Category: Applications

NEW DELHI: Dish TV’s media campaign revolving round freedom-from-cable-problems theme has incensed a section of cable community, which feels it’s “unethical.”

In a letter e-mailed to Dish TV, All India Aavishkar Dish Antenna Sangh (AIADAS), one of the many bodies representing the cable fraternity, has exhorted the DTH company to withdraw the “misguiding advertisement.”
 
“The whole cable TV community is shocked on seeing the business-damaging and misguiding advertisement campaign launched by Dish TV through various news papers, hoarding, and bus shelters. This type of advertisement campaign has hurt the cable TV fraternity in India as a whole,” the AIADAS letter states.
 
The letter further highlights that the latest Dish campaign would severely hurt the business of cable operators; almost to the extent of crushing them out.

“In case the (cable) consumer shifts (to DTH), who is going to pay compensation to the cable TV operator?” Dr. AK Rastogi, head of AIADAS, has asked in the letter.

Though Rastogi claimed that Dish has agreed to withdraw the damaging ad campaign in deference to the cable industry’s anguish, Dish TV CEO Sunil Khanna denied any such move.

“We are not withdrawing any campaign, nor altering it,” Khanna told Indiantelevision.com today afternoon.

He added that instead of being cry babies, cable operators should seize this opportunity to digitize their networks and offer consumers better services than before.

“With competition around in DTH sphere, there is bound to be consumer awareness campaigns highlighting the advantages of a DTH service. The cable operators should brace themselves for reality,” Khanna said.

MUMBAI: Media company Google has inked a deal with US media conglomerate Viacom.

The online search behemoth will distribute clips of MTV‘s shows that contain advertising to other web sites.
 
Media reports state that sites that are part of Google‘s AdSense Network will get MTV‘s content. Google, Viacom and the AdSense partners will split revenues derived from the tie-in of advertising and content.

The content will include SpongeBob SquarePants and Laguna Beach. The move will give Viacom a much broader reach than traffic to its own Web Sites. Google now uses the AdSense network to place paid-search ads for advertisers.

BANGALORE: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) under the aegis of the Indian ministry of communications and IT will be holding a summit on the internationalisation of the web.

The main objective of the summit is to discuss requirements for representing Indian languages correctly in various web standards developed by W3C under the internationalisation activity and come up with feedback to incorporate the recommendations.

This summit is being organised to take the W3C initiatives further along with the Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) – the body representing the interest of IT manufacturing in India from 24 – 25 August in Bangalore.

W3C International‘s Richard Ishida will deliver the keynote address. Several computing experts, academicians and developers are expected to participate in the event. Invitations to participate have also been extended to all State IT Secretaries.

Cisco Systems India will be the Platinum Sponsor for the event targeted at key influencers such as CIOs, CTOs, business decision makers, researchers, technologists and developers from the institutions and technology-driven businesses.

The W3C is a vendor-neutral, non-profit international organisation, where its members, staff and invited experts work together to design technologies to ensure that the web will continue to thrive in the face of a growing diversity of people, hardware and software. The mission of W3C is to help the web reach its maximum potential

MUMBAI: US media conglomerate Disney-ABC Television Group has announced key findings from its ABC.com streaming video trial.
 
 
The two-month-long trial this year offered ad-supported, full-length episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives, Commander in Chief and Alias. This marked the first time a channel made multiple series available for viewing online, free of charge to consumers. 10 US advertisers including AT&T, Cingular and Ford took part in the test.

In May and June, ABC.com‘s broadband player served over 5.7 million episode requests, totaling 16 million video streams. Based on survey research conducted for ABC by Frank N. Magid Associates during the trial, 79 per cent of those surveyed had a positive online viewing experience and 87 per cent responded that they were likely to recommend the site to others.

The broadband player attracted a young, highly educated audience. The average age of users was 29, and more than half were college graduates. Users of the broadband player were almost equally split between males (47%) and females (53 per cent).

