Category: Technology

MUMBAI: Star India has announced the availability of its Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) Star One and Tamil GEC Star Vijay on mobile TV platform.

Star has joined forces with Apalya Technologies to stream the satellite channels on consumer’s mobile across all major operators and regions.

Initially, Star will launch the service with video-on-demand (VoD) content.

Says Star India SVP for new media and IT Gurtej Singh Sandhu, “Extending these channels on the mobile platform, was the obvious step towards building a community and get stickiness to our channels across. We wanted to create a medium for users to interact with the channel/brand.”

MUMBAI: UK-based BT has launched a new on-demand service called ‘Bolly & Beyond‘ on its IPTV service ‘BT Vision‘ that offers South Asian films, TV, music and children‘s programmes.

Accordingly, subscribers of BT can watch programmes on a pay-per-view basis or subscribe to the ‘Bolly and Beyond‘ pack for unlimited access that will cost them ? 6.85 (US$ 11.28) per month.

Films lined up in the on-demand currently include movies like Singh is Kinng, Luck and Jodha Akbar as well as the Rajesh Khanna-Amitabh Bachchan classic Anand.

The service also includes a selection of popular Indian TV shows, such as celebrity talk show like Koffee with Karan, soaps like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, cookery show Khana Khazana and family comedy Instant Khichdi.

There is also an area dedicated to children, offering titles such as the animated seriesJungle Tales, and animated films like Dashavtaar.

MUMBAI: Comcast, the US based entertainment service provider, has reveals their plans to offer TV shows on mobile devices through its new wireless internet service.

The services enable subscribers to watch shows via the web at no additional charge. The services will also be available to iPhones and BlackBerry cell phones.

Meanwhile, the company also plans to add voice option to the wireless package which will enhance the competition with mobile phone providers like AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.

The company will bring its wireless service and home internet package together to bring its online on demand service for subscribers to watch cable shows on the web.

MUMBAI: CNN has launched a commercial self-service on-line storefront of its wire stories.

This enables journalists, publishers and media organisations to license CNN story content through a web based service at www.cnnwirestore.com.

The CNN Wire Store is available globally to license and download individual CNN Wire stories for $199 per story for a single use, utilising a simple credit card transaction. The site allows publishers to browse through CNN Wire articles, hold selected articles in a cart for review, check out easily, and download story content on demand.

In discussions with publishers and journalists about the news industry and the changing face of the marketplace, CNN earlier this year expanded the offerings of the existing CNN Wire service and made it available for subscription. And now CNN provides the new CNN Wire Store for publishers needing content for single use and on demand basis.

MUMBAI: PVR Cinemas has partnered with Oxigen, the IT- enabled service provider to offer movie tickets through Oxigen‘s pan India retail network.

With this deal, it is for the first time that PVR tickets will be available outside of their own portal.

The tie up enables consumers to walk into any Oxigen outlet and book tickets for PVR cinemas. Users can also book movie tickets directly on the Oxicash website.The initiative taken by Oxigen is to expand the IT-enabled services to its customers.

“We see huge potential for growth in entertainment retailing. The association with PVR cinemas reiterates our commitment of leveraging the platform of e-commerce and technology to bring futuristic, value-added services to the customer‘s doorstep,” says Oxigen Services India founder chairman and MD Pramod Saxena.

MUMBAI: n a bid to generate more revenue streams, The Wall Street Journal is planning to charge for access to the newspaper on mobile devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone.

he announcement was made by News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York. While expressing confidence towards the improvement of the ad market, Murdoch also predicted that newspapers on print would become extinct within the next 20-30 years.

It is pertinent to note here that this move to charge the mobile readers comes at a time when the newspaper industry in the US is facing a crisis of survival with ad revenues and circulation falling or stagnating.

Murdoch noted that the plan to charge for access to the newspaper on mobile devices will kick into action “in a month or two”.

MUMBAI: As Adobe looks at expanding its business focus from desktop to the internet and mobile web, it has decided to acquire Omniture, the audience analytics company, for $1.8 billion.

This is because, Omniture‘s client list includes almost all the top web publishers.

As per the agreement, Adobe will commence a tender to buy the entire outstanding common stock of Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash.

The transaction is expected to close by the fourth quarter of Adobe‘s 2009 fiscal year, subject to regulatory approval.

GlobeCast has invested more than $2.93 million (€2 million) in HD upgrades for its two UK sites, making it one of the most HD capable ad hoc service providers in the world.

For the Uefa Champions League, GlobeCast has partnered with Israeli-based Satlink to deliver all games of Europe’s most prestigious football competition in HD to 26 territories across the Americas and Asia each night of the competition, which runs from mid August to May.

Up to eight games per night will be downlinked in HD from the Eutelsat W2A and Eutelsat W3A satellites using a wide range of new Tandberg RX 1290 receivers across both sites. Each feed will then be compressed, using Tandberg E 5782 encoders, into four multiplexes of two 31Mbt HD channels – to fit within 36Mhz satellite transponder slots. English commentary mixes will also be added to all games via ISDN.

MUMBAI: Motorola‘s Home and Networks Mobility business has revealed its next generation encoding platform.

This video processing platform supports both MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) encoding and transcoding and has been designed to meet future processing demands of both 1080P/50Hz and 1080P/60Hz resolutions using the MPEG-4 format.

The compression engine supports all popular video formats including 1080i and 720p and is designed to keep pace with service providers‘ future video requirements by providing additional processing horsepower to support emerging services such as 3D television and multi-stream output.

Motorola VP, GM for networked video solutions Bob Wilson says, “Growing consumer demand for higher quality and richer video experiences dictates the need for rapid technology innovation and service provider evolution.

“Motorola is working closely with service providers and content providers to anticipate their future needs and deliver practical solutions that transform potential video challenges into competitive advantages. The introduction of this advanced encoding platform is just one example of how Motorola is protecting our customers‘ investment in technology as they begin a critical transition to the next generation of high-quality video services such as 1080p and 3D in support of multiple device and content formats.”The new platform, named Motorola SE-6000, accepts baseband SD and HD video, as well as pre-compressed MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 streams to act as both a high performance encoder and transcoder for satellite, cable and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) applications.

‘Mobile Active‘ enables consumers to preview the mobile services on TV and download content on to their mobile handsets. The content may include ringtones, wallpapers, text alerts and contests.

Says Dish TV COO Salil Kapoor, “Mobile Active is our latest initiative to drive convergence in the entertainment and communication space. Our main focus is on empowering our young customers and giving them an easy user interface to download mobile Vas products.”