Category: Technology

MUMBAI: Locked in intense fight for subscriber growth, the DTH operators have come out with special discount offers and packs for the festive season.

And why not? Last Diwali season saw the addition of a million direct-to-home (DTH) subscribers.

Airtel Digital TV, the last DTH entrant and the first to come out with festive offers, has tweaked its value and economy packs for south and non south regions, while the cost correction has been made for their ultra pack. The DTH operator has also launched offers for traders to get a big lift in subscribers this season.

“We launched in October last year and missed the festive season. This year we are making efforts to grab the lead share,” says Airtel Digital TV marketing head Sugato Banerji.
Market leader Dish TV is offering all channels at the price of ‘Silver pack‘. It will also give cash back of Rs 1,000 to every tenth customer.

Says Dish TV COO Salil Kapoor, “Our promotional offers over the last few months have been much appreciated which can be seen in our growing subscriber base. Our customers enjoy a bouquet of 185 channels at Rs 125 and to make this festive occasion more colorful and bright every 10th customer is assured Rs 1000 as cash back.”

Dish TV is also offering three months Platinum/South Platinum pack, Colors, UTV Pack and set-top box for Rs 1,990. The other offers are three months Gold/South Gold, Colors, UTV Pack and STB at Rs 1950 and three months Silver/South Silver, UTV Pack and STB at Rs 1890. Dish TV will charge Rs 200 extra for installation. The offer is not valid in Uttar Pradesh (because of high entertainment tax) and Kerala.

Sun Direct, the fastest growing DTH operator in terms of subscribers, has announced free subscription packs for a limited period in various schemes.

MUMBAI: Alcatel-Lucent has introduced a converged IP/Optical backbone network solution. The solution is designed to relieve the strain on service providers‘ core networks caused by the explosive growth of video and other bandwidth-intensive applications.

The Converged Backbone Transformation solution is a key component of Alcatel-Lucent‘s High Leverage Network strategy, key elements of which have already been selected by service providers.

Internet video traffic is increasing dramatically. At the same time, demand is also increasing for IP-based services such as business data applications, tele-medicine, video surveillance, collaborative business applications (including telepresence), cloud computing, remote storage and backup and data center protection and more, all of which have very high quality of service (QoS) requirements. Backbone networks – also referred to as ‘core‘ networks – must be able to handle both types of traffic appropriately, which is increasing the strain on core routers – through which nearly all traffic passes. Continually adding core router capacity is expensive, and as a result the network backbone is becoming a significant cost center, providing poor return on investment.

Qwest CTO Pieter Poll says, “Core traffic continues to increase significantly and we don‘t see that changing. We need to ensure our capacity matches the needs of our customers and fulfils their expectations for growth.

“We‘ve been exploring new approaches to address traffic growth and customer demand and recently announced that Qwest is working with Alcatel-Lucent to evolve our nationwide backbone network to reach industry-leading 100 Gigabits per second speeds by implementing Alcatel-Lucent‘s LambdaXtreme and 7750 Service Routers.”

The company adds that its new converged backbone transformation solution more tightly integrates IP and optical transport resources, enabling service providers to optimise and leverage their transport networks to deal with the rapid growth in traffic, while substantially cutting operational and maintenance costs. Alcatel-Lucent‘s new approach can reduce the number of required network elements, improve efficiencies in power and rack space, simplify network provisioning and fault management, minimise latency, and enhance reliability.

MUMBAI: Seagate, which offers hard disk drives and storage solutions, has unveiled its new FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player.

This is being positioned as the next generation home theater solution and the aim is to instantly and easily connect the user‘s digital media library to the home entertainment system.

The FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player leverages a docking system unique to Seagate FreeAgent Go portable drives and accessories, providing a way to connect the external hard drive to the television or home entertainment center. After loading the drive with movies, videos, music and pictures from the home PC, one slides it into the FreeAgent Theater+ dock to get access to digital media library.

The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player includes two additional USB ports for connecting other USB attached storage devices. Also incorporated into FreeAgent Theater+ is an Ethernet port for network connectivity, which allows access to digital media through the home network. Seagate intends to launch a USB Wireless Adapter in October to enable this same access with 802.11n wireless connectivity to a home network.

MUMBAI: China Satellite Mobile Broadcasting Corporation (CSM) has selected China Digital TV Holding to provide conditional access (CA) systems to mobile TV networks throughout China.

CSM is a company under the China‘s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).

The system installation is expected to be completed by the end of 2009. Post installation of head-end systems, China Digital TV will provide terminal-end solutions, which are compatible with handheld devices on the market, to local CSM operators on demand.

China Digital TV has deployed simulcryption projects in 10 provinces and regions including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jilin, and Liaoning, and expects to be present in all 31 provinces across China by the end of 2009.

MUMBAI: Star Network has extended its roadblock initiatives from television to the online video space.

Star Player, Star Network‘s online video destination, has partnered with Tata Teleservices to run a five-day roadblock campaign in September for Tata Photon Plus.

Beginning 22 September, the campaign will have a Tata Photon Plus pre-roll featured on all videos played on Star Player throughout the duration. media2win is the online advertising agency handling the Tata Photon Plus account.

