ITV

Category: Technology

  • Catvision to install 200 headends by December 2016

    Catvision to install 200 headends by December 2016

    KOLKATA: Catvision, a manufacturer, re-seller and system integrator, which has installed more than 60 headends till now, aims to install around 200 more headends by the end of 2016 through its joint venture company Catvision Unitron.

     

    By looking at an additional 200 headends, the company is aiming at about 25 per cent share in the headend installation vertical by 2016.

     

    Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Catvision managing director Athar Abbas said, “We have installed more than 60 headends in locations like Guwahati, Dimapur, Sonipat, Dehradun among others till now. In phase III and IV, we are looking at a market share of 25 per cent. By December 2015, we are looking at 100 headends and another 100 by 2016.”

     

    Catvision signed a joint venture agreement with Belgian company Unitron Group NV to set up a 50:50 joint venture called Catvision Unitron in India. The company develops AV encoders for the cable television industry.

     

    Now the JV develops CATV digital systems and products with the latest world-class technology. Unitron Group NV of Belgium has years of experience in the state-of-the-art digital headend technology, and is one of the leading companies in Europe in providing solutions for TV distribution to multi- dwelling units and residential complexes.

     

    On the other hand, Catvision has experience in the CATV industry in India, a market that is migrating to digital technology totally by the end of 2016.

     

    “This joint venture with Unitron has enabled Catvision to become a leading player in India and surrounding countries in the emerging digital TV space,” Abbas said.

     

    As was reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com, the company aims to manufacture around 15 lakh STBs to be used in the third and fourth phases of cable TV digitization process in India.

     

  • Air Canada digital strategy leaps ahead with Apple Watch app

    Air Canada digital strategy leaps ahead with Apple Watch app

    MUMBAI: Air Canada has developed an app for the recently unveiled Apple Watch that will make it even more convenient for customers on-the-go to obtain important travel information and initiate tasks such as checking-in.

     

    “Air Canada is excited to offer customers the convenience of our new Air Canada app for Apple Watch. The app will allow customers to easily check their flight status and boarding times. They will also be able to save precious time with notifications that prompt them to check-in and board. The app further advances Air Canada’s mobile strategy of innovating with the latest technology to provide customers a wide variety of options for managing their travel using their preferred personal device,” said Air Canada vice president of marketing Craig Landry.

     

    With its Glance feature, the Air Canada app for Apple Watch readily provides customers with personal and relevant information about flights departing within a 24-hour window. Essential information can be displayed on the user’s Apple Watch and is frequently updated during the day of travel, including Actionable Notifications for check-in and boarding. The app also includes a hand-off feature to enable customers to begin more complex tasks, such as checking-in, that can then be completed either on an iPhone or Mac computer.

     

    The Air Canada app for Apple Watch will be available in the Apple Watch App Store on 24 April. The Air Canada app for iPhone is available from the App Store.

  • Catvision to manufacture 15 lakh STBs by 2017

    Catvision to manufacture 15 lakh STBs by 2017

    KOLKATA: Catvision, a manufacturer, re-seller and system integrator, aims to manufacture 15 lakh set top boxes (STBs) by 2017 fiscal end.

     

    The company has set sights on this goal as the cable TV sector prepares for phase III and IV of digitisation. Catvision is looking at capturing a market share of one per cent with this.

     

    Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Catvision managing director Athar Abbas said, “With the extension in the deadline for cable TV digitisation, the industry will be able to cater to all the needs of the fragmented markets. By the end of 2015-16, we are looking at five lakh STBs and by 2016-17 we aim to manufacture another one million STBs.”

     

    Talking about Phase I and II, Abbas said that India could achieve an ambitious target as the digitization process as a whole was well executed in these two phases. “No one expected that Phase I and II would be done on time but India did it. However, in the remaining phases, the biggest challenge would be fragmented markets,” Abbas said, when queried about the challenges the locations, falling under Phase III and IV, might pose.

     

    Speaking on the delay that digitization Phase III and IV have encountered, Abbas said that the government was keen on STBs being manufactured in the country. “The delay will give employment opportunities to many and keep a check on the balance. The industry is happy as the VAT has been reduced from 12.5 per cent to two per cent,” he said.

     

    Catvision was promoted in 1985 by professionals, who earlier worked in senior positions with the HCL group of companies – India’s largest computer and IT conglomerate. In 1986 Catvision started installing complete CATV systems in company townships and hotels – the first cable TV network in India.

     

    In 1990, it became the exclusive agent of CNN for a period of five years. The first Gulf War, captured live on CNN, triggered commercial cable TV in India. In 1995, the company made a public issue of stock. At present the company’s stock is listed at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The company has its head office at Noida, and manufacturing unit at Dehradun.

