Category: Software

MUMBAI: Millions of DirecTV subscribers will stop getting programming provided by Tribune television stations in 16 markets across the US at midnight 31 March, as result of breakdown in negotiations on transmission fees.

This is the date when Tribune‘s contract with DirecTV expires.

Subscribers will also lose access to WGN America, Tribune‘s national cable network.

Tribune has alleged that DirecTV is not offering it a fair deal by refusing to compensate for the rebroadcast of its television stations. At the same time, DirecTV is paying popular broadcasters for the right to distribute their programming for more than 10 years. The television station is now asking for an agreement that is similar to those that it has in place with other broadcasters and programme providers.

Tribune Broadcasting president Nils Larsen explained, “Despite our best efforts, DirecTV is refusing to offer a fair deal and we remain far apart in negotiations. As a result of DirecTV‘s inflexibility, there‘s a strong likelihood that service interruptions will occur. We feel we have an obligation to make sure DirecTV subscribers are aware that they will lose the programming provided both by our local stations and WGN America after Saturday.”

“Our television stations are vitally important assets in the communities we serve,” said Larsen. “Each week, viewers across our markets rely on us for more than 700 hours of local news, traffic, weather and sports coverage, as well as live sports events and high-quality entertainment programming. DirecTV subscribers will be deprived of all of that programming when our contract expires at midnight, March 31.”

As a result of breakdown of talks, DirecTV subscribers will lose entertainment programming such as “American Idol,”Glee”,”New Girl” and sports programming such as Nascar and Major League Baseball among others.

Tribune has established a web site telldirectv.com to enable DirecTV subscribers to register their concerns about losing this valuable programming. “Ssubscribers should let DirecTV know how they feel,” said Larsen. “Their opinions are important and they should let DirecTV know they want to keep all of this programming.”

Tribune is one of the leading multimedia companies, operating businesses in broadcasting, publishing, and interactive. The company‘s broadcasting group owns or operates 23 television stations, WGN America on national cable and Chicago‘s WGN-AM.

NEW DELHI: The number of channels on Doordarshan’s direct-to-home platform DD Direct Plus will go up from 59 to 75 channels by the end of the current year.

This was stated by Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting S Jagathrakshkan, amid contradictory figures given by both Prasar Bharati and the Ministry over the past year.

Prasar Bharati had on 7 June last year cleared the expansion of the country’s only free-to-air (FTA) TV platform to 200 channels by the end of the 2011 and even said the clearance of the detailed proposal for e-auction of the channels for the platform was expected to fetch at least Rs 3.5 billion.

Prasar Bharati sources at that time said over 250 FTA Indian and foreign TV channels were in the queue.

Later on 6 September, the Board raised the figure to 250 channels but said this would be in two stages: 150 channels by December 2011 and another 100 channels in the next calendar year 2012.

This figure included the slots for which auctions were held last year. The Prasar Bharati Board had in its 104th meeting taken note of the result of the auction of the six vacant slots on the DTH platform at the prices ranging from Rs 32.1 million to Rs 35 million per year.

It was then announced that the public broadcaster will put on auction another 90 slots within the next few months to increase the capacity from 59 to 150 channels. Sources said DD could have made another Rs 2.17 billion, crossing the Rs 2.8 billion mark before 31 March 2012.

Later in the year, DD sources told indiantelevision.com that DD Direct Plus was expected to get an annual fee of Rs 1 billion each from the 54 channels that will beam on MPEG 2 and Rs 1.5 billion each from the 96 channels that will beam on MPEG 4.

Doordarshan spends Rs 3.5 billion to Rs 4 billion every year to operate 59 channels on DD Direct+ (including 22 DD channels) whereas private operators manage over 230 channels on their respective DTH platforms at nearly half the cost (on a per channel basis), sources said.

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today asked all Telecom access service providers to prevent misleading tariff advertisements to further improve transparency in telecom tariff offers for facilitating the telecom subscribers to choose the tariff plans that best meet their needs,.

This Direction, ‘Preventing Misleading Tariff Advertisements’, has been finalised after extensive consultations with the stakeholders including holding ‘Open House Discussions’ at various places across the country.

A tariff advertisement is considered to be misleading as it is likely to induce the consumer to subscribe to a tariff plan which he would not have subscribed; contains an untrue statement; omits a material fact having bearing on the subscriber’s decision; and fails to disclose attached limitations and restrictions.

Through this Direction, the telecom access service providers have been directed to give advertisements that are transparent and non-misleading and unambiguous; disclose all material information in unambiguous manner; contain the website address and customer care number of the telecom access service provider; and the advertisements issued in vernacular languages contain all the mandatory disclosures in the same vernacular language.

