IRDETO CLINCHES DEALS IN INDIA AND MACAO

Content protection and management company Irdeto Access has landed two contracts in Asia – one for conditional access in Macao and the other for content protection in India.

Irdeto signed an agreement with Macao Five-Star TV for the provision of its conditional access system for a DVB satellite pay television platform. Irdeto will licence its M- Crypt DVB to Macao Five-Star TV, which will launch with 10,000 subscribers but forecasts it will hit the 100,000 subs mark by the end of 2001. The platform’s channels will be encrypted and broadcast via the Sino-1 and Asia-3S satellites to Hong Kong, Macao, mainland China and South East China. It will initially launch channels in Hong Kong and Macao but intends to boost the number of channels to 20 in the near future.

Meanwhile, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) chose Irdeto’s access protection and management system M-Crypt DVB to support its business offering secure uplink broadcasting facilities to Indian broadcasters.