Category: Software

MUMBAI: US pay-television company Dish has not been able to persuade a federal judge in New York to stop broadcast networks including Fox from pursuing lawsuits in California over a Dish service allowing customers to watch channels and avoid ads.

US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan granted a motion by Fox to dismiss Dish‘s copyright and contract claims in her court over the ‘Auto Hop‘ feature, saying that they should be addressed in Los Angeles.

Swain noted that Dish’s filing was motivated by a fear of imminent legal action by the networks and was, thus, improperly anticipatory.

She said that it was inappropriate to consolidate the cases in New York because three of the sets of parties claiming injury have chosen another forum for their claims.

Dish‘s service, which works with a digital video recorder, automatically skips over commercials for programming from the four major broadcast networks. Fox has argued that AutoHop will ultimately destroy the advertising-supported ecosystem.

Fox said, “We are pleased that the court has determined that Fox, as the true victim and plaintiff here, should have the right to proceed in its chosen forum in the 9th Circuit. Now we move on to the real issue at hand—demonstrating that Dish Network has created and marketed a product with the clear goal of breaching its license with Fox, violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television business, which damages not only FOX and the other major networks, but also the hundreds of local stations around the country. We look forward to trying and winning the case on its merits.”

MUMBAI: US pay TV service provider DirecTV has failed to reach an agreement with Viacom over the carriage of its channels. So Viacom‘s channels will not be available to DirecTV‘s customers.

Viacom has said that DirecTV was not interested in engaging in meaningful conversation. DirecTV said that it sent proposals to Viacom which runs channels like MTV and Nickelodeon but never heard back from the media conglomerate.

DirecTV said that Viacom was asking for an over 30 per cent increase, though it had no issue with any fair compensation.

NEW DELHI: In the absence of any quality of service for mobile data services at a time when service providers are rolling out 3G services and these services are presently available in all the service areas, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has drawn up draft regulations on “Standards of Quality of Service for Mobile Data Services Regulations 2012”.

With the roll out of 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) services, the growth rate in cellular mobile telephone service is poised for higher growth compared to wireline internet users.

Trai feels it is necessary to benchmark and monitor the quality of service offered by the service providers of mobile data services with various options open to the implementing agencies so that the interests of consumers are protected.

Trai has, therefore, decided to benchmark the quality of service parameters for mobile data services so that the interests of consumers are protected. Accordingly, the draft regulations have been prepared.

Stakeholders have been asked to send in their comments by 25 July and counter comments by 1 August.

MUMBAI: Mogae Digital has launched a new offering, Talking Comics, which will go live on Tata Sky later this week.

The video stories will be carried on Actve Wizkids and will be promoted on the the default channel – Channel 100.

The service will start with 50 comics and will go up to 120 by September. Stories from Tenali Rama, Mullah Nassrudin, Akbar-Birbal, Bheema, Krishna, Vikram-Betaal and Krishna series will go live in the inaugural round. Yudhishtra, Duryodhan, Arjun, Karan, Bheeshma, Raavan, Guru Nanak, Sai Baba and Gautam Buddha will be unveiled in September. Stories from the Bible, and a series of Ghost Stories will be launched early next year.

Mogae Group executive director Tanya Goyal said, “Talking Comics is a revolutionary new product. It gives a video experience that does not take away from the pleasure of ‘reading‘ a comic. Mogae has invested the last four years into creating original world-class IP in the comics space, specifically for mobile devices.”

Mogae Digital has over 50 titles and over 2000 stories created entirely at Mogae Studios. “With newer opportunities opening up on DTH, we have spent over 18 months creating this new genre of Talking Comics,” Goyal added.

Talking Comics were originally created to give a video experience to comics on mobile hence the file sizes are kept light.

“We were the first to ‘create‘ comics for mobile on Indian mythology, history and folklore. Earlier comic creators like Amar Chitra Katha created comics for paper. When taken on to mobile these comics were heavy and difficult to download. In our case, each story is easy to download, and easy to scroll. The mobile versions of all comics are in UAT (User acceptance testing) at most mobile operators and will go live this quarter,” Goyal explained.

Mogae is in talks with other DTH operators too for the Talking Comics.

Additionally, a comedy series created in partnership with a leading TV channel is being currently worked upon as a Talking Comics product. Its launch is slated for August-September, the company said.

Also, later this year Mogae will be launching a mobile-greetings product. Over 2000 animation based cards have been created for the same.

Mogae Digital is part of the Mogae Group, co-owned by Sandeep and Tanya Goyal, erstwhile JV partners of Dentsu India.

MUMBAI: Norway-based Opera Software is exploring opportunities to partner set top box manufacturers in India which will allow DTH, IPTV and cable subscribers to access Internet via TV.