The service providers have been mandated to maintain an advertisement register which must include a specimen of every tariff related advertisements, and carry out internal audit to ensure that they are complying with all aspects of this Direction and to report compliance to the Authority on half yearly basis.

MUMBAI: DVS, the manufacturer of hardware and software solutions, will be presenting its latest products at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters (Nab) show in Las Vegas that takes place from 16-19 April.

DVS will present version 5.0 of its DI workstation Clipster. Along with its Digital Cinema Mastering Tool, Clipster supports mezzanine files such as IMF, providing the digital master as a file package with different video, audio, subtitles or closed caption tracks. In combination with Raw cameras, Clipster assures massive flexibility – e.g. by supporting Raw material from Red, ARRI and Sony cameras.

Furthermore, Clipster supports formats like Panasonic AVC-Ultra, Sony SR, Apple ProRes 422 and Avid DNxHD, and is capable of reading and writing OpenEXR. Equipped with state-of-the-art hardware, Clipster offers security and speed.

DVS’s multi-channel broadcast server Venice follows the company’s philosophy of openness. In heterogeneous, file-based production environments, users benefit from seamless processes and thereby from remarkable workflow efficiency. Venice’s broadcasting flexibility is shown in various tasks like ingest, transcoding or play-out, since they can be freely structured and processed automatically.

Venice is now available in a 2U chassis offering space for up to 9 TB of internal storage and up to 4 video channels. Equipped as standard with 10 Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 interfaces, the DVS video server meets
revolutionary standards for the fastest data processing and transfer speeds, all in a small form factor.

The DVS storage systems serve as a platform when it comes to creating a storage architecture for broadcast and high-end post production environments. Clients the company says benefit from system performance, especially from the SpycerBox family which has increased its capacity up to 72 TB. Even in mission-critical processes, the DVS SpycerBox allows for high-availability scenarios. SpycerBox can be integrated as a NAS or a San configuration – or as a combination of the two – into existing system architectures, providing users with a low-latency end-to-end solution that forms the core of their infrastructure.

CinePlay, a new member to DVS’s sophisticated family of video boards, has been specially designed for customers who want to develop a cinema player that will play out material as specified by the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative). Equipped with two HD-SDI inputs, two HDMI links and powerful decompression hardware, a single CinePlay board can play out 3D material in 2K 4:4:4 at 24 fps for each eye.

MUMBAI: SES is collaborating with Samsung to drive digital broadcasting via satellite in sub-Saharan Africa.

Samsung will introduce LED television with an integrated free-to-air satellite receiver, the Samsung LED TV Free Satellite, that will be distributed in Nigeria, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon in August 2012. Distribution to additional countries will follow.

The integrated satellite receiver will allow consumers to receive free-to-air television channels without the need for an additional set top box as the LED TV will be directly connected with the satellite dish. In preparation for the launch, SES and Samsung will jointly arrange training sessions with distribution partners and installers to ensure the proper connection of the TV device to the satellite dish. Both partners will also run a joint marketing campaign in June 2012.

As a leader in the free-to-air digital TV market, SES delivers more than 60 free-to-air channels in more than 40 African countries. The launch of the new Samsung LED TV Free Satellite coincides with more channels becoming available in Africa.

SES senior director of marketing development and Marketing in Africa Christoph Limmer said, “This collaboration is the first of its kind and will drive digitalisation in Africa .Today, one out of three households in Africa has a TV set but less than 10 million homes receive content in digital format. Our cooperation will not only help to improve access to digital content for African consumers but it will also encourage African broadcasters to launch more content. In servicing more than 40 African countries, we are well aware of the huge demand for more and higher quality TV services. The opportunity lies in providing an increasingly sophisticated African viewership with a significantly increased number of TV channels – a first for many African countries.”

Samsung Africa Regional Product Manager Dae Hee Kim said, “The Samsung LED TV Free Satellite is our contribution to the continent’s efforts to ’go digital’, providing African consumers with greater choice and broadcasters with the opportunity to grow the region’s media industry.”

MUMBAI: Broadcom which offers semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, has announced the availability of new 40nm HD cable set-top box (STB) system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions to meet the growing global demand for entry-level HD STB platforms.

Engineered for the entry-level international HDTV cable market, the new Broadcom BCM7581 and BCM7582 feature high levels of integration and advanced technology to meet the needs of cable operators across the globe.

 
Leveraging Broadcom‘s industry leading portfolio of digital cable solutions, these new products add higher performance processing while lowering power consumption to Broadcom‘s lowest cost HD STB platforms.

The key features include:

• With an integrated, scalable and cost-effective design, the 40nm BCM7581 and BCM7582 cable STB platforms reduce design complexity, power consumption, size, and overall system costs to enable greater deployment of HD digital cable boxes throughout the world.


• It has a CP with Floating Point Unit and 2D GPU supporting all popular middleware and user interface solutions.


