01 Jan 1998

Time should have taught us by now that there is little point in deciding on the standard for anything. Sooner or later market forces, aided and abetted by large advertising spends, will actually make the final decision.

The example of VHS against Betamax has been trotted out all too frequently.

However, it should be remembered that although British Satellite Broadcasting had the better system, Sky won the day.

For the time being in Germany Premiere does not appear to have a choice.

One moment there are protests about the incompatibility of the DF1 and Premiere boxes, the next moment poor old Premiere is banned from using it.

To be accurate the banning of Premiere from using the DF1 d-box stems from the possibility that the 50:50 joint venture between Kirch and CLT-Ufa may have breached European Union competition legislation. The result, apart from what at the time of writing seemed like the loss of the all important Christmas marketing period, is the potential to create even more market confusion than when the two broadcasters were competing. DF1 will now have some remarketing to do of its new subscribers, presuming the EU ban is eventually lifted.

The Scandinavian market, the subject of our Cover Story this month, offers another take on the decoder problem. Telia, like Deutsche Telekom, has signed up to the Eurobox. And what's good for Sweden's leading cable operator is also a positive for other, sometimes competing, operators in the country.

If as a customer you sign up for one of these boxes and happen to move home and cable operator then maybe, just maybe, your investment won't be wasted.

Needless to say life is never that simple because Canal Plus, though taking a modular approach to its box, is using a different standard for its boxes. Worse, a Nordic-wide alliance to produce a single standard could feasibly produce a different standard again.

Deutsche Telekom has also opted for the Eurobox, but here the prognosis is a little better. A second edition of the Eurobox is likely to see more opportunity to vary the specifications. One such modification which might be possible is the use of different conditional access systems, rather than just Viaccess, which is the case at present.

All this could create something close to the compatibility which the DVB and associated groups have been trying to establish. Now that Canal Plus seems likely to drop its reluctance to a common Application Programming Interface (API) who knows what might happen. EU permitting that is.

This month we welcome two new columnists to C&SEu both of whom should be more than familiar to you. Our North American correspondent Noel Meyer will be giving us his regular North American view. The column will appear each month at the end of Frontline News. Kate Bulkley's Final Analysis can be found each issue on the inside back page. Kate is well known to viewers of EBN as the presenter of Media Report and, contracts permitting, soon the new CNBC.

We also have an internal arrival. Sarah Callard who joined the editorial team last month as senior reporter.