Category: Software

MUMBAI: Asian satelite service provider Asiasat and International Launch Services (ILS) have announced a contract for the launch of AsiaSat 7 satellite on an ILS Proton.

The satellite is under construction by Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California. ILS and Khrunichev are implementing a mission integration schedule to support a 2011 launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
  
Asiasat 7 is configured as a replacement satellite for Asiasat 3S, one of AsiaSat‘s flagship satellites, operating at the orbital location of 105.5°E.

Asiasat 7 is a Space Systems/Loral 1300 platform, with C and Ku-band transponders, designed for a lifespan of 15 years. The projected orbital maneuvering lifetime of the satellite is expected to improve due to the performance of the ILS Proton launch vehicle.   
 
ILS president Frank McKenna said, “A little over a year ago, we contracted, integrated and launched the AsiaSat 5 satellite within a 6 month timeframe, providing unmatched flexibility for our longtime customer, Asiasat. We are very honoured to play a key role in Asiasat’s replacement strategic plan with the launch of Asiasat 7.”

Asiasat CEO William Wade says, “With this launch opportunity on the ILS Proton, we are continuing our replacement strategy to provide continuity of services to our current and potential new customers across Asia, Middle East, CIS and Australasia. We know that we can count on the professionalism of ILS and Khrunichev for a successful launch for Asiasat 7”.
 

MUMBAI: Airtel digital TV has appointed Sam Mall-promoted Media Track as the exclusive marketing partner for their pay-per-view (PPV) platform. 
 
Media Track is Mall’s start-up venture, which provides innovative marketing solutions to brands. Mall has over 25 years of experience in the domain of media sales and marketing.  
 
“Airtel has been the frontrunner in acquiring digital airing rights of latest movies. Media Track’s expertise in conceptualising and providing innovative marketing solutions to brands will help further strengthen plans for offering varied content for customers,” Mall said.

MUMBAI: Online consumers in rapid growth markets have overtaken mature markets in terms of engaging with digital activities.

India has a higher proportion of ‘engaged’ online users (43 per cent) than emerging Asian countries, though China leads in Asia on this front with more than half the respondents highly engaged.

Incidentally, India has a slightly higher proportion of highly engaged users than the US and that is despite the huge infrastructure gap and costs of accessing internet.
  
The largest ever global research project into people’s online activities and behaviour – Digital Life – has been launched by custom research company TNS.

Covering 88 per cent of the world’s online population through 50,000 interviews with consumers in 46 countries, the study reveals a number of very significant findings as well as providing indicators for the future of the world’s online behaviour.

The core data from the study is being made publicly available via an interactive website, www.discoverdigitallife.com, with TNS providing more detailed reports and breakdowns to its clients.

Among the key findings of the study, the India highlights were:

– Online consumers in rapid growth markets have overtaken mature markets in terms of engaging with digital activities. When looking at behaviour online, rapid growth markets such as Egypt (56 per cent) and China (54 per cent) have much higher levels of digital engagement than mature markets such as Japan (20 per cent), Denmark (25 per cent) or Finland (26 per cent). This is despite mature markets usually having a more advanced internet infrastructure.

– Activities such as blogging and social networking are gaining momentum at huge speed in rapid growth markets. The research shows four out of five online users in China (88 per cent) and over half of those in Brazil (51 per cent) have written their own blog or forum entry, compared to only 32 per cent in the US.

More than one fourth of the respondents in India update their blog / forum at least several times a day which is higher than a lot of developed countries. It is more than double the percentage of users doing that in North America. The Internet has also become the default option for photo sharing among online users in rapid growth markets, particularly in Asia.

The number of online consumers who have ever uploaded photos to social networks or photo sharing sites is 92 per cent in Thailand, 88 per cent in Malaysia and 87 per cent in Vietnam, whilst developed markets are more conservative. 
 
