Category: Software

MUMBAI: Just after the launch of AXN HD in Singapore last week, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) Networks – Asia, has announced that AXN HD will launch in Malaysia on 16 June 2010 on the Astro platform.

SPE Networks – Asia also operates AXN, AXN Beyond, Animax and Sony Entertainment Television (SET). 
 
SPE Networks – Asia senior VP, GM Ricky Ow says, “With the success that we have enjoyed in South Korea, AXN HD has smoothly expanded onto two major platforms this year, and we are looking into more markets in time to come.”
 
The broadcaster adds that launching AXN HD is a natural progression for AXN.

NEW DELHI: The largest international sporting event of the year – FIFA 2010 – will be available to Indian viewers on High Definition Television (HDTV), if they are subscribers of Zee Network’s Dish TV direct-to-home platform.

Dish TV today announced its foray into high definition – Tru HD Service – around five months before Doordarshan takes to this technology at the time of the Commonwealth Games in October, and also said that it had entered into an agreement with ESPN Star Sports to provide the FIFA coverage in HD. FIFA would be provided free to subscribers of its Tru HD Service.
 
Dish TV Managing Director Jawahar Goel told a news conference here today that apart from ESPN Star Sports, the platform would immediately provide its flagship channels Zee TV and Zee Cinema apart from Discovery and National Geographic in HD format.

He said he was confident that the platform would be able to give around forty channels in HD format by the end of the current financial year. It was unfortunate that people had already bought TV sets that were HD compatible but had no HD empowered content, and this gap would be filled by its HD initiatives.

ESPN Software Managing Director R C Venkateish promised to get even more sporting events on HD.

Dish TV Chief Operating Officer Mr Salil Kapoor pointed out that those having HD Compatible television sets could go HD by simply buying the new set top box for HDTV – 1080i -costing Rs 5,990. He said though the STB cost much more, this was the introductory price.

He said HD would have five times sharper picture quality as it used two million pixels per frame, three times the sound clarity, 16:9 Variable Aspect (screen) Ratio with a 33 per cent wider screen, and stereophonic digital sound with SPDIF connector.  
 
He said although another DTH platform had also announced use of HD, Dish TV had also bridged the gap between content and technology since its competitor did not have any channels. Thus Dish TV would provide HD from the stage of shooting to the stage of the TV set.

He said Dish TV had always been the market leader in DTH and today had 30 per cent of the cable and satellite homes – that is more than 7.3 million. Dish TV had also forayed into mobile dish by provide Dish TV to cars, to airlines like Kingfisher, to some trains like Palace on Wheels, and to some select sea liners.

If the Asian Games in 1982 are historically connected with the intorduction of colour TV in India, FIFA and the Commonwealth Games will be recalled for the fact that they brought in HD technology into this country, he said.

Essel – distribution businesses Group Director Arun Kapoor said Zee had a library of over 5,000 films and had already converted 250 titles into HD format. He also claimed that the channel had the rights to the largest number of films – 37 – of megastar Amitabh Bachchan, which would be telecast shortly every Saturday.

He said Zee TV was today being received in 167 countries covering 580 million viewers.

He also said that other channels that would be brought into the HD fold shortly would include Zee Sports and Zee’s English channels

Goel said that it was expected that around 60,000 HD STBs would be sold in the current financial year and another 250,000 in the next fiscal.

Noting that superstar Shah Rukh Khan had been the brand ambassador of Dish TV for the past three years, he announced that a new commercial on HD with the star would be aired soon.

In a recorded message, Khan said his experience of working with Zee had been unique and he had found the group very creative. HD would be a huge attraction, he said.
 

BANGALORE: Gulf Bridge International (GBI), the Middle East’s first privately owned submarine cable operator, and Asian independent telecommunications service provider Pacnet announce a partnership which will extend both companies’ international connectivity and provide new and cost-effective solutions for customers.