  • Airtel reboots ‘My Airtel’ mobile application

    Airtel reboots ‘My Airtel’ mobile application

    MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel has launched an all new avatar of its ‘My Airtel’ mobile application. The application has been redesigned on Android to follow an intuitive and easy to use interface, which allows customers to conveniently discover, access and self-manage Airtel services across mobile, fixed line and DTH platforms.

     

    The new version of the ‘My Airtel’ application also comes loaded with a wide range of fresh features and capabilities and fits within the company’s wider agenda of driving an enhanced digital experience for customers. The new ‘My Airtel’ application is now available for select users and will be rolled out for all customers over the next few days.

     

    “With design simplicity, intuitive commerce flows and high performance as our priorities, we at Airtel have been working towards re-energizing the experience our customers enjoy while interacting with us through our online properties. A first step in this very direction – the all new My Airtel app has a contemporary design interface that will simplify our customer journeys and allow them to do much more – efficiently and effectively. I would like to encourage all our customers to experience the bigger and better version of My Airtel and enjoy the Airtel Surprises that come along with recharges,” said Bharti Airtel director – consumer business Srini Gopalan.

     

    Customers can now use ‘My Airtel’ app to recharge any mobile number, and receive ‘Airtel Surprises’ coupons with exciting offers like coupons worth value of first, birthday week and many more in weeks to come.

     

    In partnership with mydala, a coupon and discount marketing platform present in 200 cities in India, ‘Airtel Surprises’ will leverage a series of exclusive tie-ups with merchants across categories like shopping, food, wellness, entertainment – and offer coupons for popular brands like PVR Cinemas, Café Coffee Day, Flipkart.com. amazon.in, Ebay.in, Myntra.com, Archies, VLCC, among others.

     

    Additionally, the newly added ‘I Want To’ feature will allow customers to make their frequent tasks (e.g. recharge of a specific prepaid mobile number) a quick action on their application’s home screen.

     

    The in-application payment experience and card store feature have now been upgraded and Airtel’s payment stack is now PCI-DSS certified to ensure a safe, secure and faster check out experience for customers across My Airtel and also the PC and mobile web experiences. Push notifications with alerts such as low balance, pack expiry and payment due date will also be available on the app. Additionally, customers on ‘My Airtel’ will not incur any data charges for using the application.

     

    Betting big on delivering an improved online experience for its customers – the company has already launched a new fast-loading homepage for its website www.airtel.in, a new 4G experience at www.airtel.in/4G and an omni-channel experience to order a brand new Xiaomi RedMi 4G atwww.airtel.in/mi. Airtel is currently focused at re-engineering its online experience to ensure improved interfaces, reduced load time, payment failures etc. 

  • Downloads soar for Reliance Communications’ cricket World Cup app

    Downloads soar for Reliance Communications’ cricket World Cup app

    MUMBAI: As the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 now moves towards the knock-out stages, the global cricketing body today said that the action on the pitch during the Pool stages has been matched with remarkable levels of interest in the tournament across all online channels from around the world.

     

    For example, the official ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 App, which it launched in partnership with Reliance Communications, has seen success for a cricket app reaching over 3.35 million downloads, claims ICC. It has topped the charts as the number one downloaded sports app in 48 countries.

     

    The app, which is available for free download via the Google Play and Apple App stores, has received rave reviews with the ICC CWC Match Centre, in-match clips, fixtures, exclusive videos and real-time statistical updates being enjoyed worldwide.

     

    On the official tournament website, traffic levels have grown over 1,500 per cent since the last major ICC event and there have been over 26 million unique visitors to the website since the beginning of the tournament, claims ICC. These visitors have made up over 225 million page views.

     

    Of particular interest has been the new ICC Cricket World Cup Match Centre. The Match Centre has the fastest live scores available online and now offers real time statistics and insights using live and historical ICC Cricket World Cup data to deliver match analysis to fans around the world. The video clips of match action from the tournament itself have been popular with fans from over 200 countries watching back on the best moments from on the pitch, with over 24 million video plays combined across website and app.

     

    On social media platforms too there has been more interest than ever before for a global cricket event as millions of people interact with the tournament. Additionally, the exclusive post-match player of the match Twitter Mirror selfies gives the opportunity to ask the winning captain a question via the Global Broadcast using the hash tag, #AskCaptain. Fans have also used the Google + Facepaint feature to show their colours on the big-screens of all the grounds and over on Facebook millions have watched the latest episodes of #CWCDaily.

     

    On Twitter, the discussion around #cwc15 has also been very large, with over eight million tweets sent around the tournament with over 800 million live tweet impressions from the group stages. This comprises a 250 per cent growth in the conversation around #cwc15. The tournament’s match hashtags have also regularly trended on both Twitter and GooglePlus.

