Category: Software

MUMBAI: Real-time, interactive broadcast graphics solution Wasp3D will participate at Broadcast Video Expo, London, from 16-18 February, demonstrating its touch screen based non linear presentation tool, Waspi Mimosa.

On display will be various modules of Wasp3D on-air graphics solution that comes with new inbuilt design effects, enhanced user-friendly interface and host of new interactive tools. Wasp3D offers UBT, a feature that the company says reduces the hassles of programming and makes a graphic artists‘ task much simpler and faster. 
 
Waspi Mimosa is designed for TV stations looking for a more user interactive, analysis driven content presentation. Inbuilt telestration tools (for drawing ellipses, highlighter & arrows on the screen) and numerous touch-gestures (such as pan, zoom, stretch) helps in making the presentation visually impressive. The solution allows the anchor to call for info-graphics at the mere touch of screen without having to wait for queuing of graphics from production room. Besides its ability to integrate live video feeds, it also provides the user an option to pull the desired data feeds from the rundown for real-time updates and presentation. 
 
Wasp3D UK senior account manager Lee Otterway says, “More TV stations are now looking for innovative technologies for content packaging to differentiate themselves from the competition.” “WASPi Mimosa is one of the most innovative yet easy-to-use, touch-gesture based broadcast presentation tool that gives the anchors total control over the graphics and therefore, results in an engaging presentation, better analysis and thus increased viewership.”

Wasp3D‘s clients in Europe include Antena 1, Antena 3, Belgacom, CNBCe, Star Khaber, GSP TV, RTV, TRT, Turk TV and TV Vest. 

MUMBAI: News Corp has announced that Owen Van Natta will step down from his position as MySpace CEO, effective immediately.  
 
Van Natta will be replaced by newly-elevated co-Presidents Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, who will each report to News Corp chairman and CEO of Digital Media Jon Miller. All three executives joined MySpace in April 2009, with Jones and Hirschhorn previously serving as COO and chief product officer, respectively. 
 
Jones and Hirschhorn noted, “We joined MySpace last April with very a specific set of goals in mind, and are anxious to continue working together to make those goals a reality. This business is now pointed in the right direction, and we have a great team of employees that will continue to push MySpace closer to its potential as the place where people go to be discovered and to discover great content.” 

MUMBAI: Hathway Cable & Datacom‘s IPO scraped through, getting subscribed by 1.36 times on the final day of offer.

The issue, which was subscribed 0.91 times at the end of two days, received bids for 30.90 million equity shares against 22.75 million offered for public. Most of the bids came at the lower end of the price band.

Hathway hopes to raise Rs 7.35 billion at the upper and Rs 6.66 billion at the lower price band.
 
The issue got good response from non-institutional investors, who subscribed 4.29 times of the shares reserved for them.

However, the response from the retail individual investors was lukewarm, attracting bids for just 0.27 times of the reserved 8.32 million shares. 
 
On Monday, Hathway had lined up five anchor investors who put in Rs 1.2 billion for 18 per cent of the IPO (4.99 million shares) at Rs 240 a share.

MUMBAI: Zee Turner has taken a swipe at Hathway Cable & Datacom, switching off all its 33 channels to the cable network across multiple cities.
 
Claiming an amount of Rs 280 million that is due over a stretch of six months, Zee Turner has blacked out its channels to Hathway in cities like Delhi, Pune and Bangalore with immediate effect. Parts of Maharashtra such as Aurangabad, Latur, and Nanded are also where Hathway will not get the Zee Turner channels.

“We have also switched off Hathway network in parts of Mumbai,” the company said.

Zee Turner and Hathway do not have a commercial agreement for months.  
 
Earlier, Zee Turner had issued a statement saying that Hathway has been “avoiding signing the agreement for airing these 33 channels despite numerous efforts by Zee Turner and now being overdue by almost 10 months.”

Zee Turner distributes channels like Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Cartoon Network, Pogo and HBO.

BANGALORE: Bangalore-based startup Tvara Tech solutions announced the launch of an interactive mobile solution that is a combination of a convergence device with streaming ads. The device can handle voice, data and video.

