Category: Software

MUMBAI: The Fremantle Corporation has announced the licensing of All My Children, the long-running, daytime drama to Seven Network‘s digital channel, 7TWO in Australia.

Episodes of the show are scheduled to premiere on the channel from 18 January, it was announced by Wayne and Carlie Broun on behalf of The Fremantle Corp. Australia. 
 
Said The Fremantle Corp. president Randy Zalken, “Currently celebrating its 40th anniversary on ABC in the US, All My Children is generating much excitement. Not only is the production moving to the West Coast, but it will now be available in true high definition for the first time ever. “

Created by legendary TV Hall of Fame writer Agnes Nixon, All My Children is set in the fictitious small town of Pine Valley, a quiet suburban community, where like many other small communities throughout the world, everyone knows just about everything about everyone else. The series is also the television home of Emmy-winning actress Susan Lucci, who has long reigned as the show‘s most popular character, the irrepressible seductress, Erica Kane. 
 
All My Children has been sold in over 20 countries around the world.

In addition to All My Children‘s new HD episodes, The Fremantle Corp. is also making available to broadcasters a companion internet platform that provides a wide range of interactive opportunities and bonus features for the series‘ huge fan base.

MUMBAI: MTV India, the youth channel from the Viacom18 stable, has launched a new online property with Samsung Mobile as the title sponsor.

Christened Samsung Mobile MTV Gang Next, the property will be a mix of online and television featuring a selection of gangs from various colleges and giving them tasks to perform.
 
“For us, Gang Next is yet another way of connecting to our youth audiences through youths only. The exercise of selecting gangs from colleges was started in October last year and we have now shortlisted 45 gangs from around 1,000 entries from 75 colleges,” says Viacom18 Media SVP strategy and business development Anuj Poddar.

The channel claims that it has visited 75 colleges in five cities –Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Kolkata.  
 
Every fortnight, the channel will give the gangs tasks that they have to perform before everyone else. Every task will have a winner. The ultimate winner gang will be given free passes to watch Fifa World Cup in South Africa.

MUMBAI: The Federal Court of Florida has slapped online pirate Robert Ward with a $51 million summary judgment for distributing software that aided to the theft of Dish Network signals.

The $51 million will be distributed between Dish Network, EchoStar Technologies and NagraStar that supplies the conditional access security technology to protect satellite signals from theft.
 
According to Dish, the Court held that posting software on the internet that allows people to receive Dis signals for free, violates the Communications Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and that damages could be calculated according to the number of people who downloaded the software (rather than how many people actually used it to steal signals.

The decision, rendered by the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida, was aimed at piracy software marketed as ‘Thedssguy and Veracity‘ that allowed viewers to bypass NagraStar‘s conditional access security and receive premium as well as regular channels for free. That meant lost potential revenue of over $70 per month per-viewer that did not have to pay to get its programming.
 
The Court said Dish had provided “significant independent admissible evidence of Ward‘s violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Communications Act.”

The DMCA prohibits the dissemination of technology “designed or produced for circumventing a measure that controls access to a copyrighted work,” is marketed for that function, and has limited commercial use beyond that function.

MUMBAI: Singaporean cable platform StarHub has expanded its library of content available on demand that includes inking new deals with Paramount Pictures and Comcast International Media Group.

As part of the deal, StarHub will be able to offer Hollywood blockbusters on a transactional Video-On-Demand (VOD) basis beginning this month. The lineup will include Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Star Trek. 
 
E! content from Comcast International Media Group includes Sexiest Season 2 and 25 Most Memorable Swimsuit Moments. Joining the VOD slate on 15 January is a new hot and haunted category, delivering edgier movies and series like A Chain of Curses (Japanese), Temptation of Eve (Korean) and Susuk Pocong (Indonesian).
 
In addition, TVB will provide classic Chinese-language dramas, Celestial Movies is offering up movies like The Assembly. Additionally, an agreement with MD Entertainment brings more than 1,000 hours of Indonesia series per year to the VOD offering.

MUMBAI: Hungama Digital Media announced the launch of www.artistaloud.com, a digital distribution platform for unreleased music created by artistes.

Hungama Digital, which features songs spanning over six genres, becomes a platform for one to spot music of unknown artistes. 
 
Says Hungama Digital Media MD & CEO Neeraj Roy, “Hungama‘s new initiative, ArtistAloud.com, combines the possibilities of digital platform with great musical talent. It rests on two pillars – giving each artiste his freedom of expression and music lovers their right to choose from a wider offering. Musicians should have a platform to share their compositions, either one or five, with the audience. ArtistAloud is a platform created to fill that void.”

With ArtistAloud, musicians now have an opportunity to connect with their fans directly. The library comprises handpicked compositions that have been close to the artist‘s heart and created with great passion.  
 
Artistes on board will retain the publishing rights of their compositions. They have the liberty to take their music onto the physical medium via any record label.

The ArtistAloud library can also be accessed through Hungama‘s domestic and international digital distribution partnerships comprising mobile operators, Hungama.com, the BSNL storefront, iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon MP3 through the Tata Sky DTH platform.
 

MUMBAI: Sun Direct, the direct-to-home (DTH) service provider, has announced the availability of Telugu content on demand.

Starting 9 January, the company is offering Chiranjeevi’s blockbuster movie Shankar Dada Zindabad on its video on demand (VoD) platform.
 
Sun Direct claims it has the largest collection of movie library in all South Indian languages with more than 2000 classic and latest labels in Telugu.