The launch of GBI’s cable system will provide telecom operators and other communications companies, both in the region and globally, with greater choice, value, diversity and resilience claims a Pacnet press release. The GBI Cable System, which will utilize the latest subsea fiber cable technology, will connect all the countries of the Gulf region to each other and provide onward connectivity to Europe and Asia.
 
Pacnet owns and operates EAC-C2C, a submarine cable network spanning 36,800 km across Asia, as well as EAC Pacific, a 9,620 km Trans-Pacific cable connecting Japan and the US. Through West Asia Crossing (WAC), a new submarine cable that it is building to connect Singapore and India, Pacnet will deliver seamless connectivity between India, Asia and the US on a single Pacnet network.

Upon signing the partnership, GBI Board Member and CEO Ahmed Mekky said “Both of our companies are investing heavily in infrastructure to better serve the forecast increase in traffic between the Middle East and Asia Pacific. This partnership with Pacnet is a major milestone for GBI as it extends GBI’s reach beyond our core cable system. However, this agreement goes beyond just connectivity, as it will enable both companies to work closely to develop and launch new and more cost-effective services for our customers.” 
 
Scheduled to launch in 2011 and designed to operate for up to 25 years, the GBI cable system will connect all the Gulf countries via a core ring, which can re-route traffic thereby increasing resilience. With a design capacity of up to 5 terabits per second on certain cable sections, the GBI Cable System will have the capability to meet the rapid growth in demand that has been forecast for traffic originating and terminating in Gulf.
 

BANGALORE: The Advanced Television Systems Committee, (ATSC) announced plans last week to explore opportunities in three important areas: terrestrial broadcast delivery of 3D TV, next-generation television broadcasting systems and Internet-connected TV
technologies.

“As we continue our efforts on the development of standards for Mobile DTV, Non-Real-Time (NRT) applications and ATSC 2.0 activities, we must also lay the foundation for future technologies and standards that will enable new capabilities and services for the broadcast television industry,” said ATSC President Mark Richer.
 
Announced at the 2010 ATSC Annual Meeting in Pentagon City, Va., the ATSC Board of Directors has formed planning teams to consider technical feasibility and market requirements in key future technology areas. Three planning teams were appointed to explore the feasibility and market requirements for 3DTV, broadcast Internet TV, and what lies ahead for over-the-air digital content delivery.

ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) is the name of the technical standard that defines the digital TV (DTV) that The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent United States Government agency, has chosen for terrestrial TV stations in the US. The FCC is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable.
 
 
ATSC replaced much of the analog National Television System Committee (NTSC) television system in the US on June 12, 2009 and is likely to replace NTSC by August 31, 2011 in Canada, January 1, 2014 in El Salvador and December 31, 2021 in Mexico.

MUMBAI: UK pubcaster The BBC has unveilled the full launch of its comedy website bbc.co.uk/comedy, featuring new elements, offering users a more immersive experience.
 
Comedy fans can now navigate BBC comedy past, present and future. There are classic archive moments aggregated into collections, exclusive material from the likes of The Thick Of It and Outnumbered and bespoke web-only comedies from some of the hottest new talent online.

Following its beta launch in May 2009, the site has become a playground for the next generation of comedy stars as well as enabling well-known comedy greats to experiment with new ideas.

The library now features over 600 clips that have amassed 2.5 million views on bbc.co.uk, with as many again being watched on YouTube.  
 
The broadcaster adds that bbc.co.uk/comedy is the place to discover rising stars such as Jason Lewis, Idiot Of Ants, Harry Partridge and Mr Khan, played by Adil Ray – one of the stars of Bellamy‘s People.
To mark the full rollout of the site, comedy fans will also be treated to sketches from comedy talent including Those Mitchell And Webb Animations, a collaboration between the team behind the sketch show and some new online animators.

James Corden, Jaime Winstone, Robert Llewellyn and Ewen Macintosh star in BeastHunters – a fantasy horror series that follows a team of amateur de-beasters on their hunt to find creatures released from a mysterious medieval bestiary – The Whisperine, created by newcomers Jamie Lennox and Louis Waymouth.

