Category: Technology

NEW DELHI: Direct-To-Home (DTH) satellite TV operator Tata Sky has approached the Delhi High Court seeking directions to broadcaster Sun TV to share its feed. TataSky had filed the petition in this regard on 22 February.

The petition said that though Tata Sky had filed a petition with TDSAT, the Tribunal was delaying issuing the necessary orders, due to which TataSky was not getting the feed from Sun TV, as a cosequence of which it was losing business.

In its petition in the High Court, Tata Sky has alleged that Sun TV was violating the regulations of broadcast and cable sector regulator Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). A Bench comprising Justice Vikramjit Sen and Justice J P Singh asked Sun TV to file its reply and posted the matter for further hearing on 13 March.

Tata Sky has contended that as per section 3.2 of Trai Regulations, no broadcaster can deny signals to any DTH operator or service provider.

However, Sun TV has refused to do so by quoting very high rates. This amounted to violation of broadcasting guidelines of Trai, Tata Sky alleged.

The company also said by such denial Sun TV, controlled by Kalanidhi Maran, was depriving its customers in the southern region from viewing many regional channels.

It is learnt that TDSAT had asked Tata Sky to file written submissions and the case is still pending with TDSAT, but the DTH player meanwhile decided to approach the High Court.

MUMBAI: Online marketplace eBay India, and Mandira Bedi have announced the launch of the eBay Cricket Mania campaign.

This is a campaign for the two million strong eBay India community toexpress their support to Team India as they prepare for the World Cup by wearing trendy “Go India Go!” bands in the Indian tricolours and win rare cricket collectibles.

eBay India is donating Rs. 5 to the NGO Mouth and Foot Painting Artists (MFPA) on behalf of every eBay member who sports the patriotic and colourful bands.

The eBay India Cricket Mania rewards all buyers on eBay India with cricket collectibles through the World Cup. One can shop on eBay India and win cricket gifts. Every buyer who hits a single (completes one transaction) wins a eBay India “Go India Go!” band.

If the buyer scores two runs (completes two transactions), he gets a special 100 years of cricket VCD compiled by David Gower. If the buyer scores 4 runs (completes four transactions), he is rewarded with a cricket ball autographed by Mandira Bedi. For all buyers hitting a sixer or completing six transactions, they get an original Sachin Tendulkar autographed biography – The making of a cricketer.

Bedi said, “I am thrilled to be associated with eBay which is one of the most exciting online brands and the India‘s leading online marketplace. eBay Cricket Mania gives millions of Indians the opportunity to demonstrate their cricket passion by actively participating in the World Cup campaign and winning rare cricket memorabilia.”

eBay India country manager Rajan Mehra says, “At eBay India, we believe in engaging with the youthful online shopper by providing a shopping experience which is fun and exciting. As cricket is the national passion, we wanted to provide an opportunity for the Community to express their support for Team India at the World Cup. The eBay Cricket Mania initiative helps to build on the cricket fervor and additionally supports the noble cause of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists Association.”

: Played with passion! Followed with obsession! With the cricket World Cup scheduled to kick off in less than a month‘s time indya.com, which is running the official website www.cricketworldcup.com as the International Cricket Council‘s (ICC) web partner, is starting to make a push.

The site officially launches on Monday, 26 February.

For the Champions Trophy the site got 230 million page views. Kasliwal says that for the World Cup the site is expecting a billion page views during the event. “Our application Matchcast (which is a scorecard) has been expanded upon. It will be interactive. The aim is to give the consumer a complete experience. One can get match highlights, fall of wickets package, interactive contests. There will be live chat during the game. Users can comment on the state of the game. Our video content will include highlights from the previous World Cups. Other sites (as per the ICC diktat) are not allowed to show cricket videos.”

