Category: Software

MUMBAI: The recession has brought back American audiences to the theatres. DVD sales has taken a dive while box-office collections have soared, according to Adams Media Research.

Disc sales, including DVDs and Blu-ray, dropped 13 per cent year-over-year to just $8.73 billion in 2009, down from $10.06 billion a year ago.
Box-office spending, however, rose 10 per cent to $9.87 billion in 2009 in the US.

Company president Tom Adams, however, clarified that the 2009 figures are preliminary as late December figures are being worked on. 
 
According to the report, disc rentals remained almost flat while video on demand rentals increased minimaly as did online purchases. Sales of DVDs have been undercut by the rise of low-cost rental.

Hollywood has traditionally relied on DVD sales to underwrite the cost of production and marketing films, but the market has diversified in recent years. 
 
The demand for on-demand television and online distribution has been steadily increasing. Companies such as kiosk chain Redbox, which rents DVDs for $1 a day, are proving to be popular with the public, where DVDs can be picked up and returned in fast-food restaurants, pharmacies and shops.

Online subscription services such as Netflix Inc have also been a success in the past decade as they offer a “watch instantly” service where some subscribers can watch films on a PC or TV at home.

MUMBAI: Several media and entertainment analysts have started sharing their thoughts on cable carriage fee disputes that sprang up in the New Year.

News Corp and Time Warner Cable (TWC) avoided a loss of Fox stations and various News Corp cable networks in systems operated by the second-largest US cable firm by entering into a new carriage agreement that included re-transmission fee payments for the Fox network. 
 
In a note to investors, adding that the likely deal would also include digital rights and possibly even the relinquishing of several minutes of advertising time by Fox, Thomas Eagan analyst Collins Stewart said, “We expect the companies negotiated a multi-channel, multi-platform agreement which included the Fox broadcast network, and several cable channels.”

Eagan said, should the overall agreement translate to an increase in programme fees per TWC subscriber of 25 cents-75 cents, TWC‘s 2010 operating cash flow would take a $12.6 million-$ 37.8 million hit if none of the increase were passed on to subscribers.

“Most likely, TWC will pass on some of the increase to its subscribers,” he added. 
 
On the other hand, Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce pointed out that re-transmission fee deals have typically run three years and argued that monthly per-subscriber fees for Fox are difficult to pinpoint.

“There are many moving parts — values received by both sides — that make any one data point fairly irrelevant,” he argued.

“Something in the $0.40-$0.60 range might make sense, but again, Fox also gets more HD channel capacity and VOD (non-linear) content revenue sharing; TWC gets access to that programming, revenue sharing and advertising time etc,” he added.
 

MUMBAI: Alleging that the cable operator refused to discuss a fair market price for carriage of HGTV and Food Network, Scripps Networks Interactive has pulled out the two lifestyle channels from Cablevision.

The two channels stopped being available on Cablevision at the end of 2009. 
 
The platform said that it “offered Scripps the ability to continue delivering HGTV and Food Network to our customers while we negotiated a new agreement. But instead, with virtually no warning, Scripps took the extraordinary step of flipping a switch and removing its channels from Cablevision-effectively holding their own viewers hostage in order to pursue a more than 200 per cent fee increase from Cablevision and our customers.

In response, Scripps issued a statement that reads, “Scripps Networks Interactive has been trying to have productive negotiations with Cablevision for more than six months, but to no avail. Repeated requests to sit down together to discuss a fair market price for our networks have been rejected.”  
 
Under the current contracts, Cablevision pays Scripps about 25 cents per subscriber for the combination of Food Network and HGTV. “That combined rate is substantially lower than rates earned by other, individual top 10 cable networks and considerably less than rates Cablevision pays itself for less popular networks that it owns,” Scripps said.

Cablevision services 3 million subscribers in the New York, Long Island and Tri-State region.
 

MUMBAI: Cable and satellite (C&S) households is anticipated to touch the 103 million mark in 2010, one-fifth of which is expected to be digital homes.

Thus, according to the latest Tam research that gives a quick snapshot of the demographic proportions and the universe changes in the television sector, digital homes in 2010 is expected to reach 20 million as against 15 million in 2009. The total number of C&S households in 2009 stood at 90 million. 
 
The study also states that TV owning households in 2010 will see a 9 per cent growth in the year to become 134 million, as against 123 million in 2009.

The study further suggests that while digital growth will come from both rural and urban markets, digital will primarily be driven by pay DTH wherein growth rate of the same will be higher in the rural zone.  
 
As per Tam, digital homes in the rural market will grow to 14 million while digital homes in the urban markets will touch about six million. 

MUMBAI: Piracy, the world over, has crossed extreme limits. Not only has pirates expanded their cobwebs in India, they have mushroomed in several places in the world in all formats of piracy.

