Category: Applications

MUMBAI: Further to the license agreement between Visiware and Universal Studios Consumer Products Group to bring Universal Pictures properties to interactive TV gaming, Visiware has driven its latest game, The Fast and the Furious to the starting line.

Inspired by the action film The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, this sporting arcade game challenges players to experience the atmosphere of the underground Tokyo drift. For the uninitiated, this is a form of racing that replaces simple drag racing with a rubber-burning, automotive art form that consists of an exhilarating balance of speeding and gliding through a course of hairpin turns and switchbacks racing world. Viewers can do this all on their television screens.

The game features three different modes in which the goal is to become the new Drift King. In Drift King mode, players race head-to-head against one to three opponents. In Pursuit mode, players must prevent their opponents from catching their car, while in Time Attack mode, players strive to set the fastest lap time. Authentic sound effects and images from the film are featured in the game.

Visiware chairman Laurant Weill says, “We are happy to be partners with a group that has really made efforts to understand the interactive TV gaming market. It is a pleasure to work with Universal‘s creative and professional team, especially on such an exciting project as The Fast and the Furious. We believe this is the best racing game available to date on interactive TV.”

Universal Studios Consumer Products Group VP interactive Bill Kispert says, “The new film is an adrenaline ride, and Visiware embraced the challenge of creating an innovative racing game for iTV.

“Whether racing against the clock, or fender to fender with an opponent, it‘s fantastic that players can become armchair racers — and experience The Fast and the Furious brand — all with a click of their TV remote controls.”

NBC Universal director of interactive TV, Jon Dakss says, “Visiware continues to push the boundaries of gameplay on the iTV platform. This game has wonderful balance and will appeal to racing fans and casual gamers alike.”

The Fast and the Furious is the third game released by Visiware in collaboration with Universal. The first two games developed under the partnership were based on the blockbuster King Kong — included a quiz game and an arcade game

MUMBAI: Archer Entertainment Media Communications which works in different areas of digital content has launched an IPTV platform, www.IndiaTVLive.com, in the US to distribute Indian content.

Full-time broadcasting, in every Indian language, to 40 million Indians living outside of India and 1.2 billion Indian subscribers in India via www.indiatvlive.com and www.indiaradiolive.com will begin by 15 August 2006, marking the 59th anniversary of India‘s independence.

www.IndiaTVLive.com will stream Indian TV, radio and internet content to subscribers over IPTV. It will enable all Indian media via Internet Protocol to deliver television and radio channels real time, live and direct from India in as good as high definition television quality on wired, Wi-fi and cellular devices worldwide. The content will comprise news, sports and entertainment in all Indian languages.

IndiaTVLive.com‘s content and marketing partners include Shama Broadcast & Content Service India and Creative Content Services India owned and operated by Kedar Nath Gupta. Abhesh Verma is the CEO of India Broadcast Live, an Archer supported company.

Archer Entertainment COO Munish Gupta said, “Teaming up with Abhesh, Archer was able to put together a state-of-the-art digital technology platform to broadcast the top channels from India. We will deliver channels real time and live from one of the fastest growing and dynamic countries in the world but also guarantee terrific consumer experience in terms of quality. This is the first time that the world will watch news and events as they unfold in India on any device connected by high speed Internet. This is just the beginning of what Archer and www.indiatvlive.com intend to deliver.”

India‘s Union Cabinet minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vyalar Ravi expressed delight that this new (IPTV) platform will connect expatriates with instantaneous news and information from India thereby making the ministry‘s job simpler. “I personally know both the promoters, father (Kedar Nath Gupta) and son (Munish Gupta), and their hard and consistent work in media and for the community.” The Indian Minister added that the service could further enhance the fast-growing relationship and investment by overseas Indians into India.

Verma said, “The platform provides us the extremely lucrative opportunity to reach both inside and outside of India. Overseas Indians represent the most affluent ethnic consumers of any expatriate group. Within India, we will target a whopping 500 million consumer class with a steadily rising broadband connectivity. There‘s no doubt we will become the voice of India and Indians across the globe.”

Archer Entertainment provided the initial funding for the launch and marketing of http://www.IndiaTVLive.com. Archer Entertainment CEO Michael Selsman said, “We remain committed to growing and diversifying the (IndiaTVLive.com) platform.”

MUMBAI: Mobile sports fans around the globe are experiencing the first major international sporting event being broadcast live to mobile phones worldwide, from Europe to South Africa to North America, in the palms of their hands. Texas Instruments which manufactures wireless semiconductors hosted a press event yesterday 4 July 2006 on the potential of mobile digital TV in Munich, Germany.