Kasliwal also mentions another application – the Simulator. The visitor can view a graphical representation of what is happening ball by ball. He says that from a technological point of view it is a challenge. For each over two dozen parameters are taken into account. The recording takes place on the fly. There will also be expert analysis of each match. Prominent names are in the process of getting signed up. There will also be interviews with players and the captains. For the captains there is a section Captainspeak. Kasliwal says that it is in the process of tying up with speakers. It is also doing an interactive Voice Of the World Cup initiative. The contest kicks off next month. Here a clip of India‘s match versus Pakistan in the previous World Cup is featured. Sachin basically hammers Shoaib. One can visit the section and provide a commentary recording. The winner who will be chosen by the public and a team of experts gets to do commentary for the semi finals and the final for the site.The site will also have a picture gallery courtesy gettyimages. For fun one can participate in games. One game that will shortly be launched is called Pick The Score. This is a prediction game and one has to guess scores. There will also be a fantasy game. Here one chooses a dream team for each match and one scores depending on how well the individual players are faring.The site will also have quizzes, an ICC contests suite. There will also be pages dedicated to teams and players, merchandise that can be ordered. In some countries like New Zealand, Hong Kong, Korea, Germany, France the site will offer for a fee live streaming of matches. In India highlights and the other earlier mentioned features will be given for free.GroupM COO South Asia Vikram Sakuja says that at first the agency was not sure how the product would turn out. However he is happy that for the Champions Trophy the site got a quarter of a billion page views. “I am glad that GroupM saw this potential and got some of our brands like Lufthansa to work with this exciting media offering.”

NEW DELHI: Appreciating the need for empowering the citizen with modern information technology, President APJ Abdul Kalam today announced that the year 2007 will be the ‘Year of Broadband’ as the government was committed to bridging the digital divide by providing broadband coverage throughout the country.

In his address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament on the opening day of the Budget session, Dr Kalam said, “Our Information Technology sector continues to develop and remain globally competitive,” adding that, “My government will take forward the National Identity Card Project under the National e-Governance Plan for nationwide roll-out in a phased manner so as to ensure better delivery of services to our citizens.”

He said the government was encouraging the growth of the electronic hardware industry and the semiconductor industry.

He also said the Right to Information Act was one means of empowering citizens, adding that it had often been said that eternal vigilance is the price of democracy.

The President said a Vision for the development of an empowered S&T base by 2015 had been prepared. Steps will be taken to attract talent, rejuvenate university research, enable women scientists to re-enter careers in science, strengthen technology business incubation processes, promote excellence in research, engage private sector in R&D and create greater science awareness and a scientific temper among the people. The financial allocation for science and technology will be increased from less than 1% of GDP to 2% of GDP.

He said that to sustain the efforts in the advanced fields of modern science and technology, there was need to increase the number of scientists and improve the quality of Indian science. The Government was deeply concerned about the inadequate enrolment of students in basic sciences and said Indian science is lagging behind other newly industrializing economies. India needs a new thrust in the field of science and technology.

The National Knowledge Commission had submitted its first report placing emphasis on the need to invest in education at all levels of the knowledge pyramid. Several new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Information Technology were proposed to be set up in various parts of the country.

NEW DELHI: A sub-group on ‘Going Digital‘, set up by the Planning Commission, has recommended that digital terrestrial transmission by Doordarshan should be launched with a slogan Digital Delhi by 2010 to coincide with the Commonwealth Games in that year.

The Sub-Group headed by Rajeev Ratna Shah, Member Secretary in the Planning Commission and a former CEO of Prasar Bharati, said a phased approach should be taken for going digital covering all the seven mega cities by 2011 in the first phase and the rest of the country by 2013.

The sub-group, comprising 17 members, was set up by the Committee on Information, Communication and Entertainment (ICE) that has been examining the larger issue of convergence and advent of modern technology. Members include the secretaries in Information and Broadcasting and Department of Telecommunications, the Prasar Bharati CEO, the presidents of Cetma, Mait, Nasscom, and ISP Association of India, co-chairman of the Ficci entertainment committee Kunal Dasgupta, chairman of the CII entertainment committee, chairman of the Film & Television Producers Guild of India, president of the Cable TV Operators Association, Rajiv Mehrotra who is the managing trustee of the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, Virat Bhatia from AT&T Communications Services, Zee Telefilms President Abhijit Saxena, Sameer Rao who is vice-president in charge of strategy, planning & regulatory in STAR India, and a representative of the Prime Minister‘s Office.

It was also agreed that a group chaired by BS Lalli, the CEO of Prasar Bharati who is also chairman of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, and some private broadcasters like Star, Zee, Sony, Eenadu etc. and their major MSOs will examine an 11-stage process and firm up their sequencing and put the entire process on a “digital upgrade timeline”.

Digital migration process

Ideally, the Sub-Group said the migration process must commence from Delhi in 2010, coinciding with the Commonwealth Games, and proceed to other mega cities by 2011 and Tier II and Tier III cities by 2012. In non-urban areas simulcast can continue for a few more years. Analogue transmission should be completely phased out by 2015 as the outer limit. It was decided that to keep the transition costs to the minimum, the switching over time as well as the simulcasting period should be kept to the minimum.