There will be a series of short films by Lenny Henry, titled Conversations With My Wife. Lenny plays a stay-at-home dad Skyping with his executive wife who is jetting off around the world.

In a bid to further utilise the online trend of sharing content, bbc.co.uk/comedy will be introducing Playlists, which will allow established comedy talent to recommend their favourite BBC comedy moments of all time as well as discover up-and-coming comedy. Kick-starting this will be Stephen Merchant and Johnny Vegas.

BBC Comedy Commissioning controller Cheryl Taylor says, “The BBC Comedy website represents an extraordinarily diverse array of classic and cutting-edge humour and I would urge all comedy fans to check it out.

“Any platform which showcases both established and up-and-coming comedians in such innovative and accessible ways is hugely valuable to the genre and offers up brilliant development opportunities to both on and off screen talent.”

BBC Multiplatform commissioning executive Martin Trickey says, “The site brings together the best of the BBC from past, present and future. People will be able to find classic moments from comedy greats alongside the freshest new talent from around the UK.”

bbc.co.uk/comedy, aims to be the first port of call for comedy lovers, enabling them to catch up on the latest comedies from across the BBC via BBC iPlayer, discover spin-off content via the Red Button and YouTube, join in discussions and keep up to date with the latest news via the blog and Twitter.

MUMBAI: In the US, viewers spent more than 3.1 billion hours watching Video on Demand (VoD) content last year, says the media measurement company Rentrak in its report.
 
Rentrak has announced the Rentrak State of VoD: Trend Report 2009. The report encompasses industry-wide performance data for all of 2009, and is based on an aggregation of data from Rentrak‘s On Demand Essentials service which tracks 70 million set-top-boxes (STBs) across 33 operators and for more than 100 content providers.

Some of the key findings are:

Active users of VoD are ordering an average of 16.4 free programs per month, 8.7 subscription programs and 2.0 movies-on-demand
  
Viewers placed 5.1 billion FOD orders and spent nearly 1.6 billion hours watching FOD content
Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) content had 1.6 billion transactions and more than 1.1 billion hours of playtime
Transaction-On-Demand (TOD) content had more than 208 million orders totaling more than $963 million dollars in gross revenues in 2009.

MUMBAI: Google‘s ‘Creative Sandbox‘ is ready to set foot in India.

The event, to be held on 28 May, is an effort to engage and enable agencies and marketers to foresee the possibilities that can be explored on the digital medium and go beyond the traditional campaigns in India.
 
Thus, it will highlight the advances in web technology that are being used by creative minds around the world to push new boundaries and delivering extraordinary results.

Google Creative Sandbox will be an interactive session, comprising a select gathering of Indian advertising industry‘s creative minds and marketing honchos of leading brands. The audience will be viewing the latest technological innovations done around the world and discuss the emerging opportunities for advertisers in the digital space in India. 
 
Said Google MD India & Head of Media & Platforms Japan & Apac Shailesh Rao,
“Over the last one year, we have taken significant steps and invested in training the young advertising professionals in the country to make best use of web platform. At this stage of evolution in India, we believe it is critical to bring in a podium to drive focused efforts by partnering with agencies to truly leverage the full potential of the web platform. With over 70 million users in India, Internet is now established as a mainstream medium and the creative minds in the agencies have a huge opportunity to do something that‘s never been done before online in India.”
The event will also have key notes and presentations from Googlers covering topics like ‘Brand conversations in the digital world‘ and ‘Kamasutra of Marketing‘. The event will also showcase creative execution of ad campaigns done on Google‘s product platforms like Geo, Mobile, Chrome browser and Orkut.
 

NEW DELHI: The auction for Bandwidth Access (BWA) began to pick up to an extent on the third day today by registering a Pan-India total of Rs 41.84 billion against the base price of Rs 17.5 billion.

Six service centres – Delhi, Mumbai, rest of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu – closed their bids on the third day after sixteen rounds with Rs 4.53 billion. Gujarat had a bid of Rs 4.48 billion.
 