TNS India VP Sandeep Budhiraja highlights, “India seems to be on the move and one need to read these numbers keeping in mind the infrastructure woes that India has – the costs of internet connectivity being much higher than say China and the US. With the broadband and 3G launches are around the corner, digital usage and adoption is poised to take off in India. If you are in the digital industry then India is the place to be as very soon we would have scores of people watching cricket live on our mobiles”.

Less than a third of online consumers in Japan (28 per cent) and under half of those in Germany (48 per cent) have uploaded photos to such sites. India is in the top five countries in the world where TNS sees many users upload photographs at least several times a week. Turkey leads with every second person doing it with India having around 35 per cent people uploading photographs several times a week.

Goodbye email, hello social networking : One further finding of the study showed that online consumers are, on average, spending more time on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn than on email, despite the former only becoming mainstream in many markets over the last few years. In rapid growth markets such as Latin America, the Middle East and China, the average time spent, per week, on social networking is 5.2 hours compared to only four hours on email.

Online consumers in mature markets remain more reliant on email, spending 5.1 hours checking their inboxes compared to just 3.8 hours on social networking. The heaviest users of social networking are in Malaysia (9 hours per week), Russia (8.1 hours per week) and Turkey (7.7 hours per week). India is yet to catch up with this as social networking usage is around 2 hours per week and just a slightly more i.e. 2.4 hours per week of email usage currently.

When it comes to who has more friends, online consumers in Malaysia top the list with an average of 233 friends in their social network, closely followed by Brazilians with 231. Indian users have 72 friends at an average in their social network. The least social are the Japanese with just 29 friends and Tanzanians have, on average, 38 in their circle of friends.

Surprisingly, Chinese consumers only have an average of 68 friends in their networks despite being heavy users of social networking sites, indicating a culture that embraces fewer but closer friendships.

MUMBAI:In its aim to promote the range of Philips MP3 players CAM, MUSE and ARIAZ in colleges across India, MTV India has tied up with Royal Philips Electronics, to carry out the ‘Philips & MTV Go Gear Mp3 Challenge’ campaign.

The challenge is being conducted across five metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai. As part of the campaign, students can enter the challenge online by visiting the official MTV Facebook page, where they are required to upload videos of themselves singing their favourite songs. They can participate in the ‘Philips & MTV Go Gear Mp3 Challenge’ that occurs in the ‘Go Gear Listening Booths’ in their colleges. 
 
All that the participants have to do is to sing their favourite songs in these booths. They would be judged by the MTV VJ Bani J. The winners will be awarded Philips MP3 players,

Says MTV India channel head Aditya Swamy, “The core of MTV is music and young people. Our partnership with Phillips is just that. It leverages our strength beyond the TV business.”
 
Adds Philips GM & Country Head, Media; Amit Tiwari, “This was a showcase that connected Offline , online and on ground activations. Our range of MP3 players are extremely hip and happening, and totally perfect for the fast-paced lifestyle of today’s youth.”

MUMBAI: GlobeCast has renewed and expanded its contract with IMG Sports Media Production, a division of global sports and media company IMG Worldwide.

The three-year deal will provide HD coverage of up to six English Premier League (EPL) football matches per week and an incomplete highlights package to rightsholders across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
 
As a result, GlobeCast has made an investment in MPEG4 upgrades for its two UK sites, strengthening its position as one of the most HD capable ad hoc providers in the world.

Before the start of the 2010/11 season in August, GlobeCast installed dual dark fibres, channelized to take 16 HDSDI feeds, between IMG and their Technical Operations Center (TOC) in Central London. This new link, which is capable of receiving up to eight simultaneous redundant feeds, has enabled GlobeCast to take all matches in uncompressed high definition before multiplexing them with MPEG4 compression through an Ericsson nCompass 6 multiplexer for delivery to satellite.  
 
For broadcast across Asia and Europe, all six feeds are uplinked to the IS904 and W2A satellites respectively for downlink by rightsholders across the region. For the Americas, all feeds are converted using Snell & Wilcox HD Alchemist frame-rate converters, before being uplinked to Intelsat’s IS9 satellite. Several match feeds are also being sent via the GlobeCast Backbone Network (GCBN) for playout in Hong Kong.