There is need for convergence in regulation in the light of developments in technology and the I&B Ministry was requested by the sub-group to take a fresh look at the proposal for having a common communications convergence regulator with separate bureaus under it for dealing with content and carriage. A supplementary report will be submitted with regard to regulatory issues relating to going digital.

All the content producers – Prasar Bharati as well as private operators – should provide agreed and identified channels in the digital / HDTV format to MSO / cable operators under “Must Carry” clause.

High Definition TV should be introduced in a phased manner starting from Delhi (2008-09), extending it to all the six mega cities. Commonwealth Games should be covered in HDTV format in 2010.

The I&B Ministry, private broadcasters and service providers along with the Department of Telecommunications (WPC cell) should work in a coordinated manner to identify spectrum requirements keeping their rollout plans so that spectrum planning could be proactively made. A Spectrum Management Group could be set up to achieve this.

Prasar Bharati should work out the financial implications of going digital, covering AIR and Doordarshan operations and submit the same to the Planning Commission.

Prasar Bharati should digitally archive all its contents including educational contents for providing them for distribution streaming audio-video technologies. Prasar Bharati may also work out a mechanism to leverage the rich content available by appropriately pricing them and retailing them. All Prasar Bharati content of Classics or Fiction should be made web accessible with premium content accessible through payment gateway. Public service broadcasting content should be freely accessible on the web.

Digital cinema

The Sub-Group has also recommended amending the Cinematograph Act 1952 for inclusion of digital cinema. It said digital cinema should be seen as a means of securing the Intellectual Property Rights of the producer. Digitally recorded content taken from satellite in an encrypted conduit provides a failsafe method of delivering films to exhibitors directly, without intermediary or distributor‘s interface at multiple locations simultaneously, in streaming audio-video-mode. It said this was the best guarantee against piracy. Digital cinema should, therefore, be encouraged by recourse to various fiscal and non-fiscal incentives.

Production of cinema in digital format could be on lower tax regime and the theaters that have installed digital cinema exhibition facilities can be subjected to say lower entertainment tax. This would need to be taken up with State Governments, the Sub-Group said.

It said all conditional access devices (and Set Top Boxes) should be built on common standards for inter-operability, so that customers are not put to inconvenience. This will also help in better absorption, acceptability of digital technology. The plain-vanilla-STB should lend itself to modular insertion of proprietary data to include value-added services.

Content providers should be encouraged to work on creation of domain specific server farms and data depositories. The concept of digital libraries promoted by the Department of Information & Technology should also be publicly made available. Create open access platforms like Google libraries and others should also be encouraged. Memory modules could specially be created for lawyers, doctors, accountants and other professionals for instant data mining and retrieval in respect of their domain.

Triple play services

Triple play services riding on entertainment related applications would be able to create the most viable business models for spread of rural connectivity. Applications of Wi Max technology will allow entertainment to rural areas and this will provide ubiquitous Broadband experience to rural areas. Just as Wi Fi band has been delicensed, we need to move to the next step in encouraging proliferation of Wi Max technology for which the Wi Max band (2.5 GHz / 3.5 GHz / 700 MHz or existing Wi Fi band 2.4 – 2.48 GHz) could be delicensed for rural connectivity.

Content creation would be a specialised area requiring thorough understanding of the local requirements and language that can only be done through local entrepreneurs. The Rural Content Provider (RCP) would provide content and other facilities, including entertainment, which will be of interest to the rural population. Delivery of services could be through home TV or Mobile telephone. The business model of such an RCP would vary from region to region and would be driven by the market. The department of IT and the Department of Telecommunications need to evolve a suitable policy framework that would encourage such RCPs.

The Deparment of Information & Technology/National Informatics Centre should work out a comprehensive plan for rollout of statewise, regionwise and citywise GIS database and encourage private enterprise to do customized applications and value addition for various public sector as well as private sector applications.

MUMBAI: Tata Sky will take 5-7 years to break even and plans to further invest Rs 20 billion to ramp up its direct-to-home (DTH) business.

“We have already invested close to Rs 10 billion. We will pump in a further Rs 20 billion,” says Tata Sky CEO and MD Vikram Kaushik.

There is a hardware and content subsidy and it will take us 5-7 years to break even, he adds. Tata Sky charges Rs 3999 for hardware and installation cost while the subscription fee is Rs 300 per month.

The DTH service provider has a subscriber base of half a million and expects to benefit largely from the ICC cricket World Cup with its free subscription promotional scheme for the next three months.

It has roped in actor Hrithik Roshan for its new marketing campaign where select viewers would get to watch the World Cup final match with him.