“It is a good time to get into this (digital devices space)…We would look at partnering someone like say Huawei to build our browser onto their platform,” Opera Software Sales Director (India and SAARC) Sunil Kamath has been quoted as saying.

The company feels the cable digitalisation in India will throw up big opportunities as every cable television household will have to avail STBs by 2014 in order to access channels.

Opera has recently partnered telecom operators like Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular to distribute a co-branded Opera Mini mobile phones.

“Such tie-ups help us reach out to more consumers and gives us another distribution channel,” Kamath said.

“India is a strategic market for us. We support 14 Indian languages and we are confident that we will continue to see the strong growth that we have seen in the last few months,” he added.

MUMBAI: Leading satellite operator SES has said that the SES-5 satellite has been successfully launched into space on board an ILS Proton Breeze M booster.

After a 9-hour, 12-minute mission, the Breeze M upper stage of the Proton rocket released the SES-5 satellite directly into geostationary transfer orbit.

The SES-5 satellite was designed and built for SES by Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a leading manufacturer of commercial satellites.

The spacecraft, to be positioned at the orbital slot of 5 degrees East, features 36 active Ku-band transponders and up to 24 active C-band transponders.

SES-5 has two Ku-band beams, one serving customers in the Nordic and Baltic countries and one serving Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as two C-band beams, one with global coverage and one with hemispheric coverage over Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The satellite provides Ku-band uplink capability, allowing for flexible operations between Europe and Africa.

SES-5 is designed to deliver high performance and extensive coverage for direct-to-home (DTH) services, broadband, maritime communications, GSM backhaul, and VSAT applications in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The satellite also features the L-band payload for the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). The EGNOS payload, which was developed for the European Commission (EC), will help verify, improve, and report on the reliability and accuracy of navigation positioning signals in Europe.

SES President and CEO Romain Bausch declared, “SES-5 marks the second successful ILS-Proton launch in 2012 for SES and the third SES satellite delivered by Space Systems/Loral in the last ten months. SES-5 furthermore hosts the EGNOS payload for the European Commission. The powerful new satellite enters the global SES fleet as Number 51.

“We would like to thank the launch teams of Space Systems/Loral, ILS, Khrunichev and SES for their dedicated work that ultimately ensured total mission success. We would also like to thank the European Commission for entrusting SES with the EGNOS hosted payload. After thorough in-orbit testing, SES and its customers can now look forward to SES-5 providing new, state-of-the-art satellite capacity across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.”

MUMBAI: Persistent Systems, the outsourced software product development (OPD) services provider, has been appointed to provide social media analytics for Star India‘s Satyamev Jayate.

The Aamir Khan hosted show, which deals into social issues, has created buzz in the digital space with viewers sharing their opinions, personal experiences and suggestions through SMS, IVR and online media which has resulted in the creation of a large volume of data.

In the last few weeks, there has been a wealth of unstructured responses flowing in from a variety of sources like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, website comments, SMS polls, and phone voice messages.

This data is being analysed and delivered by Persistent Systems to Satyamev Jayate team at Star India and Aamir Khan Productions in real time to understand the impact the show has on the governmental, social and, most importantly, the individual level, the company said.

Content Filtering, Ranking and Tagging System (CFRTS) has been custom developed for the data analysis of Satyamev Jayate, the company said.

Commenting on the partnership, Persistent Systems chairman and MD Anand Deshpande said, “We are very excited to be a strategic partner to the creative and unique initiative that is Satyamev Jayate. By working with Star and the Satyamev Jayate team we are leveraging our expertise to contribute towards a social cause.”

Persistent has assembled an array of automated tools to parse the data and a user-interface for several hundred analysts to process messages for deep analytics. The result is a cluster-based analysis along with trend, demographics and sentiment analysis for each message.

The data is being portrayed on a series of dashboards that are featured online at savatmevjayate.in as well as on air on the Star Network.

“We are very keen to understand and capture the chronology of change that is being affected through Satyamev Jayate. Hence we were looking for a partner who can not only mine the relevant data, but also analyse and present it in a meaningful way,” said Star India VP Digital Lalit Bhagia.

MUMBAI: India’s leading e-commerce website Snapdeal.com has partnered with sports goods company Stag International to help promote and popularise Table Tennis as a sport in the country through online channels.

With this partnership, Snapdeal.com customers can now buy all sporting products and accessories by Stag International. These products are available under the Sports and Hobbies category. The category also features products across Cricket, Tennis, Squash, Badminton, Football, Basketball, and fitness accessories.

As part of this initiative, Snapdeal.com also conducted a week long online contest for Table Tennis enthusiasts. Winners from this contest won a lifetime opportunity to play a rally with the table tennis legend and 5-times Former World Table Tennis Champion Peter Karlsson in New Delhi/NCR.