The majority of online viewing for episodes occurred within the first 24 hours of their broadcast on ABC. Approximately two-thirds of those surveyed watched complete episodes, with partial viewing of episodes occurring mainly because viewers had already seen the episode on TV or were interrupted. The majority of users viewed from home, using a desktop computer. The number one reason given for viewing online was because users had missed the episode on TV.

On average, 87 per cent of users surveyed were able to recall the advertiser who sponsored the episode they viewed. Those viewers embraced the interactive advertising, with over 50 per cent rating the advertising experience positively and 84 per cent believing that they were getting a great deal by being able to watch the episode online for free in exchange for watching the ads.
 
 
Disney-ABC Television Group president Anne Sweeney says, “The launch of ABC.com‘s broadband player was a huge step for us as we strategically reposition our websites from marketing tools to rich entertainment platforms. The research that has come out of the trial helped prove true several hypotheses regarding our consumers and their online viewing patterns.

“With the data we have collected, we are better equipped to move forward with our advertisers and affiliates to create new multiplatform opportunities for our consumers.”

Disney-ABC Television Group executive VP, digital media Albert Cheng says, “The research we gathered from this trial has been invaluable as we move forward with next phase of the broadband player. We have been extremely pleased with the consumer feedback from the trial, and are busy working on some minor adjustments to the broadband player in order to again make full episodes available to consumers this fall. When we relaunch, the basic concept of ad-supported, free to the consumer full-length episodes will return along with some added features to enhance the consumer experience.”

NEW DELHI: The Indian DTH market is all set to explode with Dish TV going ballistic with services and marketing activities ahead of Tata Sky’s imminent launch.
 
Though Dish TV terms it as sheer coincidence that it’s unveiling a host of value-added services and as well as coming out with a media campaign over the last two days, the timing seems to be just correct.

“We had planned our value added service from before and it’s purely a coincidence that our consumer-awareness campaign, which broke a few days ago in the media, comes ahead of Tata Sky’s proposed launch,” Dish TV CEO Sunil Khanna told Indiantelevision.com today.
 
Apart from a 360 degree approach through a media campaign — goodbye to cable problems. Hello Digital! — country’s first DTH platform Dish TV is also set to unveil a host of services from Monday onwards.
 
Leading the pack of new initiatives is interactivity, which will come via Zee News.

The digi-boxes of Dish TV would now allow the unique experience of interactive viewing. Consumers can surf while watching TV for detailed stories, headlines and weather reports.

How does this work? A subscriber of Dish TV wants to see whether Indian tennis sensation Sania Mirza has won her latest match or not and cannot wait for the sports segments to come in the news bulletin.

So while a news bulletin is on on Zee News, a few presses of the buttons can take the viewer straight to the sports section for the Sania news story even as the main news bulletin continues.

“Such interactive facilities will give Dish viewers more convenience, but will also mean the broadcaster‘s (Zee News in this case) having to upload more feeds than usual to give the interactivity features a momentum,” Khanna said.

By the end of next week, Zee News’ interactivity on Dish would be completed for all subscribers, he assures.

Apart from news, Dish TV is also planning to go interactive with sports, starting with Zee Sports.

Sports interactivity will involve freezing of shots from a particular angle, getting player details immediately without having to wait for the sports channel providing it and statistics about the game in progress and sports in general.

The interactivity on Zee Sports will start with the Indian cricket board-recognised tri-nation series involving India, Australia and another country at a neutral ground from mid-September for which Zee has the telecast rights.

“At this point of time only Zee Sports will go interactive, but we are talking to Sony Entertainment TV India for introducing the features for the ICC Champions Trophy that will air on Max,” Khanna said.

Dish now has all the sports channel presently available on Indian cable networks, which include ESPN, Star Sports and Ten Sports. It also has some niche sports channels not beaming to cable subscribers.

Asked which other channels can go interactive, Khanna opined that globally interactivity works best with news and sports programming.