“We are on course to achieve our target of one million subscribers in our first year of operations. We have activated half a million boxes. The World Cup should give us a spurt as we have interesting value-added features. In the Cas (conditional access system) areas, we have also seen a rise in demand for our service,” says Kaushik.

Tata Sky hopes to add on the Sun network channels soon. “There was a hearing in the court today. The final hearing will be before the first half of March,” says Kaushik.

MUMBAI: Kalanithi Maran‘s Sun Direct TV has secured government approval to induct 20 per cent foreign equity worth $150 million. Malaysia-based Astro is making the investment in the direct-to-home (DTH) venture through its wholly owned subsidiary company South Asia Entertainment Holdings Ltd (SAHEL) of Mauritius.

The cabinet committee on economic affairs gave its nod today to Sun Direct to issue equity shares to SAHEL. The approval is subject to guidelines issued by the ministry of information and broadcasting.

Sun, which was waiting for a satellite and regulatory approvals, can be ready to kick off its services after Insat-4B launches on 10 March.

NEW DELHI: Broadcasters have expressed the hope that the government will ease the taxation structure for the initial three to five years and introduces policies that promote domestic manufacturing of set top boxes because the high import duty and taxes like octroi and other taxes were acting as a bottleneck in smooth transition to digitalization.

Zee Turner CEO Arun Poddar told indiantelevision.com today that irrational rates were dissuading Indian entrepreneurs from investing in the production of STBs. He hoped the government would introduce policies that promote domestic manufacturing of STBs.

Listing his expectations from Union Budget 2007-08 being presented on 28 February, Poddar appealed for doing away with double taxation from broadcasters. He said since media was part of the entertainment as well as a service industry, broadcasters were charged both entertainment tax and service tax.

He said the entertainment industry was in the transition mode from analogue to digital and it was extremely imperative for the government to take steps that not only accelerate the process but also make this industry an interesting and appealing investment proposition for Indian manufacturers.

Service tax remained one of the crucial and unresolved issues in the entertainment industry and should be sorted out in the forthcoming Union budget. While service tax is levied on the electronic media, the print media is exempted from any such taxation. This is despite the fact that both print and electronic fall under media and entertainment industry. There was therefore need to create a level playing field for all, and take measures to bring electronic at par with print media.

“The 400,000 exemption limit from service tax has led to ‘appalling confusion and dissatisfaction‘. While the last mile cable operators are able to take undue advantage of this exemption limit, multi system operators (MSOs) and broadcasters were being penalized,” Poddar said. The last mile cable operators conveniently avoid passing the service tax to MSOs by under declaring their subscriber base by almost 80 to 85 per cent. MSOs and broadcasters paid service tax but could not recover this from the last mile operators.

He expressed the hope that the government would bring about clarity on how service tax should be charged or should waive the exemption limit completely.

MUMBAI: Casbaa lauded the Philippines Department of Justice (DoJ) for its recommendation in filing of 12 criminal cases under the “information for copyright infringement” law against cable operator Maguindanao Skycable CATV and its directors and officers.Speaking on behalf of the Casbaa members who filed complaints with the DoJ against Maguindanao Skycable, Casbaa said the DoJ had strengthened the industry‘s faith in a government commitment to protect intellectual property rights.“With this decision, the DoJ strongly demonstrates the Philippine government‘s strong political will to address the worsening pay-TV piracy situation. We are pleased with this development and eager to see the prosecution of the complaints,” said Casbaa CEO Simon Twiston Davies.

Casbaa and its members filed the complaints against Maguindanao Skycable for illegally acquiring and transmitting copyrighted programming from channels-AXN, CNN International, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, the Disney Channel, ESPN Star Sports, HBO Asia, MTV Asia, National Geographic, Star Movies, Star World, and Star Sports.The complaints were filed based on evidence gathered by the National Bureau of Investigation – Intellectual Property Rights Division (NBI-IPRD) following a period of intensive surveillance and a raid on Maguindanao Skycable‘s offices and head-end in Cotabato City in southern Philippines.

Under the Phillipines Republic Act the accused persons who have illegally transmitted copyrighted programs face a jail term of up to three years and fines amounting to Php 150,000 for the first offense. The courts may also order a convicted operator to pay damages for economic losses resulting from the unauthorized broadcasting of copyrighted programs. The Philippine Cable Television Association (PCTA) also welcomed the DoJ resolution, saying it is a “positive step towards creating a competitive Philippine pay-TV market that provides a level playing field for cable operators”.