British digital feud ends: Britain's Independent Television Commission announced that rivals BSkyB and British Digital Broadcasting have agreed to make their new digital TV decoders interoperable. Commission chief Peter Rogers told a news conference that BSkyB, a venture run by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and BDB, a venture between Granada Group Plc and Carlton Communications Plc, have settled their differences.

The companies have been locked in a dispute over the boxes since February, when BDB awarded a deal to supply the technology used in the decoders to Franco-German group SECA rather than News Datacom &£45;- another Murdoch enterprise. This "interoperability" means that viewers will be able to receive digital TV services, regardless of whether they are delivered via satellite or terrestrial platform.

- while on the other side of the pond -

Federal regulators said on Wednesday that they'll move to block the US$1.1 billion sale of a key television satellite slot by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and MCI Communications to a group of cable operators. "Cable prices continue to increase rapidly and unless this acquisition is blocked, consumers will be denied the benefits of competition: lower prices, more innovation, and better services and quality," said Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein, the Justice Department's top trustbuster.

Regulators fear the sale of the Direct Broadcast Service slot to Primestar Partners, owned by the leading US cable companies, will stifle competition between satellite and cable TV systems. Klein said Direct Broadcast Services represents the best hope of increasing competition to land-based cable TV operators and should not be owned by the cable companies. "DBS presents the first real threat to the cable monopoly," he said.

Primestar is owned by TCI Satellite Entertainment, a publicly traded spin-off of cable giant Tele-Communications Inc., along with Time-Warner, MediaOne Group, Comcast, and Cox Communications. Participants in the satellite slot sale are likely to go to court to have the Justice Department's antitrust objections overruled, sources familiar with the deal said.

(Source: Reuters & Wired News)