for distribution of data and facsimile data. Through this agreement, the Faxcast USA service is expected to be carried over the nine owned and operated stations and up to 206 affiliate stations that make up the NBC television network as well as CNBC. MediaTech's North American subsidiary, Faxcast USA, Inc. has been operating its fax and data service over five of NBC's owned and operated stations and CNBC for the past twelve months. NBC has also agreed that it will work to secure the cooperation of its Super Channel unit in Europe, its newly developed Asian satellite channel, CNBC Asia, as well as NBC network affiliate stations in the United States to further develop this data distribution network. CLARKBELT SNAPSHOT By Jean Phillipe Donnio PARIS, France (TS) -- An update of satellite movements, - Intelsat 504 is located at 29.4 deg W since July 1995. It was replaced by Intelsat 506 at 31.4 deg W. - Intelsat 513 has been replaced by Intelsat 706 at 53 deg W. Intelsat 513 is now being moved westwards, probably to 177 deg W (Intelsat 503 replacement) or to 157 deg E (new Intelsat slot in the Asia-Pacific Region). - TDRS 1 has reached its new slot at 139 deg W. It had left the 85 deg E slot in May. - Inclined satellites: a few satellites appear to have stopped North-South stabilization to save lifetime. Among them, Telecom 1C. - Eutelsat 1F1 has just gone over 5 deg inclination! Launched in Jun 1983, the satellite is in inclined orbit since 1989. SO WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE BOAT ? LONDON, England (TS) -- Anyone tuning around on HotBird can't have failed to notice the appearance of a yacht, a large, large yacht, during the day on a channel leased to CLT. During the evening a relay of ART's music channel ART 5 takes over. What's the reason behind this mysterious transmission ? A lot of speculation has taken place but TELE-satellit can reveal the answer this week thanks to the all knowing Marcello Berengogardino of Italy's "Satellite Magazine" who explained what's going on. The owner of ART, Prince Al Waleed, who also now owns a larger stake in Italy's Fininvest, has a favourite channel. You guessed it, the ART music channel. He apparently watches the channel while he works for many hours a day but now he's on holiday, during August. His holiday is taking him across the Mediterranean on his "little" boat. With the signal the ART channels put into the region large dishes are needed and its difficult to receive the signal so, when presented with the problem, the Prince's aides decided they must solve it. After a lot of faxes and telephone calls, Telespazio leased transponder 16 from the CLT for the length of the Prince's vacation at a cost of around 320,000 ECU. Uplink costs come in at about 20,000 ECU making it a more expensive vacation than planned but at least with the music channel ! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TELE-satellit is available from newsstands in central Europe of via subscription worldwide. You can get a one-time sample copy at a special price from our new UK subscription centre. UK readers pay just GBP 2, Europe GBP 4, RoW GBP 6. TELE-satellit GB PO Box 1124 Ascot Berkshire GB-SL5-0XH email : 100574.1003@compuserve.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Where to find satellite news : TELE-satellit News, English : CompuServe UK Forum (UKFORUM) - library 19 CompuServe European Forum (EURFORUM) - library 5 CompuServe Deutschland on line (GERLINE) - library 15 fax on demand +49-8282-81003 fax on demand +49-2163-81744 fax on demand +49-7308-919009 NBC Super Channel - NBC Text page 171 rec.video.satellite.europe and rec.video.satellite.tvro newsgroups on Usenet World Wide Web : http://xan.esrin.esa.it:2602/satellite.html : http://www.inrete.it/sat/h2h.html (Italian translation) Fidonet SAT.028 Fidonet SATELLITE.FR Fidonet RU.SAT Fidonet SATELLIT_R23.PUB Maus Net : tv.grp America On Line - from the "ham radio" area in the General file library. Anonymous FTP to : ftp.funet.fi /pub/dx/text/satellite/telesatellit CIX Skyguide/telesat conference SAT NET BBS network SweDX BBS, Swedish DX Federation. +46-8-53034727 / Fidonet 2:201/339 Short Wave Paradise BBS, online 24 hours a day ! USA 616-383-4979 Mailing list, send a message to majordomo@tnet.de with the message "subscribe ts-news" TELE-satellit News, German : CompuServe Deutschland on line (GERLINE) - ASCII version, library 15 CompuServe Der Spiegel Forum (SPIEGEL) - ASCII version, library 11 fax on demand +49-8282-81003 fax on demand +49-2163-81744 fax on demand +49-7308-919009 SAT 1 Text - page 513 3sat Text - page 691 SAT NET BBS network Other reliable sources of satellite news :  Radio Sweden Mediascan. 1st and 3rd Tuesday, 20 minutes into the English programme via Astra, Shortwave, Mediumwave 1197 kHz and the World Radio Network. Text and audio files of Mediascan can be found in the SCDX directory on ftp.funet.fi  Radio Netherlands Media Network, Thursday, 23 minutes into the English programme viashorwave and The World Radio Network  European satellite home page, URL http://xan.esrin.esa.it:2602/satellite.html