Next on the list is a dedicated gaming channel for people of all age groups. At any given point of time it will have eight games, which will be updated on a monthly basis.

Hassle free and simple, PlayJam software would start downloading on set top boxes of subscribers from early next week onwards.

The whole process will take a few days to be completed for all of the 1.25 million DTH subscribers of Dish.

According to Dish TV AVP (interactive services) Manish Chawla, three to four games are likely to be added every month with the overall number of games available remaining at eight presently.

The electronic programming guide had always been available to Dish subscribers, but from next week it will get fully activated with programming details of over 100 channels at one’s fingertips.

The EPG will store three days’ information, which is likely to help viewers plan their viewing, Chawla explained as proper setting of the EPG will send out alerts before a particular programme starts.

With Tata Sky (a joint venture between the Tatas and Rupert Murdoch’s Star) also planning to start its services soon, there will be hectic action in the Indian DTH market.

Hong Kong based Media Partners Asia (MPA) says that India remains the most significant and accessible cable and satellite (C&S) opportunity in the Asia Pacific region.

India began commercial DTH operations in October 2003 and by December 2004 reported over three million subscribers. MPA said India is poised to become Asia’s leading cable market by 2010, the largest satellite market by 2008 and the most lucrative pay TV market by 2015.

MUMBAI: The worldwide subscriber base for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services is expected to expand by a factor of more than 26 from 2005 to 2010, spurring a competitive battle between video providers both old and new, iSuppli Corp. predicts.

Global IPTV subscribers will grow to slightly more than 63 million in 2010, rising at a stunning Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 92.1 per cent from 2.4 million in 2005, as presented in the figure below.

The IPTV subscriber base will generate more than $27 billion in overall IPTV services revenue in 2010. While video services will account for the largest portion of these dollars, value-added media services and IPTV operator advertising will combine to represent more than 14 per cent of IPTV services revenue in 2010. Furthermore, across all IPTV services, the corresponding content licensing revenue will reach $11 billion in 2010. “The fight to capture the expanding base of IPTV subscribers will put telecom operators on a collision course with existing pay-TV market competitors and with a new class of broadband video portals as they roll-out progressively more sophisticated offerings,” said iSuppli vice president multimedia content and services Mark Kirstein. iSuppli categorises market deployment of IPTV services in three phases. The current global IPTV market is early in its first phase: basic service deployment. The second phase will add an array of value-added and interactive services. Phase three will bring dramatic improvements in integration and interactivity. Thus, in this pending battle for subscribers, providing a competitive video offering is merely the cost of entry for IPTV operators. Differentiation of IPTV services will be essential to bringing new capabilities to TV-based entertainment and attracting subscribers. Areas of differentiation will include: Interactivity, such as communication, community, voting, interactive advertising and television commerce (t-commerce). Integration across multiple platforms, across voice and data services and across content types, i.e. video, voice, music, gaming, data services and user content. Personalisation, including intelligent TV recommendations, individualised advertising and non-linear video programming, such as Video on Demand (VoD) and Digital Video Recording (DVR). Value-added services, including on-demand gaming, music, media applications, home networking management, security and data. Beyond the video service providers themselves, an array of companies will benefit from new opportunities arising from their roles as the “arms suppliers” for the battle over the next generation of television distribution. These companies include infrastructure gear manufacturers, set-top box makers, software vendors and semiconductor suppliers, iSuppli predicts. On a geographic basis, the European market has taken the early lead in the global IPTV market, both for subscribers and for revenue. However, Asia will generate faster growth than the other regions and will achieve the largest subscriber base by the end of this year. The Americas region will lead the world in terms of IPTV dollars starting this year because it will yield the highest Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today refused to pass any interim order on petitions filed by Dish TV and Star India relating to a disputes tribunal directive on channel pricing for the DTH platform.

The apex court admitted both the petitions, but is yet to decide on the next date of hearing.