The MPEG4 multiplex solution allows GlobeCast to uplink the feeds directly out of its central London facility or from its teleport in Brookman’s Park.

GlobeCast will also be delivering incomplete highlights packages of the games to rightsholders 30 minutes after the match feeds finish.

GlobeCast has worked with IMG for the delivery of EPL matches since 2007.
 

MUMBAI: Airtel digital TV, the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel, is offering live updates of ongoing Commonwealth Games via its application iSports.

The company said that the application is free for all Airtel digital TV normal SD, DVR and HD subscribers. 
 
Through this interactive service, customers will get to see lists of three days event schedules, live update of the medal tally and ready reckon on events, venues, and nearest metro.

“iSports will be a welcome treat for the true sports fans enabling them to know exactly when their favourite Commonwealth Games events are scheduled, keep track latest medal tally real time, making the Games a memorable experience for them,” the company said. 
 
To access the service, subscribers have to press iTV on the universal remote or the red button on DD channels running CWG 2010.

MUMBAI: In response to the latest proposals by the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore, the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (Casbaa) has reiterated that the new regulations remain contrary to the interests of Singapore’s pay-TV subscribers and the industry at large. 
 
According to Casbaa, incentives for content innovation will be suppressed, with particular damage to the business of producing or acquiring marquee pay-TV programming, which by its nature is expensive to produce or acquire.

The regional industry body said the new rules for the mandatory supply of content to all Singaporean pay-TV operators will “necessitate sustained regulatory micro-management of the pay-TV market exacerbated by interference with intellectual property rights.” 
 
Constant regulatory fine tuning can be expected with significantly enlarged state interventions, said Casbaa, which urged the Government of Singapore to revoke changes in the Media Conduct Code that impose the “Cross-carriage system”.
Casbaa, which represents the pay-TV industry across 16 Asian markets, said that the proposed regulations are damaging to Singapore’s hard-won role as a regional content hub. “If implemented as they stand, the new rules would undercut the attractiveness of Singapore as a destination for media investment and impair employment and economic growth.”

Drawing on advice from global trade and intellectual property rights specialists Greenberg Traurig, which represents the International Intellectual Property Association in Washington, Casbaa concluded that the new rules remain inconsistent with Singapore’s international treaty obligations.

Casbaa CEO Simon Twiston Davies says, “Content owners, who have used Singapore as a regional base for more than 15 years, consider the new rules very harmful to the country’s reputation for protecting intellectual property rights holders”.

Casbaa noted that many Asian markets are seeing substantial increases in domestic content production for pay-TV.

While damaging to the interests of Singapore, if the new rules were replicated in these other markets in Asia, they would do infinitely more damage to their young industries.

“The useful stimulus to domestic production coming from growing pay-TV could be irreparably undermined. These are regulations that will not work for Singapore and would be even more destructive in other jurisdictions,” adds Twiston Davies.

MUMBAI: BBC director general Mark Thompson continues his tirade against News Corp-promoter Rupert Murdoch‘s bid for BSkyB.

In an interview with US television PBS’s Charlie Rose, Thompson has warned against potential “abuse of power” by Murdoch-owned media conglomerate if it acquires the remaining 61 per cent of UK-pay TV, BSkyB.
  
Murdoch is expected to give details of the deal during his inaugural Baroness Thatcher lecture in London on 21 October.

In his interview, Thompson said, “We‘re not saying there‘s been a crime committed here. What we‘re saying is there is – given the scale of the potential ownership in UK media – a strong case for looking at it systemically and deciding whether or not anything needs to be done to address the issue.”

“If the two (News Corp and Sky) were combined, there might be a significant loss of plurality in our media market,” Thompson was quoted by The UK Guardian.

Thomson warned that there is a potential “of an abuse of power.” He, however, maintained that “Cable (business secretary Vince Cable), the relevant minister, will decide whether he wants to refer this. It‘s not that they‘ve done anything wrong.”   
 