At present, the device has a high degree of customization for the hospitality and the automotive travel industry.

Consisting of a 8.9 inch proprietary touch screen, the device has a built-in payment gateway to enable swiping of credit and debit cards; GPS-based location aware applications which can be customized to beam ad content depending upon the location or interaction – the company has the framework in place for content deployment; mobile communication and data access, which at present is limited to GSM and GPRS.
 
The device has the capability of channeling third party services – this could be travel, shopping and entertainment; industry specific software applications for the hospitality and automotive industries, hosted, multi-tenant web based applications.

For the hospitality segment, there is menu automation software designed to upsell, and hence enhance billing, while in the case of the automotive sector, the device enables access to infotainment and card swiping for payment. A fare in a taxi could use the device to book tickets, if they are available online, or watch a movie, during a cab ride.

There is a clutter of devices in the automotive industry which have a number of convergence capabilities. The differentiator that Tvara offers at present is that it is focusing the product as a B2B solution rather than the direct consumer who uses such devices as a car computer. 
 
Tvara also wants to have alliances with media buying companies for using a part of the screen as a sort of a ‘live’ digital signage that could have some degree of intelligence to determine the type of ads that can be beamed based on the browsing patterns or the inputs of a person.

Another differentiator is the price – Tvara is looking at a price point of Rs 35,000 to Rs. 40,000 each for the B2B segment; similar devices cost up to $2,000 in the case of a car buyer.

Once 3G services are launched on a much larger scale, a chip for enabling 3G services can be added to the device, say company officials. Modules for other applications can also be built or added, depending upon specific requirements. The company is looking at introducing 10,000 devices during the first year and claims that the market potential for such devices could be as high as $500 million over the next three to five years.

MUMBAI: Ameba, the Winnipeg based IPTV system for kid‘s entertainment, has taken delivery of its proprietary set-top boxes in preparation for its North American launch of AmebaTV.com.

The new portal is designed to deliver safe children‘s entertainment which is commercial free directly to television viewers via the Internet.
 
“Taking delivery of our set-top boxes is a milestone in our plan to bring children a truly safe television entertainment environment that is designed to put control over programming choices in the hands of parents. We will provide producers with easy access to a profitable no-risk system for direct digital distribution of their content,” said Ameba President Tony Havelka.

At AmebaTV.com parents can select a range of titles from the AmebaTV.com website and download content to the Ameba set-top box. Children can select the titles they want to watch from the parent approved list on their TV.
 
For producers, Ameba offers a revenue model based on consumption. Once the digital content is on Ameba, the royalties begin. If content is not yet in a digital format, Ameba will pay to have the content digitised in advance, recouping the costs from the royalty stream. Digital files can be transferred back to the programmer at any time free of charge.

Only the content transfers to Ameba and not the rights. So rights holders are free to add or remove content as they see fit, giving them full control of their content on the Ameba platform.

AmebaTV.com maintains a library of 500 hours of commercial free live-action and animated age-appropriate content from producers including Decode Entertainment, Breakthrough New Media and Casablanca Kids.

The programming slate includes SkinnamarinkTV, Wee Sing Train, Mother Goose Club, I‘m BoHUNKy-Dory, Olivers Adventures, Rainbow Fish, Hoobs, and I Love Mummy.
 

MUMBAI: Hathway Cable & Datacom‘s IPO was subscribed by 0.91 times on the second day of offer, as per data on the BSE.

The issue received bids for 20.65 million equity shares against 22.75 million offered for public.
 
Interest from the retail individual investors, however, has remained tepid so far with just 0.07 times of the reserved 8.32 million shares being subscribed.

Non-institutional investors subscribed 3.52 times the shares reserved for them.

On Monday, Hathway had lined up five anchor investors who put in Rs 1.2 billion for 18 per cent of the IPO (4.99 million shares) at Rs 240 a share. 
 
Hathway‘s IPO will close on 11 February. The leading MSO has a public issue of up to 27.75 million, consisting of a fresh issue of up to 20 million equity shares (Rs 10 each) and an offer for sale of 7.75 million.