     

    Globally on Facebook, 36 million people have generated 341 million interactions with cricket becoming a regularly trending topic throughout February and March.

  • Zee adds &TV HD, Ten Cricket channels to mobile app

    Zee adds &TV HD, Ten Cricket channels to mobile app

    MUMBAI: Zee, which launched its Family App across 10 Asian Pacific countries last month, has expanded its product offerings by adding two new channels on the app namely – &TV HD and Ten Cricket.

     

    Ten Cricket will be available Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Israel, Fiji and Philippines, whereas &TV HD will be available in these countries as well as Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. 

     

    The current conversion from download to usage is above 80 per cent for Zee Family.tv.

     

    “Currently the app is on free trail till 31 March and will be launched as a pay product from 2 April ensuring high quality and hassle-free viewing experience of the Zee Family channels with Catch up options,” said Zee business head Asia Pacific Sushruta Samanta.

  • Contest for PMO mobile app launched; winner gets trip to US

    Contest for PMO mobile app launched; winner gets trip to US

    NEW DELHI: A contest has been launched for development of a mobile app for the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).  

     

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his recent address at the 25th foundation day of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) had announced the intention to launch a mobile app for PMO. 

    The Government’s citizen engagement platform MyGov will host this contest in association with Google. The contest will be organized over the next three months in three areas of ideation, wireframe development and app development. The best app will be then presented to the PMO. The team developing the wining app will get a chance to visit the headquarters of Google in the United States. 

    The contest is open for all citizens of India above the age 18 years, who are registered on MyGov (https://mygov.in). Participants can submit their entries on the contest page. Each phase will be assessed by an independent jury constituted by MyGov. 

    Speaking on the launch, Communication & Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said views of the citizens collected through the MyGov and other forum have been incorporated into railway and Union Budgets. 

     

    The need to tackle benami properties and the idea for introduction of sovereign gold bound scheme have come through some suggestions from the people. He said this Government wants to take follow up action on ideas obtained through crowd sourcing and also wants to use social media for public good. 

    Deputy secretary R S Sharma gave an overview of the Digital India programme, whose aim is to first digitally connect all citizens of the government and then digitally empower them in participative process of policy making and being continuously informed of various government initiatives and programmes. 

    MyGov CEO Gaurav Dwivedi charted out the evolution of MyGov, since its launch on 26 July last year and laid out some key features of the newly released MyGov Version 2.0. Google India managing director Rajan Anandan, who is MyGov’s partner in the contest, spoke of Google’s commitment to partner India’s digital drive at multiple levels.

  • India ready for 4K & hybrid technology: Broadcom Corp

    India ready for 4K & hybrid technology: Broadcom Corp

    KOLKATA: Broadcom Corp, one of the market leaders in providing chips for technologies such as enterprise networking, set-top boxes, and mobile connectivity functions, believes that the Indian market is ready for concepts like value added services (VAS), 4K, and hybrid technology.

     

    Broadcom interacted with more than 50 companies including satellite operators, cable operators, CAF players and OEM (original equipment manufacturers’) at the recently concluded 23rd Convergence India 2015 Expo, largest South Asian platform for Telecom, Broadcast and Digital Media. After participating in the fair, themed ‘Connecting India’, the company said it has got overwhelming response from the industry and trade visitors. 

     

    “Newer concepts like VAS, 4K, and hybrid technology are of interest across the broader audience,” said Broadcom India managing director Rajiv Kapur.

     

    “We spent time and discussed about our products and services with top 30 players of the industry apart from interacting with mid-sized companies,” informed Kapur.

     

    While India is a large market for Pay TV and broadband, till some years ago, the technology platform was almost missing for stakeholders to gather at a platform and address the issues, challenges and scope of working.

     

    “Broadcom spent quality time with big players. Even small players were interested in using and leveraging our services,” he said.

     

    Kapur said that the company is eyeing further growth from Indian R&D centre. “Apart from executing ideas gathered from this meet at our global R&D centre, we would execute some ideas at our research centre in India,” he concluded.

  • FY-2014: Technicolor reduces financial debt despite lower group revenues

    FY-2014: Technicolor reduces financial debt despite lower group revenues

    BENGALURU:  Global technology player in the media and entertainment sector Technicolor reported profit from continuing operations at €137 million as compared to a loss of €111 million last year. The company reported net income after tax, excluding costs due to debt repayments, at €149 million in the year ended 31 December, 2014 (FY-2014) as compared to €69 million in FY-2013. The company reported net financial debt at nominal value (non IFRS) of €645 million in the current year as compared to the €784 million in FY-2013.