Today there are approximately 16 countries with Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) mobile TV networks in place. DVB-H is an open standard developed by the DVB Project with broad industry support among hundreds of companies worldwide. The advantages of DVB-H compared to other mobile TV standards were addressed in a panel discussion led by David McQueen, principal analyst for Informa Telecoms and Media, with representatives from TI and Nokia. The panel also discussed the potential of the emerging mobile Digital TV (DTV) market with on-the-go consumers who are hungry for content to fit their interests. Following the panel, attendees were able to experience how sports fans‘ lives are changing with mobile TV from demonstrations of TI‘s Hollywood DVB-H single chip and Nokia‘s N92 mobile device.

McQueen says, “2006 is the year the mobile DTV picture will start to become clear with strong industry traction and international sporting events serving as the catalyst for mobile DTV growth. In fact, Informa expects $300 million in operator revenue to come just from users accessing streaming and broadcast services in June and early July to watch their favourite team play in international competition.”

In order for mobile DTV handsets to be embraced by the mass market, the service and the technology must be affordable. Nokia director, Multimedia Harri Mannisto says, “At Nokia we firmly believe that mobile DTV will deploy beyond the initial uptake the market is currently experiencing. From the numerous consumer pilots in which Nokia has been involved, it has become clear that mobile TV is a very exciting and interesting mobile service which consumers are ready to pay for.”

Christian Dupont, European director for TI‘s Wireless Terminals Business Unit, indicated that while the market‘s real growth will take place in the next five years, major international sporting events are sparking shorter term development. “This year we expect a substantial increase in consumer awareness for mobile broadcast TV that will in turn drive broader adoption of mobile DTV with DVB-H.

“We are seeing the impact the first live mobile TV broadcast of a major global sporting event is having which is evidence that the entire ecosystem has taken a major step together to bring mobile TV to consumers worldwide outside of initial trials.”

At every level of the mobile DTV value-chain, carriers, handset providers, infrastructure owners, content providers, broadcasters and semiconductor suppliers are putting increased efforts behind their mobile DTV plans supporting DVB-H. Informa believes for good reason – they predict 210 million mobile TV subscribers by 2011 and that by then ten percent of all mobile handsets sold will have a broadcast receiver, with DVB-H accounting for 63 per cent of broadcast receiver sales.

Demonstrations shown at the press included:

* Nokia showcased live broadcasts on its innovative Nokia N92 mobile device, the first DVB-H enabled device in the Nokia Nseries portfolio.

* TI demonstrated its Hollywood technology – the industry‘s first single-chip mobile DTV solution on the market – and its high performance OMAP2420 processor to provide a crisp, clear viewing experience. This demonstration was displayed using a DLP Pocket Projector linked to a demonstration unit and used technology from TI‘s partners PacketVideo and Silicon and Software Systems Ltd. (S3).

NEW DELHI: The Indian government yet again pleaded for more time to roll out CAS — six months to be exact — but a Delhi court has refused to accede to the request, asking for a final stand on the issue by the next date of hearing.

According to information available with Indiantelevision.com, even the broadcast regulator pleaded for two to three months time to sort out CAS-related issues like pricing of TV channels.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) submitted to the Delhi High Court today that it has initiated a dialogue with the industry stakeholders on issues related to CAS, which would take a few months time to complete and some consensus arrived at.

However, the court was critical of such pleas and fixed the next date of hearing for 19 July.

On the arguments forwarded by the government for more time, the court said the maximum that could be given is 90 days as authorities have already consumed considerable time in carrying out an earlier order of the court.

On 10 March, the Delhi HC had directed the information and broadcasting ministry to roll out CAS in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai within a month’s time.

The court observed that if the government is unable to sort out CAS matters, then it could also explore the possibility of going ahead with the rollout based on the Chennai model.

Chennai is the only city in India where CAS has been rolled out and running smoothly since 2003.

A clutch of MSOs, including Hathway and INCablenet, had filed a case against the government on CAS in the Delhi High Court late 2004, alleging that keeping addressability in abeyance had resulted in financial losses to the petitioners.

In the representation made before the court today, the petitioners alluded to the possibility of the government having plans to do away with mandated CAS completely. In this regard they made references to the relevant sections from the draft Broadcast Bill 2006, which is currently being circulated amongst government organisations for further feedback.

When the government counsel expressed his ignorance of a draft Broadcast Bill, leave alone plans of junking CAS by making it voluntary, the counsel for the petitioners furnished a section of the draft Bill in the court.

Also Read:

Delhi HC orders Government to implement CAS within four weeks

MUMBAI: Wurld Media, creator of peer-to-peer (p2p) service Peer Impact, has announced that select movies and television titles from Fox and Warner Bros. are now available via digital download on their entertainment network in the US market.

This announcement follows Peer Impact‘s agreement with NBC Universal to include their catalogues of movie and television event titles for on-demand rental, also now available on the service, making Peer Impact the first p2p model to offer content from three major motion picture studios.

