Unity Media’s pay-TV concern Arena has failed in its attempt to gain access to the decoders of its rival Premiere. A German court has rejected a petition for a temporary injunction that would suspend the cancellation of licence agreements made between Unity and Premiere in March. Relations between Unity and Premiere have understandably been edgy since the cable company acquired the pay-TV rights to the Bundesliga previously held by the DTH operator. Unless Unity is able to gain access to the Premiere boxes it will need to deploy its own receiver inventory. It has already agreed to adopt the Irdeto-owned Cryptoworks conditional access system amid suggestions that it might be able to utilise the first generation d-box decoders that used the Betacrypt system.