Dish TV, the country‘s first pay DTH platform, had petitioned to get Star channels at a cheaper rate than what had been directed by TDSAT (Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal). On the other hand, Star‘s contention was that the disputes tribunal had no jurisdiction over pricing issues and had accordingly sought a stay on TDSAT‘s order.

An executive of Dish TV said, “We‘d have to wait for the court directive. But in the meantime, a deal with Star can be concluded at the prescribed rate of Rs 27 per subscriber.”

Earlier, TDSAT had said that Star should make available its channels to Dish TV at half the rate at which they are available to cable ops presently. This worked out to RS 27 per subscriber.

It was only yesterday that Star delivered to Dish TV the integrated receiver decoder boxes that would enable the DTH operator to access its channels for redistribution purposes.

Also Read:
Star offers to shake hands with Dish TV

NEW DELHI: Star and Dish TV move towards a consensus by shaking hands even as the launch of Tata Sky‘s DTH service is imminent.

A day before the Supreme Court is to hear a case on channel pricing, Star today delivered to Dish TV, country‘s first pay DTH platform, the integrated receiver decoder boxes that would enable the DTH operator to access Star channels for redistribution purpose.

Some formalities are yet to be completed, both the companies said.

Dish TV CEO Sunil Khanna added, “It might take a couple of days for us to start beaming the Star channels on the platform as the boxes need to be tested.”

As per a directive of the disputes tribunal TDSAT (Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal), Star has offered its channels to Dish TV at Rs 27 per subscriber a month. Dish would also not pay any minimum guarantee money to Star.

A spokesperson for Star India said that in deference to TDSAT directive an offer was made to Dish TV despite the latter moving the Supreme Court on the tribunal order.

Not clear at the moment is what would happen to a Supreme Court case, which was filed by Dish TV some time back. Dish had petitioned that instead of Rs 27, the Star channels should come to it cheaper as Star had offered its channels to Dish some years back at one-fourth the price paid by cable ops.

The price of Rs 27 fixed by TDSAT for Star bouquet of channels is 50 per cent of Rs 54 that a cable operator presently pays.

Dish TV sources said the Supreme Court case is likely to continue, but is unlikely to have much of a bearing on the present truce called by Dish and Star. The apex court will be hearing the Dish TV petition on 4 August.

Dish TV has been waging a legal battle for over a year to get Star and Sony-Discovery channels on its platform. The Sony-Discovery One Alliance recently signed up with Dish TV.

Meanwhile, Dish’s Khanna said that a price revision of the monthly subscription would be decided in a few days time. “In all probability, Star Plus and other popular channels would be part of Dish TV’s basic tier of service, which also includes other mass general entertainment channels like Zee TV, Sony and HBO.”

Also Read:
TDSAT to Star: give channels to Dish TV

Dish moves TDSAT against Star

TDSAT puts a lock on any DTH operator carrying Star channels

MUMBAI: MtvU, MTV‘s 24-hour college network and a division of Viacom Inc., has announced an agreement to acquire Boston-based Y2M, the parent company of an online advertising network of 450 campus newspaper websites.

Adding Y2M to MtvU and to MTV Networks‘ overall portfolio is another step in MTVN‘s strategy to super-serve its audiences with relevant and innovative content, and to be a leader in the digital space.

Following MTVN‘s recent purchases of XFire, Gametrailers, IFilm and Neopets, this acquisition demonstrates the company‘s continued commitment to being a premier multi- platform media company across every screen consumers use.

The network reaches over five million college students via 450 online campus papers — the most powerful local media brand on campus — which serve as definitive on-campus information hubs, providing local news, sports, weather, event
listings and much more.

“This acquisition is in line with our business strategy of moving forward in the digital space and continually expanding our online portfolio of music, gaming, news and entertainment,” MTVN chairman and CEO Judy McGrath says. “Bringing MtvU and Y2M together is another avenue for us to be everywhere our audiences are, deepening our relationship with them and connecting them across every platform and device, all the time.”