The company says that as major content providers continue to address the growing demand for online distribution methods, Peer Impact presents a solution by enabling users to legally download and share licensed content while protecting both the license holders and the consumer.

MUMBAI: US market research firm Scarborough Research, which works in the area of identifying the shopping, media and lifestyle patterns of Americans, has released an analysis of video-on-demand (VOD) users – those consumers who live in households that used VOD during the past month.

The analysis found that VOD users are 27 per cent more likely than all consumers to cite reality programmes as a television genre that they typically watch.

Across America seven per cent of consumers live in a household that used VOD during the past month. VOD users are 24 per cent more likely to tune in to music videos. 22 per cent more likely than all consumers to watch news magazine shows, science fiction (21 per cent more likely) and dramas (18 per cent more likely), round out the top television genres among VOD users as compared to the general population.

Today‘s VOD users hail from upscale, young families. According to the Scarborough analysis, VOD users are 27 per cent more likely than all consumers to be between the ages 18-24; 20 per cent more likely to have two or more children in the household; and more than twice as likely as all consumers to have an annual household income of more than $150,000. VOD users are 27 per cent more likely than all consumers to be African-American.

VOD users are avid consumers of entertainment and information technologies. VOD users are 50 per cent more likely than all consumers to spend 20 or more hours online weekly. They have high-speed Internet connections, and are more likely than all consumers to have a cable modem, DSL or wireless Internet connection. VOD users are 38 per cent more likely than all consumers nationally to have purchased something on the Internet in the past year. 39 per cent of VOD users use online services for travel reservations and 47 per cent of VOD users use on-line services for news. VOD users are almost three times as likely as all consumers to have purchased pay-per-view (PPV) five or more times during the past year.

When it comes to advertising categories, home improvement is a top category among VOD users. 73 per cent of VOD users live in a household that has bought hardware, building, paint, or lawn and garden items in the past year. They are 15 per cent more likely than all consumers across the US to have spent $3,000 or more on all home improvements in the past year.

NEW DELHI: Existing DTH player Dish TV has locked horns with Tata Sky over interoperability — or its waiver — of digital video recorders to be made available to consumers of a DTH service in India.

DTH license holder ASC Enterprises, which operates the Dish TV brand, has told the broadcast regulator that if digital video recorders (DVRs) are not interoperable, as mandated in DTH guidelines, it would “compromise” consumer interest.

On the other hand, Tata Sky and technology company NDS (controlled by Rupert Murdoch) have said that “interoperability is not feasible on high end devices” like DVRs.
“The technical specifications vary with the (DVR) models that are introduced and these were not envisaged when BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) drew up STB specifications,” Tata Sky has said in its submission to the regulator.

ASC Enterprises has counter-punched by saying that existing clauses on interoperability of boxes protect the “consumer interests by ensuring they switch over their service providers for the basic functionality of watching the broadcast channels as per their option and choice.”

If that was not enough, Tata Sky and residents’ welfare associations (RWAs) have come out in support of multi-dwelling unit (MDU) technology, which has been strongly opposed by all sections of the cable industry, including Cable Operators’ Federation of India (COFI), which feels cable ops stand to become redundant.

MDU technology, being tested by Tata Sky for its proposed DTH service in a few cities, envisages making available a DTH service to multiple homes through a common dish antenna, but separate set-top boxes.

The technology is being touted by its supporters as cost effective for consumers and as a safeguard for “aesthetic” senses in concrete jungles that Indian cities are turning into.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had asked for comments on various issues related to DTH, including whether certain clauses in the DTH guidelines need to be amended to exclude DVRs from being interoperable.

Fifteen individuals/organizations, including a clutch of RWAs, have submitted their feedback, baring the fact there isn’t consensus on matters like DVRs and MDU technology, which have the potential of changing the way people consume television fare in India.

Even a company like Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infocomm, whose DTH license application hasn’t been processed by the government, feels that DVRs should be kept interoperable.

“The clauses 7.1 & 7.2 of DTH license conditions need not be amended to exclude digital video recorders. All set top boxes whether simple STB or personal video recorder/ DVR-enabled set top boxes should be interoperable,” Reliance has stated

The full text of feedback, peppered with technical jargons and occasional innuendoes hitting at opponents, can be seen on the regulator’s website, www.trai.gov.in.

MUMBAI: 10 to 15 July 2006. That‘s the launch window that the Indian Space Research Organisation has set aside for the launch of DTH services satellite Insat 4C. According to ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair the indigeneously designed launch vehicle has been moved to the launch pad in Sriharikota. 

The GSLV Mark II is a 49-metre tall rocket weighing around 40 tonnes at lift-off. Its payload is the Insat 4C satellite, with 12 ku band transponders and a mission life span of 10 years.

Most of the satellite‘s capacity has been booked for DTH services by the Sun Network, National Informatics Centre and VSAT (very small aperture terminals) operators.