The movies are priced at Rs 25 with flexible show timing beginning at 11 am, 4 pm and 8 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. 
 
Sun Direct COO Tony D’Silva said, “With the lifespan of films in theatres reducing to an average of two to three weeks and piracy eating away the revenues, DTH platform on television will emerge as an attractive alternative for production houses. New movies on DTH can be effectively leveraged between the theatre release and CD/DVD launch, making it a win-win scenario for all the parties including the subscribers and an additional revenue stream for the DTH platform.”

MUMBAI: ET Now, the English business news channel from Times Global Broadcasting Company Ltd (TGBCL), is now available on Tata Sky.

The channel, which delivers news on stock markets, business and finance, will be on Tata Sky channel Number 542, starting today. ET now is available on the ‘Cosmo Pack’ and ‘Mega Pack’.
 
Says Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd MD Vineet Jain, “Since its launch in June last year, ET Now has acquired significant audience acceptance. In line with our effort to increase reach and viewership, ET Now will capitalise on the high reach of Tata Sky across the country.”

ET Now is already available on other DTH platforms like Airtel Digital TV (Channel 309), Big TV (Channel 998) and Dish TV (Channel 597).  
 
Says Tata Sky MD and CEO Vikram Kaushik, “Tata Sky since its inception has focused on creating a strong premium brand. In a similar fashion, ET Now has achieved a niche status as becoming the voice of India Inc. Making ET Now available to our subscribers is one more way of enhancing experience of viewers who look for such insights.”

MUMBAI: Ben Silverman‘s newly formed content studio Electus has entered into a strategic partnership with Yahoo! and will develop and produce exclusive premium content for the online major and its advertising partners.

The new relationship will not only produce original programming for Yahoo! users, but will also give advertisers new opportunities to integrate their brand messages into the next generation of online programming.
 
“Content creators and producers are looking for more direct relationships with their audiences and advertising partners, and this partnership will allow advertisers to have fresh ideas matched with premium experiences that enable their messages to be delivered directly to their consumers,” said Electus CEO Ben Silverman.

“Yahoo! is the ideal partner for this initiative; not only do they have the audience reach and a deep understanding of what consumers want, but they have a long history of successful custom campaigns that deliver for all partners involved,” adds Silverman.
 
Under this partnership Electus will develop a number of original concepts for Yahoo! in partnership with advertising partners. Both Electus and Yahoo! will work together on delivering the final custom experiences on Yahoo!

“Yahoo! is bringing together entertainment and advertising to build differentiated experiences that help redefine branded entertainment. Yahoo!‘s original content formula has generated some of the web‘s successful programming, and the addition of Electus‘ creative expertise will help drive the next wave of branded programming that delivers audience engagement and advertiser results,” says Yahoo SVP North America revenue and market development Joanne Bradford.

MUMBAI: Vdopia, the online and mobile video monetization company, has launched VLive, an online live streaming ad insertion technology platform.

VLive will enable media companies and TV channel owners to leverage their live content online. Not only will they be able to live stream the content but also monetise it with Dynamic Video Ad Insertion. A primary driver for this innovation is the high cost of content delivery, especially in the online video delivery space.
 
“VLive platform enables the video ads to be inserted in the Live Video Stream in the same way video ads are inserted on Live TV. The big change is that the ads are not static but are dynamic. This means that if one million users are consuming the content Live, the technology is able to serve different advertisements to different users at the same time,” says Vdopia chief operating officer and co-founder Chhavi Upadhyay.

“VLive Platform also provides exact information to the advertisers on how many people actually watched the ad and from which location. Each and every ad impression is accounted for. VLive, thus, combines the power of TV branding with measurability of the internet. VLive technology makes use of new cloud computing paradigm and is scalable to handle sudden traffic loads in real time basis,” adds Upadhyay.
 
Until now the traditional media companies have been using the Live TV stream with same TV ads on the internet and thus not been able to gain any additional revenue for their premium content. With VLive Platform, content owners, media companies and online publishers can now replace those TV Ads with different ads and thus unlock the revenue potential of their content.

“We need to combine our expertise in networking, video encoding and delivery technology, as well as online video display techniques to yield the desired results. We intend to launch VLive in other parts of the globe very soon,” says Vdopia chief business officer co-founder Saurabh Bhatia.
 

MUMBAI: Want to watch live TV channels in your car with personal audio? Now you can, with Dish TV’s Personal Live TV on Move.

The direct-to-home (DTH) company today announced the launch of the personalized service at the Auto Expo in New Delhi. 
 
Dish TV already offers Live TV on the Move, a service with 70 satellite TV channels. However, there was a limitation: only one channel could be viewed at a time. Now the company has extended the service by offering an independent visual experience.

Says Dish TV COO Salil Kapoor, “Earlier dishtv was providing a single TV system where with one mobile dish antenna, only one screen could be run. We made some critical enhancements in both the mobile set-top-box (STB) and the mobile dish antenna to bring this facility for the first time on the Indian roads.” 
 
The company claims that it has realised the need for Personal Live TV after taking feedback from mobile Dish TV customers and channel partners. “When people travel in the same vehicle, each one of them have a different need just like in homes. Someone wishes to watch news while someone else a movie, so in such an environment personal TV for each passenger becomes very useful,” Kapoor adds.

The investment for a four-seat system in car will be around Rs 245,000 including installation and video screens plus the annual subscription of Rs 10,000. The cost of single TV system is about Rs 190,000.

Dish TV is planning to provide this personalised service in intercity buses, taxis and trains.