According to an official release, MtvU and Y2M will together create stronger multi-platform offerings, giving advertisers the most effective and comprehensive methods to connect with college students on-air, online, on the handset, in print and on campus. MtvU‘s national advertisers will benefit from an increased ability to develop targeted, localized campaigns, and Y2M‘s advertisers can capitalize on MtvU‘s industry-leading expertise in emerging media platforms such as broadband video and mobile phones.

Additionally, the combination of Y2M and MtvU will provide editors of student papers in the College Publisher network the ability to easily include rich media and a whole suite of new features on their online sites without impacting the editorial or design independence of each paper‘s staff. New features that will become available to affiliates include enhanced community functionality, a vast library of emerging music, and the means to create university-specific online networks. MtvU will also offer the student papers access to the network‘s base of more than 120 top-tier advertisers, enabling new ad sales and revenue sharing opportunities.

“MtvU and Y2M complement each other perfectly — as the definitive college television and online student paper networks — and together, these two mediums are powerful connectors to college students across every touch point,” MTV president Christina Norman. “We can now provide new, innovative, turn-key methods for our advertisers to reach this powerful demographic and continue to find new ways to super-serve the college market.”

“Student publications are the lifeblood of college campuses, and we‘re looking forward to supporting them with new tools and advertising opportunities — empowering them to expand their offerings and audience, as well as improve their financial performance,” said MtvU GM Stephen Friedman. “Y2M‘s unmatched network and stellar team are a welcome addition to MtvU and together we‘ll unlock a myriad of new opportunities for college students and universities nationwide.”

“The combination of Y2M and MtvU will advance the mission of college newspapers across the country and enhance their commercial opportunities with regional and national advertisers. Together, this will strengthen our ability to serve the unique needs of our 450 university newspaper partners, the 7,000 student journalists who rely on our publishing and hosting technology, and the two million registered online subscribers in the College Publisher network,” said Y2M president and co-founder John Fees, “We are extremely optimistic about the potential this holds for our college newspaper partners, Y2M and MtvU.”

MtvU has grown rapidly since launching in early 2004, increasing distribution more than 35 per cent and tripling the size of its advertiser base.

The network has also proliferated on multiple platforms, becoming the first MTV Networks channel distributed in its entirety on broadband and increasing on campus events to more than 300 a year. This transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of 2006.

MUMBAI: MIH, part of the multinational media group Naspers Limited, has appointed Ashish Kashyap as the CEO of MIH‘s internet operations in India.
 
As the overall head for the company‘s operations in India, Kashyap will be responsible for creating an organisation focused on building and operating cutting edge internet and mobile applications, unleashing consumer internet brands and also investing in start up businesses in the Indian online and digital space.
 
Kashyap has over 12 years of experience spanning internet, television and radio businesses. Prior to joining MIH-Internet, Kashyap was the country head of Google India (Domestic Operations), wherein he set up the company‘s India facing business from scratch. Before joining Google, Kashyap, was the general manager e-commerce at Indiatimes.com, where he was responsible for creating numerous innovations such as airline ticket auctions and tell your price amongst others. Kashyap also has had successful stints at MTV and Times FM.

MIH Internet (India) head of investments Craig White said, “MIH operates in over 50 countries worldwide wherein we are market leaders. The Indian internet and mobile businesses represent one of the largest global opportunities for us. We see the opportunity from two prisms. First, building unique internet applications and second, investing and seeding entrepreneurial debuts. Ashish brings with him a wealth of industry experience especially in the internet business that will help us set a strong foundation in this dynamic market.”

“I continue to be passionate about innovating and creating disruptive consumer applications in the internet and mobile space – products and services that would make lives simpler and exciting for the Indian consumer. I am excited to join MIH‘s internet business in India at a very interesting time, wherein there is a clear market opportunity on one hand and a very aggressive mandate from MIH in India on the other. I am confident I will be able to fulfil my passions and at the same time drive value for all the stake holders,” added Kashyap.