Meanwhile, he remained short of asking the UK government to block the deal, but hinted that it would make News Corp a dominant media player in the country.

Murdoch will notify the European Commission of its bid for the pay-TV channel within 15 days.

Thompson has been warning against the consequences of the deal for some months. He had, in his keynote at James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in August, warned against the concentration of power the deal would represent.

MUMBAI: Samsung Electronics has announced consumer offers for the festival period this year.

The company is relying on its new products like 3D TVs, LED TVs, new launches in Home Appliance and digital still cameras to create excitement in the market place.
 
Samsung India deputy MD Ravinder Zutshi says, “We are also extending some value added offers on our Flat Panel TVs including 3D TVs that should help us achieve over 100 per cent sales in our Flat Panel TVs during the festival period this year. Our aim is to provide the consumers with the best of home entertainment and convenience through great value propositions. We are looking at a 40 per cent jump in sales during this festival period.”

Samsung has launched its 3D LED TV Solution package. As part of this package, the purchase of a Samsung 46 inch and above 3D LED or 3D LCD TV would entitle the consumer to a Samsung BD player, three pairs of 3D glasses and a 3D movie absolutely free, while a 40 inch 3D LED TV would get the buyer a Samsung C5500 BD player and one pair of 3D glasses free.

The company has also announced offers for its other Full High Definition (FHD) Televisions Panels. A consumer gets an Airtel DTH HD Set Top box with three month Economy/ South pack along with a two month HD pack free, on the purchase of 37 inch and above Samsung Full HD LCD TVs, 32 inch and above LED TVs and all Plasma TVs. Likewise, the purchase of 32 inch LCD TV and a 26 inch LED TV will assure customers of an Airtel DTH set top box free along with three month Economy/ South pack.

For buyers of small screen sized LCD TVs (19, 22 and 26 inch) and 22 inch LED TV, consumers will get 50 DVDs free. 
 
In addition, Samsung is also offering its consumers a ‘Tata Photon Plus’ package with purchase of any Samsung Flat Panel TV. Consumers need to make a nominal payment of Rs 999 and can avail a ‘Tata Photon Plus Package’ with 10GB usage free. This Photon Plus Package has also been extended to buyers of Frost Free Refrigerators, Fully Automatic Washing Machines, Convection Microwave ovens and Split Air Conditioners.

Buyers of Samsung Microwave ovens get a five-year warranty on the ceramic enamel cavity of the microwave oven. In addition, the company is extending zero per cent finance offers on all its products during the festival period.

Samsung has unveiled new models across its LED television categories, including the 22 and 26 inch LED television categories. Samsung Flat Panel TVs available across LCD, LED and Plasma platforms in sizes ranging from 19 to 58 inches incorporate the winning combination of style and advanced features for a complete entertainment experience.

Samsung Flat Panel TV range is available in the price range between Rs 13,900 to Rs 200,000 for the non 3D models.

MUMBAI: Netflix, the online DVD rental service, has struck a 28-day release window pact with Sony in which it has agreed to withhold renting of the studio’s DVDs to its subscribers until a month after they are on the shelves.

The arrangement will not impact all Sony releases; instead, the studio will pick and choose which films will be delayed.
 
Netflix recently signed similar agreements with Warner Bros., Universal and Fox. While the online DVD rental company will see its access to DVD releases reduced in the deals, the terms of such agreements call for each studio to reduce licensing fees to be paid by Netflix as well as increase the number of their titles Netflix can offer to its subscribers through Instant Streaming.

In exchange for agreeing to honour the release window for other studios, Netflix has received rights to stream more of their catalogue titles. It will also pay less for the films it streams and for the new releases it rents after the 28-day window elapses.
 
Though the new pact became apparent with this week‘s DVD and Blu-ray release of Sony‘s The Karate Kid, the DVDs of the film would not be available for rental through Netflix until 2 November.
In the past, Sony has allowed rental companies like Netflix and Redbox to rent its movies on the same day they hit store shelves.