• There is a 1GHz DVB-C tuner with the advanced RF receiver technology to support the widely varying cable systems worldwide.


• FastRTV fast channel change technology to uniquely reduce channel change time improving customer satisfaction.


• There is also an audio processor supporting all popular advanced audio formats and Broadcom automatic volume leveling technology.


• it has pay-TV security supporting all international cable markets.
   
  

Research institute Wasu Digital TV Media Group president Zhang Changli said, “HDTV is taking off in China with an increasing supply of premium content including more than 10 HDTV channels and the first 3D TV channel launched in January of this year. To deliver great quality TV content to our subscribers, we really need the high-performance and cost-effective set-top box chip solutions like Broadcom‘s BCM7581 in our deployment.”

BDA principal analyst Flora Wu said, “The Chinese government plans to convert 202 million households to digital programming before 2015, paving the way for the expanded network capacity needed to provide additional HD content and advanced services.”

MUMBAI: Undeterred by the failure of WWIL to kick off India‘s first Headend-In-The-Sky (HITS) service, Jain TV Group’s Noida Software Technology Park Limited is planning to launch the digital cable distribution platform with Intelsat as its satellite partner.

NSTPL has roped in former Trai chairman Pradip Baijal as a mentor for the HITS project. He will provide leadership on a full-time basis.

“We plan to invest Rs 3 billion to roll out the HITS services. The investment will be made for satellite capacity through partnership with Intelsat, setting up Headend and distribution of set-top boxes to cable operators,” NSTPL chief of teleport business Jeet Narayan Singh told Indiantelevision.com.

The company has signed a multi-year, multi-transponder agreement for C-band capacity on Intelsat 902 at 62 deg East. It will use the capacity to create a white label, turnkey channel package that can be received and distributed by multiple system and local cable operators throughout the country.

Singh said the deal with Intelsat will ensure that the company has enough satellite capacity to carry channels. He also stated that a couple of cable operators have already come on board, but did not reveal their names.

What gives NSTPL the confidence to succeed when Essel Group’s Wire and Wireless (India) Ltd. failed with the HITS project?

“At that time the regulations were not clear. Now the situation is different and the government is firm on implementing digitisation. There is also no ambiguity as far as the regulations are concerned,” Singh said.

In 2010, WWIL had suspended its HITS services citing lack of clarity in the regulations. The roll-out of the services was hampered since the guidelines on issues like the terms on which broadcasters supply their channels were unclear.

Singh asserted that the HITS technology will be an addressable system and broadcasters will come to know about the exact number of subscribers through subscriber management system. This will result in a win-win situation for everyone in the ecosystem whether it is broadcasters, cable operators, government or consumers, he added.

The company has two teleport facilities, one in Hyderabad and the other in Greater Noida. The two teleports carry a total of 50 channels including two pay channels, Neo Sports and Food Food.

“Unlike DTH, the HITS technology will be a two-way communication. With HITS technology, we will be able to provide more value added services and help provide broadband connections,” said Singh.

The HITS platform is intended to facilitate the goal of transitioning to digital broadcast television signals by 2014.

Said NSTPL and Jain TV Group chairman Dr. J.K. Jain, “We are excited that our HITS platform would facilitate pan-India service beginning this September, signifying an important step in the transition to India’s national goal of full digitalisation of television signals by 2014. Any cable operator can offer digital cable service with a nominal investment of approximately Rs 500,000 instead of spending crores of rupees to upgrade their networks. The platform will launch with more than 200 digital television channels and will expand to 350 by 2013.”

MUMBAI: Wire and Wireless (India) Limited, lagging behind the other leading multi-system operators like Hathway Cable & Datacom and Den Networks, is planning a revival.

The Subhash Chandra-promoted MSO has lined up a debt of Rs 2.50 billion from a consortium of banks and is looking at deploying Rs 2.5 million set-top boxes in the three metros of Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai that fall under the first phase of digitisation mandated by the government.

The company appointed Anil Malhotra, who was earlier with Digicable, as its chief operating officer a few months back after its CEO Sudhir Agarwal quit the company.

Mahipal Rawat has also joined from Digicable as WWIL COO – Siticable. He was national head operations -Analog at Digicable.

“We are importing 2.5 million STBs and have obtained line of credit. We have a presence in three of the metros that fall under the first phase of digitisation, unlike many of the other MSOs who have a footprint in two of them. We are positive about digitisation,” says Malhotra.

WWIL has a debt of around Rs 3.30 billlion, according to data till 30 September 2011. For the fiscal ended 31 March 2011, the company posted consolidated operating revenue of Rs 3.06 billion, up 12 per cent from the earlier year, while net loss narrowed to Rs 659.2 million. In the third quarter of the fiscal ended 31 December 2011, its net loss stood at Rs 147.3 million, widening from Rs 103.9 million posted a year ago, while operating revenue rose 17.1 per cent to Rs 871.7 million.