Hathway plans to raise Rs 7.35 billion at the upper and Rs 6.66 billion at the lower price band.

MUMBAI: Flytxt, which provides technology for mobile marketing, has announced the launch of Mobile Marketing Mantra, a blog on mobile marketing technology and best practices.
 
Flytxt Group CEO Dr. Vinod Vasudevan says, “Flytxt is very pleased to create this platform for the global mobile marketing community to exchange views and expertise, the launch of the blog. Mobile Marketing Mantra will host discussions by Flytxt and industry experts on topics like marketing technology, best practices in mobile marketing, and ROI measurement.”

Flytxt co-founder and senior VP product and technology Thomas Schuster says, “Mobile operators and other enterprises realise the potential of mobile as a marketing channel, but we also see a lot of myths and confusion in the minds of marketers. Through Mobile Marketing Mantra, our goal is to bust these myths and share insights from experts on right mobile marketing techniques”.
  
The blog is available at http://blog.flytxt.com/. Neon, the third generation mobile marketing platform from Flytxt is deployed at mobile operators and media companies across Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Neon, the company says, enables customers to generate incremental revenue through high-impact mobile marketing campaigns. Head quartered in Trivandrum (India), Flytxt has presence in New Delhi, Mumbai, London, Cape Town and Frankfurt.

MUMBAI: GlobeCast, a content management and delivery partner for broadcasters, has created a new division in Asia to oversee the content acquisition and distribution (Cad) business. 
 
GlobeCast’s Cad team is actively securing carriage deals for TV channels and content providers with DTH, Cable and IPTV platform operators worldwide.

GlobeCast’s expertise in ethnic content plus its proximity to operators and content providers has eventuated a number of linear and VOD content deals, with GlobeCast successfully launching top Asian channels on key European and U.S. networks serving the Cambodian, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Vietnamese and various other foreign ethnic viewers.

Within Asia, one of the company’s key Cad projects executed was for Russia Today, with the channel outsourcing a bulk of its Asian distribution activity to GlobeCast. In less than a year, GlobeCast secured regulatory clearances on behalf of the channel and launched the broadcaster to 16 key digital platforms in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Indonesia and Philippines. This ensured the channel’s reach to more than 25 million homes in the region.
 
 
The channel can be viewed on Dish TV, WWIL, Dish Hits, INCable, 7 Star Cable, Big TV, Airtel DTH, DD Direct, Hathway Cable and Sun Direc and by subscribers of Singtel, Starhub, Hong Kong Cable, SK Broadband, Destiny Cable, Indovision, and .

The project also involved securing carriage for RT in more than 30,000 rooms in 200+ four & 5 star hotels in India. GlobeCast is also responsible for signal monitoring as well as the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) and marketing activities for Russia Today.

In addition to this new activity, GlobeCast operates a worldwide satellite and fibre network, as well as provides media management services such as programme origination, playout and web streaming. In Asia, GlobeCast operates from New Delhi, Singapore, Beijing, Seoul and Hong Kong.
 
 

MUMBAI: Hathway Cable & Datacom (Hathway), which hit the capital market today with an initial public offering (IPO), got off to a slow start.

The IPO was subscribed by just 0.46 times on its first day of offer, according to data available on the BSE. Most bids have come at the lower end of the price band, fixed in the region of Rs 240-265 by Hathway.
 
In all, the issue received bids for 10.42 million equity shares against 22.75 million offered for public.

Non-institutional investors subscribed 2.43 times the shares reserved for them, while institutional buyers subscribed for just 0.28 times.

On Monday, Hathway had lined up five anchor investors who put in Rs 1.2 billion for 18 per cent of the IPO (4.99 million shares) at Rs 240 a share. 
 
Hathway‘s IPO closes on 11 February. The leading multi-system operator (MSO) has a public issue of up to 27.75 million, consisting of a fresh issue of up to 20 million equity shares (Rs 10 each) and an offer for sale of 7.75 million.

Hathway plans to raise Rs 7.35 billion at the upper and Rs 6.66 billion at the lower price band.