The succesful launch of the GSLV will pitchfork India‘s ISRO into an elite group of countries and groups with indigeneous satellite design and launch capabilities: United States, Russia, Japan, China and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Nair was speaking to journalists at a satellite navigation conference which was held at its offices in Bangalore yesterday. He said that the launch window date will be kept, good weather permitting.

Isro spokespersons have been pointing out that using indigeneous launch vehicles will result in a saving of about 30-40 per cent or Rs 1.5 billion in expenses per launch. With four satellites to be launched by GSLV Mark II and Mark III, the savings thus will be substantial. It will, however, be using the services of Arianespace to launch the Insat 4B satellite from Kouru in French Guiana next year.

“With the commissioning of the Rs 3.5 billion ($75mn) second launch pad at Sriharikota, India is the only country to have such a state-of-the-art facility to launch different types of vehicles Ranging from PSLV (polar satellite launch vehicle), GSLV Mark-1, GSLV Mark-II to the upcoming GSLV Mark-III in the four-tonne class,” a top ISRO official is reported to have said sometime back.

NEW DELHI: A majority of broadcast industry stakeholders are against IPTV separated from cable service and have said this is likely to create more problems in an already vexed industry.

A consultation paper issued by the broadcast regulator on IPTV and amendment in the Cable TV Act has drawn varied comments from stakeholders, including that IPTV should not be separated from cable TV and laws regulating it.

“IPTV is similar to cable services in terms of content and mode of delivery. It would be appropriate to categorize it as a cable service rather than a telecom service under (the) Telegraph Act,” DTH licence holder ASC Enterprises has said.
Agreeing with ASC is MSO Alliance, an apex body of multi-system operators in the country, which has sated that IPTV should not be dubbed a different service from cable TV.

“Given the nature of IPTV services, which is akin to cable services, the effort on the part of regulator should be to propose amendments which would serve the purpose of keeping IPTV within cable services domain, rather than to suggest the ones which would take them away from the Cable Network Regulation Act,” MSO Alliance has said in reply to a consultation paper issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

On the other hand, Star has said that treating IPTV differently from cable services, as had been suggested by Trai in its consultation paper, would give undue advantage to telecom companies that have been proposing to start IPTV services.

“In the absence of parity in FDI norms, telecom operators would continue to enjoy better access to the capital required for digital broadband services. This would be to the detriment of other service providers like cable and DTH,” Star has informed Trai.

Presently in India, foreign investment in cable TV is capped at 49 per cent, while the government has okayed a proposal to raise the limit in telecom services to 74 per cent.

Trai had invited comments from industry stakeholders on proposed amendments in the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and existing telecom licenses for facilitation of growth of IPTV services.

The basic intention behind the proposed amendments in the Cable Television (Regulation) Act, 1995 was to keep the IPTV service outside the definition of `cable services’.

This means that IPTV service providers would not be covered in the definition of `cable operator’ and the Unified Access Service network used for provision of IPTV services will not get covered by the definition of `cable television network’ under the Cable Act.

The 13 stakeholders that had got back to Trai with their comments on the issue include the following: NDS, ASC Enterprises Ltd, MSO Alliance, Cable Operators Federation of India, Hathway Cable & Datacom Private Limited, Reliance Infocomm Ltd, Ortel Communications Ltd, Zee Network, Star India, Tata Teleservices Ltd and the Internet Service Providers’ Association of India

The full text of comments is available on the regulator’s website,www.trai.gov.in.

MUMBAI: Leading satellite service provider Intelsat today announced the completion of its $ 6.4 billion acquisition of rival PanAmSat.

The addition of PanAmSat‘s video market expertise, advanced satellite fleet and blue-chip media customer base makes the new Intelsat the largest provider of fixed satellite services (FSS) worldwide to each of the media, network services/telecom and government customer sectors.

Intelsat acquired all of the outstanding common shares of PanAmSat for approximately $3.2 billion. As a result of the merger, PanAmSat is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intelsat, and the common stock of PanAmSat has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The total value of the transaction, including PanAmSat debt that was refinanced or remained outstanding, is approximately $6.4 billion. 

Using optimized capacity on a combined fleet of 51 satellites and a large, complementary terrestrial infrastructure including eight owned teleports, fiber connectivity and over 50 points of presence in almost 40 cities, the new Intelsat:

— Carries one out of every four television channels transmitted over fixed satellites;

— Supports 27 DTH platforms worldwide;

— Operates 16 satellites that are part of video neighborhoods around the world;

— Is the number one provider of transponders for video programming worldwide;

— Carries more high definition (HD) programming than any other FSS carrier;

— Is the largest provider of commercial satellite services to the government sector;

— Is the leading provider of services to enterprise, Internet and mobile network operators; and

— Provides communications services to 99 percent of the world‘s populated regions.