“We have firmed up debt of Rs 2.5 billion from a consortium of banks. Our network and digital head-ends are ready in Delhi and Kolkata and we will need some capex in Mumbai. We are geared up for digitisation,” said WWIL finance head Sanjay Goyal.

WWIL had raised Rs 4.48 billion from rights issue and its cash reserves stood at around Rs 800 million till 30 September 2011.

“We have reduced our head-ends and are centralising them. Our eventual plan is to have one national digital head-end,” says Malhotra.

MUMBAI: The Indian gaming industry is expected to grow from Rs 13 billion to Rs 46 billion by 2016 as it rides on the back of an explosive growth of mobile phones and promise of deeper penetration of broadband.

Console gaming accounted for Rs 7.3 billion (excluding the revenue generated by the grey market) in 2011, mobile gaming earned a revenue of Rs 4.3 billion and package PC and set box gaming made up the remaining , according to a KPMG report.

Last year also marked the arrival of casual and social gaming.

“For the gaming industry to grow, access is very important. The primary reason for the growth in gaming in other countries is access – whether it is the US where consoles were subsidised or China where cyber cafe is visible everywhere. The problem with India is that the mobile connectivity and broadband penetration is still low,” says Indiagames founder & CEO Vishal Gondal.

The mobile market, Gondal believes, will grow further as mobile phones become cheaper. With the increase in offtake of smart phones, the access to data will be easy. Gaming apps in particular have contributed to the growth of mobile gaming as accessing games is just a click away.

According to XMG Studio founder & CEO Ray Sharma, the gaming industry is on the cusp of transition with more and more people accessing games from their mobile phones. The amount of time users spent on mobile has exceeded that of mobile.

“There is a shift from console to the mobile device. Very soon, we will see the tablet processing power exceed that of console games. This transition is similar to what we witnessed in the 90s when arcade was replaced by consoles,” he opines.

Unlike the matured markets, monetisation of content is a big problem in India.

Playcaso COO Ninad Chaya believes that mobile phones are a primary source of entertainment for a majority of people in rural India. The games apps have changed the whole business model of the business. The Freemium model has played a pivotal role in getting casual gamers to get hooked on.

DigiBC president Howard Donaldson does not buy the theory that console gaming will die a slow death. His contention: hardcore gamers will continue playing console games as they offer interactive experience.

“I don’t see console gaming going away, there are hardcore gamers in North America who play console games for experience,” he states.

Games with local tastes are culturally more acceptable, a trend that is beginning to become visible in the Indian marketplace. Last year, for example, saw the emergence of the Bollywood inspired superhero game, RaOne Genesis.

Ubisoft Entertainment India producer Jithin Rao echoes Donaldson‘s views. “Console gaming will hold on to its own despite the fact that gaming apps are gaining currency worldwide since there is a committed constituency of hardcore gamers.” He, however, concedes that console gaming is declining compared to mobile gaming that has seen a rise, particularly in India.

“In the last three years, we have not seen the sale of any hard selling franchises sales go down,; in fact it’s increasing. Console gaming has not gone anywhere in the next five years, at least till the mobile apps become as powerful as consoles,” Rao contends.

Console and mobile gaining will complement each other as every platform offers a unique experience to its users. Rao suggests the creation of an ecosystem for mobile gaming was critical for growth.

The Indian gaming market will be the biggest in the world since 400-500 million are expected to access Internet from their mobiles. “We expect at least half of them to take to gaming. Females are also taking to games,” says Gondal.

The Indian gaming industry will gain as the technology scenario in the country changes with the impending digitisation of cable networks and multiple devices become available to access content.

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has extended the time for stakeholders to respond to its Consultation Paper on issues relating to advertisements on television channels to 5 April.

Noting that this was being done at the request of stakeholders, the regulator said counter comments can be filed by 10 April. Earlier, Trai had set 27 March and 2 April respecrtively as the deadline date.

The paper seeks the views of stakeholders on prescribing an upper limit for the duration of advertisements on clock hour basis, and defining time gaps between consecutive advertisements breaks during telecast of movies and other programmes among other issues. It also wants views on different maximum limits for the duration of advertisements in FTA and Pay channels on a clock hour basis.

The paper has been issued suo motu with the primary objective of striking a balance between giving consumers a good TV viewing experience, and protecting the interests of all the stakeholders of the television industry. Trai took up a review of existing regulations on duration of advertisements and their format of presentation in television channels in India.

In its own view, Trai feels that the limits for the duration of the advertisements shall be regulated on a clock hour basis – that is, the prescribed limits shall be enforced on clock hour basis.