Speaking of this initiative, Snapdeal.com Head – Sports & Hobbies Category Amit Monga said, “Stag International being a renowned name in this domain, we are glad to have partnered with them. With this, we are certain that we would be able to reach to a wider audience of sports enthusiasts”.

Commenting on the event, Stag International Vice Chairman Vivek Kohli said, “We are very delighted to invite Peter Karlsson, 5-times Former World Table Tennis Champion to India, to nurture the young talent and promote the game of Table Tennis in the Country. Every table Tennis Fan across the world dreams to play a match with the World Champion and as Peter is in India we at Stag decided to fulfill the dreams of Indian Table Tennis Fans by providing them with such a platform.”

MUMBAI: India‘s Star Television Network Monday launched four of its channels – Star India Plus, Life OK, Star India Gold, and ABP News – in New York and New Jersey on Time Warner Cable.

The four channel package will be available via subscription for $19.99 per month to Time Warner Cable subscribers.

“Being available on Time Warner Cable will enable us to reach a broader audience and move closer to our objective: to ensure that the Star Network of channels is available to every South Asian in the world. This will complement and enhance the array of Hindi-language channels being offered on Time Warner Cable,” said Star TV EVP of International Business Rajan Singh.

The Star TV networks will be available on the following channel numbers on Time Warner Cable: Star India Plus will be available on Channel 565, Life OK on Channel 566, Star India Gold on Channel 567 and ABP News on Channel 568.

MUMBAI: IAB UK, in cooperation with ESPN, has publish the results of research into fans‘ media consumption around Uefa Euro 2012, to understand the role played by online, mobile and social alongside more traditional media.

The research – conducted with UK sports fans – found that while TV remains the preferred viewing device to watch the tournament, more than half (54 per cent) use another digital device whilst watching – so-called “second screen” activity.

Furthermore, it found that social networking and mobile play a vital role in keeping viewers up to date and enhancing excitement around the tournament. The study also affirms the huge appeal of such tournaments for brands, with almost all respondents (98 per cent) having watched at least one Uefa Euro 2012 match.

Multi-screen engagement remains high with tablets rising in prominence: Fans‘ use of multiple devices to watch matches remains high with the use of tablets surging with one in ten who used an additional device whilst watching games on TV used a tablet.

Smartphones took the top spot with 28 per cent of respondents favouring this as their second-screen device alongside the TV set.

Whereas ESPN and IAB research around fans‘ media consumption of the 2010 Fifa World Cup showed laptops to be fans‘ favourite alternative to TV for watching matches, the latest research shows laptops have slid to second place, with 25 per cent of respondents choosing this as their second screen device.

The research also shows that fans are using second screens heavily for sports: more than two-thirds (68 per cent) of those dual screening whilst watching Uefa Euro 2012 games use the extra device on Uefa Euro 2012-related activity.

Of this group, 39 per cent visited social networking sites in relation to the matches, 17 per cent visited related websites, 16 per cent placed bets and 11 per cent use related apps.

In addition to using a second screen for Uefa Euro 2012 activities, the research found that people are also continuing with their normal internet usage behaviour while watching matches on TV, with 61 per cent checking emails and 13 per cent choosing to carry out their online banking chores whilst the games were on.

Excitement intensifies via social networks: 16 per cent of fans read tweets, 10 per cent published tweets while 20 per cent of respondents said that social networks played a crucial role in keeping them up to speed with the game when they were unable to watch it live. Websites also had a part to play in keeping fans informed with 23 per cent going online for live scores and updates.

Additionally, more social media interaction is happening during games rather than before or after, with 25 per cent sending text messages or 16 per cent reading tweets, suggesting a shift as people have become more comfortable with the technology.

The research follows a similar exercise by both parties around the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

IAB research manager Hannah Bewley said, “With the next World Cup taking place in Brazil it will be interesting to see what impact the time difference in Brazil has on social media for the 2014 World Cup.

A great opportunity for location based and social advertising no doubt.”

ESPN Europe, Middle East and Africa associate director sales Jehan Shah added, “The research shows that it is more important than ever for brands and media companies to develop multiple and varied digital sports offerings for fans. It also shows the rise of fans‘ ‘second-screen‘ activities while watching games on TV is not a zero sum game: it shows there is a growing, robust market to serve fans with companion, supplementary digital services.”

The research was based on a survey using the ESPN Fan Forum – which is a representative sample of over 3,000 UK sports fans the sports media company regularly engages with for research into their views and media-consumption habits – between 16-21 June this year. The ESPN Fan Forum is managed by Ipsos Mori.