Kolkata and Punjab had bids of Rs 1.96 billion each, while Kerala had a bid of Rs 1.23 billion. West Uttar Pradesh at Rs 987.1 million, east Uttar Pradesh at Rs 702.3 million and Madhya Pradesh at Rs 655.8 million.

Haryana, Rajasthan, and West Bengal continued to have bids of Rs 600 million each while the service centres of Himachal Pradesh, Assam, North-east, and Jammu and Kashmir had bids of Rs 150 million each for the third day today. Bihar had a bid of Rs 162.1 million and Orissa had a bid of Rs 151.5 million.

Haryana, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and North-East will not see much change with no applications for price increment for tomorrow’s rounds.  
 
The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Augere (Mauritius) Limited, Bharti Airtel, Infotel Broadband Services Private Limited, Qualcomm Incorporated, Reliance WiMax Limited, Spice Internet Service, Provider Private Limited, Tata Communications Internet Services Limited, Tikona Digital Networks Private Limited and Vodafone Essar Limited.

The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial operations from 1 September.

MUMBAI: My Name is Khan conquered the box office when it was released in cinemas in February 2010. It raked in close to Rs 735 million domestically.

Now it is all set to sweep the small screen thanks to it being telecast for a two week window in from 27 May onwards on all major DTH platforms in the country – Tata Sky, Dish TV, Sun Direct, Airtel Digital TV, Videocon D2H and Big TV. 
 
Says Fox Star Studios CEO Vijay Singh: “Allowing the film to be put on DTH platforms was part of our ongoing strategy to monetise the film.”

My Name is Khan is being made available to subscribers by all the DTH players at a sticker price of Rs 50 a view.

Sources indicate that Fox Star has struck revenue share deals with the DTH providers. Says Bharat Business Channel CEO Anil Khera: “The hit rate for films on demand is normally about 6 per cent. That is about 6 per cent of viewers in urban areas normally subscribe to a movie. For rural areas it is lower at about 3-4 per cent.” 
 
Going by those estimates if one were to take the DTH subscriber universe at about 17 million, one can expect about 680,000 subscribers to opt to buy the film. At 50 bucks a view, that works out to a revenue of Rs 30 to 35 million from the film.

Clearly, even after the revenue share, Fox Star will walk away with a good sum. As will the DTH operators. My Name is Khan continues to be the money making machine.

MUMBAI: Research, done by mBit Infotech, a pioneer in Value Added Services (Vas) has revealed that Akon is the most searched and downloaded popular icon/personality in the mobile search and download space.

In the Bollywood category, Katrina’s mobile popularity is way ahead of Shahrukh’s, as revealed by the research. 
 
The research is based on the searches performed by over 1,20,000 users of mBit in the first quarter of 2010 (Jan – April). The results showed that ‘SEX‘ is still the-most-popular-searched Keyword, out of 6730 unique keywords, which accounts for 30 per cent of the total searches performed including words porn, porno, naked etc.

music is the second most searched for keyword accounting to the 19 per cent of the total searches. Mostly international music icons like Akon, Linkin Park, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Rihanna and Michael Jackson top the list in this category. Also, sports specially cricket along with movies and videos are the third most searched for category which is 15 per cent of the total searches. 
 
Surprisingly, searches with keywords for Bollywood and Hollywood icons were way below accounting to only five per cent of the total searches according to the mBit research.

mBit Infotech CEO Raghavendra Agarwala says,”It is amazing to see that out of this total five per cent, Katrina Kaif is ruling the charts with a major pie, presumably implying that Katrina’s popularity is mounting for both national and international audiences. This has placed Katrina on the number one spot followed by Angelina Jolie, Kareena kapoor, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Bipasha Basu, Aishwarya Rai, Monica Bellucci and Amir Khan by a considerable amount. Also, besides the ‘A‘ searches which are highly searched for on mobile phones as well, Music is something that the users are actually looking at.”

Apart from the above, news related topics along with some general keywords takes the rest of the percentage slot.