Says Tata Teleservices marketing communication – VP Trivikram Thakore, “The purpose of advertising is to create awareness among those who represent your consumption audience. One can do this through a slow burn approach which still has some probability attached to it or a high impact approach where you take up all possible advertising space to ensure visibility for 100 per cent of your potential consumers. The roadblock on startv.in enables us to reach out to our consumption audience at the right place and time.”Adds media2win COO Namrata Balwani, “Contextual relevance is the key to any form of brand advertising. Star Player has content that requires hi-speed video streaming

and Tata Photon Plus is a hi-speed wireless internet access device suited for such needs. We found synergy in doing a week long roadblock to reach consumers and create impact.”

MUMBAI: Cable TV was shut in many pockets of Mumbai today following the death of a local cable operator.

On Sunday night, 52-year-old Dinabandhu Jena, a Scod18 cable operator, was returning to his Chembur residence, when he was allegedly attacked by his business rivals. Jena, who was in intensive care unit (ICU), succumbed to injuries late last night.

As a mark of protest, Scod18 has blacked out its signals in Mumbai. In Central Mumbai, cable TV was shut. Many other pockets of Mumbai also did not have cable TV for some time.

“We shut our signals till 6 pm today as a protest against the death of our operator in Chembur (central Mumbai). Police is not taking any action against the culprits. He (Jena) was attacked earlier also and we had demanded for his security, but nothing happened,” Scod18‘s Ganesh Naidu told Indiantelevision.com.

Hathway Bhawani Cable & Datacom Ltd also had one hour of black out. “We shut signals in Chembur area from 5-6 pm,” an executive said.

MUMBAI: Google, which had bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion last year, has launched DoubleClick Ad Exchange in a bid to attract a bigger chunk of the display advertising market.

The ad exchange is a real-time marketplace that will helps large online publishers and ad and agency networks buy and sell display advertising space. These publishers and ad networks manage and represent large volumes of ads and ad space from advertisers and websites.

Said Google VP product management Neal Mohan in the company blog, “By bringing them together in an open marketplace in which prices are set in a real-time auction, the Ad Exchange enables display ads and ad space to be allocated much more efficiently. This improves returns for advertisers and enables publishers to get the most value out of their online content.”

The new property will be available to Adwords and AdSense users who can access it using their existing interface. They can buy and sell display ads alongside search advertisements.Currently, Yahoo is ruling the display advertising market space. Yahoo bought Right Media, the online display exchange company, in 2007 and presently provides display advertising to approximately 120,000 companies.

MUMBAI: Airtel Digital TV, the direct-to-home (DTH ) service from Bharti Airtel, has announced the availability of the Rishi Kapoor-starrer Chintuji on its pay per view (PPV) platform.

Starting today, the recently released movie will be available for Rs 50 to customers who can book one show for a day and watch it at any of the time slots convenient to them.

Among other players, Tata Sky is also offering the movie on its PPV service for Rs 75.

Airtel Digital TV CMO Sugato Banerjee said, “Entertainment at home is increasingly becoming popular. With films like Chintuji, we offer our customers the luxury of good entertainment, all for a very nominal price.”

Indiagames’ cricket games such as Indiagames – Cricket 20-20, Indiagames – World Championship Cricket, Cricket One Day Series and Indiagames – T20 World Championship have got players hooked on to their mobile phones, globally.

Of the cricketing nations downloading these games, India tops the charts, followed by UK, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, and New Zealand. There has also been traction from the US where there is a community of expat cricket lovers.

Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal said, “Cricket is followed with zest on a global scale. The record number of downloads reinstates the games’ appeal worldwide. Indiagames shares a passion for cricket and this is clearly evident in our games and our strategy to create a Cricket franchise.

“We realised that consumers don’t necessarily want only branded content. Users are equally interested in the quality of the game and not only with the celebrities endorsing the products. Quality games sell and we raise the bar with every new mobile cricket game we publish.”

MUMBAI: Revenue from the delivery of Internet video to the TV will grow nearly six-fold in the next five years, from a meager $1 billion in 2009 to $5.7 billion in 2014, reveals a new report from The Diffusion Group.

These forecasts are part of TDG’s latest digital media analysis, Broadband Enabled TV: Rise of the OTT Provider, authored by TDG senior partner and digital video expert, Colin Dixon.

Dixon posts that in 2009, pay-per-view services will account for 96 per cent of global OTT revenue, leaving subscription revenue with only four per cent of the revenue mix. By 2014, however, annual OTT subscription revenue will have grown 50-fold and account for 31 per cent of the global revenue.Dixon points to current hardware trends fueling this growth, specifically the ongoing shift to broadband-enabled TVs and the rapid diffusion of ancillary web-enabled platforms such as game consoles

, Blu-ray players, and hybrid set-top boxes. Widespread penetration of such platforms will set the stage for a rapid uptake of internet-to-TV video services, both pay-per-view and subscription-based.

As these platforms more widely diffuse and consumers become more comfortable with using internet-based TV services, the market will be primed for the arrival of full-fledged PayTV replacement services. Subsequently, TDG expects major OTT service announcements in virtually all global regions in 2010 and 2011, both in terms of stand-alone OTT and hybrid PayTV/OTT TV services, both of which will help fuel growth in OTT subscription revenue to $1.8 billion worldwide by 2014.

At that time, the US will account for the vast majority of global OTT subscription revenue ($830 million) followed by Asia ($490 million), and Europe ($407 million). Other global regions will collectively account for only $60 million of this total.