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To: Peter V who wrote (33644)	6/5/1998 4:26:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Kirch/Bertelsmann still moving on Premiere. Kirch might sell DF-1 to Premiere......................................... infoseek.com Full story Digital TV plan may go forward-regulator 10:51 a.m. Jun 05, 1998 Eastern By Deborah Cole BERLIN, June 5 (Reuters) - The digital pay-TV alliance of Bavarian tycoon Leo Kirch and German media group Bertelsmann may go forward nearly as planned despite its rejection last week by the European Commission, a German media regulator said on Friday. Hans Hege, director of the media authority in Berlin and the neighbouring state of Brandenburg, told Reuters in a telephone interview that the two allies are likely to push forward with their plans to link up on pay-TV service Premiere. ''Bertelsmann and Kirch could now try to do what they were blocked from doing in Brussels, a sort of 50-50 merger, but not formalised in the way it would have been in the original proposal,'' Hege said. He added, however, that the merger would ultimately hinder the development of digital television in Germany. ''I hope the companies learn something from Brussels and open the market to more competition -- this is a pre-requisite for success,'' he said. ''In the short run, the Brussels decision slows the development of digital pay-TV, but it is a positive development in the long run. A monopoly is never particularly efficient or creative.'' The European Commission blocked the two companies from merging Kirch's digital TV channel DF1 with Premiere, but both companies announced last week that they would move to increase their holdings in Premiere to 50 percent each. Bertelsmann and French pay-TV group Canal Plus each hold 37.5 percent of Premiere and Kirch has a 25 percent stake. Last week, Canal Plus affirmed it plans to sell its stake and allow Kirch and Bertelsmann to become equal partners in Premiere. The move is likely to trigger a cartel investigation in Germany, company officials and the Berlin-based Federal Cartel Office said. Hege said he hoped the two German media giants would recognise the benefit of opening the digital TV market to other participants in the interest of faster development.

To: Peter V who wrote (33644)	6/6/1998 9:15:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Copy protection may delay DTV.............................. techweb.com Lack of accord on encryption threatens DTV By Junko Yoshida Los Angeles - With only five months to go before the scheduled digital-TV rollout, service and equipment providers have yet to achieve formal consensus with Hollywood production studios on a copy-protection scheme for consumer-device interfaces. That could cripple the initial commercial prospects for DTV, which is locked into a Nov. 1 debut, as well as delay standardization of the OpenCable spec, which dictates how cable set-top boxes will "pass through" signals for high-definition TV and data services. That was the stark message from six senior engineering executives, representing DirecTV, CBS, PBS, CableLabs, Thomson Consumer Electronics and Zenith Electronics, who voiced their concerns during the DTV panel discussion here last week at the International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE). Failure to settle the issue has consumer-electronics manufacturers and service providers sweating bullets. "It's going to harm all of us," said Robert Plummer, director of advanced technology at DirecTV (El Segundo, Calif.). "I believe that this is a much bigger issue than any format wars we've seen."