Al Jazeera Sport Adds SIDSA Conditional Access

By Kevin Hilton
SVG Europe Editor
Al Jazeera Sport, the Arabic-language sports channel, has inked a 10-year deal with Spanish digital-television–technology developer SIDSA for conditional-access systems. These will safeguard the broadcaster’s HD coverage of football, which this year included European league matches from Portugal, Spain, and Italy and the Euro 2008 tournament in Austria and Switzerland.
SIDSA’s conditional-access technology has been used by Al Jazeera Sport for the past three years to protect against piracy, and now the company’s KeyFly 2.0 Xtreme will be installed for existing services, which will broadcast next season’s European Champions League and a new HD channel due to be launched soon.
KeyFly Xtreme works with domestic LCD and plasma screens and can handle feeds from digital terrestrial, satellite, and cable platforms in SD or HD, with audio formats including AC-3.