     

    Group revenue in FY-2014 was however lower by 3.4 per cent at €3332 million as compared to the €3449 million in the previous year. Group revenue excluding legacy activities in FY-2014 was 1.4 per cent lower at €3315 million as compared to the €3362 million in the preceding year.

     

    Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations amounted to €550 million in FY-2014 compared to €537 million in 2013, recording year-over-year growth of 3.1 per cent at constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 16.5 per cent, up by 1.0 point year-on-year, reflecting strong Connected Home  performance, driven by continued operating efficiency and better product mix, sustained revenue growth in Production Services, particularly in higher-margin VFX activities, and lower corporate costs, mostly related to transversal functions, which helped to offset the exit from legacy activities and weaker DVD Services contribution, as well as continuing investments in new Technology business initiatives says the company.

     

    The Group’s financial result was loss of €117 million in FY-2014 compared to loss of €288 million in FY- 2013, reflecting the following informs Technicolor:  Net interest costs amounted to €65 million in FY-2014, a significant reduction compared to €112 million in FY-2013, due to lower borrowing costs stemming from the refinancing and re-pricing transactions and from the material decrease in gross debt achieved during the period. Other financial charges amounted to €FY-52 million in 2014, of which costs related to the refinancing and re-pricing transactions for €26 million, including an IFRS reversal recognised as a non-cash charge for €20 million due to the debt prepayments done in FY-2014.

     

    Segment results (Company Speak Excerpts)

     

    Technology

     

    Technology revenues amounted to €490 million in FY-2014, up 1.2 per cent at current currency compared to 2013. Licensing revenues totalled €479 million in FY-2014, broadly unchanged from FY-2013, as a double-digit decline in revenues from the MPEG LA pool (which represented 45 per cent of Licensing revenues in FY-2014 compared to 53 per cent in FY-2013) was offset by robust double-digit revenue growth across other patent license programs. The Group benefited principally from a strong level of new contracts in the fourth quarter of FYT-2014 in its Digital TV program, and from additional revenues related to the LG smartphone patent license agreement signed in February 2014.

     

    Entertainment Services

     

    Entertainment Services revenues (excluding legacy activities) amounted to €1,442 million in FY-2014, down 5.7 per cent at current currency compared to FY-2013, as weaker performance for DVD Services was partially offset by strong revenue growth across Production Services, particularly in Visual Effects (VFX) activities.

     

    Legacy activities generated revenues of €17 million in FY 2014, down by about 81 per cent at current currency compared to 2013.

     

    Connected Home

     

    Connected Home revenues were €1,382 million in FY-2014, up 2.6 per cent at current currency compared to FY-2013, highlighting a good level of activity across most regions, as reflected by record product shipments of more than 34 million units for the year (+5.6 per cent). The Connected Home segment continued to expand faster than the market, achieving year-on-year revenue growth of 4.4 per cent at constant currency, and also succeeded to post revenue increases in each of the quarters of the year. This performance resulted from further market share gains across all regions, in particular in North America and Europe, Middle-East & Africa, as well as ongoing improvement in overall product mix, especially in Latin America. In FY-2014, HD products accounted for 79 per cent of total set top box shipments (FY-2013: 55 per cent), while Ultra Broadband devices (DOCSIS 3.0, VDSL, Fiber) represented 62 per cent of total Broadband CPE volumes (FY-2013: 52 per cent), both product categories recording significant year-on-year mix improvement, in line with the segment’s roadmap.

     

    Technicolor CEO Fredrick Rose said, : “I am extremely proud of the work done by everyone in Technicolor to deliver a fantastic performance in 2014 resulting in a positive net income and the initiation of a dividend. As we now embark on our Drive 2020 strategic plan, we will remain fully focused on creating shareholder value as a leader in media and entertainment services, developing and monetizing video and audio technologies.”

  • SDI Media to deliver content directly to iTunes

    SDI Media to deliver content directly to iTunes

    MUMBAI: SDI Media has been added to Apple’s short list of vendors approved to deliver media assets directly to iTunes.

     

    Direct delivery enables significant reductions in time-to-market and increases accessibility for iTunes delivery workflows of audio, video, subtitle and metadata assets. SDI Media has been delivering content to Apple for the last four years and has been awarded this designation as a result of maintaining exceptional quality deliveries.

     

    As a direct-delivery vendor, SDI Media adds even greater workflow efficiencies to its global service offering, reinforcing their continued dedication to provide clients the most complete end-to-end localization solution in the industry.

     

    “SDI Media is proud to be recognized and approved by Apple for the quality of our deliveries. We continually strive to provide the greatest breadth of high quality localization services in the industry; with the added ability to deliver directly to iTunes we further strengthen our competitive advantage and assist in our client’s constant challenge of reducing time to market,”said SDI Media CEO Walter Schonfeld.