Online pirates came out with more than 20 million copies of Star Trek and the sequel to Transformers giving the two Paramount Pictures releases the dubious distinction of being the most ripped-off films of the year, according to a report released by file-sharing tracking service, TorrentFreak. 
 
Though the Transformers sequel bettered Star Trek at the box-office, Trekkie favourites Kirk and Spock were more popular than morphing car-robots among digital thieves.

TorrentFreak reported that Star Trek was illegally downloaded just under 11 million times, while 10.6 million copies of Transformers were copied.

While the exact data is difficult to get, pirated copies certainly seem to have cost Viacom. For the period ended 30 September, worldwide revenue at the Viacom-owned studio fell 13 per cent to $3.7 billion.

Other films on TorrentFreak‘s top 10 most illegally-downloaded list include films like The Hangover, Twilight, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The list also includes films like Knowing, State of Play and District 9 which do not rank in the top 20 in terms of box-office gross.  
 
“As we look over the rest of the top 10, we see that there are quite a few differences between popularity at the box office and on [rogue file sharer] BitTorrent,” said TorrentFreak of its report.

Though Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and 2012 rank second and fourth based on their worldwide grosses, but they didn‘t make it into the top 10 list of most swapped movies.

The illegal downloads could also cost Viacom-owned Paramount bragging rights. Warner Bros currently ranks as the highest-grossing studio overall, bringing in just under $2 billion for the year.
 

MUMBAI: Vietnam‘s national broadcaster and digital broadcasting operator Vietnam Multimedia Corporation (VTC) has signed a lease agreement with Asian satellite operator Asia Satellite Telecommunications (AsiaSat) for capacity on AsiaSat 5 satellite.

VTC will use multiple Ku-band transponders on AsiaSat 5 for its new premium direct-to-home (DTH) service in Vietnam.

VTC will use the transponder capacity in early 2010 to provide the new DTH service, distributing up to 30 High Definition (HD) and 70 Standard Definition (SD) channels to households in Vietnam. 
 
The new package will offer a wide variety of premium content ranging from sports, entertainment to technology and lifestyle, addressing the interests of the Vietnamese public, the company said in a release.

VTC general director Thai Minh Tan said, “AsiaSat 5 provides powerful coverage to enhance our DTH service to our home market and the transponder capacity to expand our line-up of HD and SD premium television channels to viewers across the country. AsiaSat can support our aggressive plan to further diversify our range of digital TV services to enhance the viewing experience of the Vietnamese consumers.” 
 
Added AsiaSat CEO Peter Jackson said, “We are pleased to have VTC as our long-term partner for DTH services to Vietnam. AsiaSat 5 is our latest high performance satellite launched this year and it will play a significant role in the DTH development of the country. We look forward to expanding our services in Vietnam, a fast growing economy of over 80 million people, with reliable and high quality satellite television when VTC launches its services on AsiaSat 5.”

MUMBAI: Following months of negotiations that failed to produce a deal ahead of a midnight deadline, Time Warner Cable and Fox came to an agreement after an 11th-hour contract extension.

The deal, to keep carrying Fox Networks programming, has helped avoid a blackout of TV shows like The Simpsons and college and NFL football games in 13 million US homes.

Though Time Warner Cable did not reveal what it had offered, privately its executives had pointed to deals with smaller broadcasters for around 20-25 cents a subscriber.

The dispute had focused on how much Time Warner Cable should pay for the right to deliver the Fox network to its cable subscribers in big cities like New York and Los Angeles.
 
News Corp, controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, had been targeting around $1 a month per subscriber, a sum Time Warner Cable had called ‘unreasonable‘.

In a short joint statement News Corp deputy chairman Chase Carey described the new agreement as ‘fair‘ and said it ‘recognizes the value of our programming‘.  
 
The cable operator was also negotiating on behalf of privately held cable company Bright House Networks, which is covered by the deal. Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glenn Britt described the new contract as a “reasonable deal”.

Both companies had waged aggressive marketing campaigns seeking support from the affected subscribers, but neither side was well-positioned for a long standoff.
 

NEW DELHI: Airtel digital TV – the DTH service from Bharti Airtel – today announced that it would be replacing the 10 WorldSpace Satellite Radio channels on its DTH platform with 10 All India Radio channels tomorrow onwards.
 
This replacement would be automatic and at no additional cost for all subscribers of the Music Plus Top Up and for those who were receiving the WorldSpace channels as part of their subscription pack.

Airtel digital TV customers would now be able to listen to the following 10 All India Radio channels – FM Gold, FM Rainbow, AIR Punjabi, FM Rainbow-Bangalore, AIR Tamil, AIR Ragam, AIR Telugu, AIR Bengali, AIR Gujarati and AIR Urdu. 
 
Aimed at offering Airtel digital TV customers an uninterrupted radio-listening experience, a communication on this initiative is also being sent to customers today.

MUMBAI: Internet TV broadcaster WatchIndia.TV has announced the launch of new a feature called, “What‘s on TV”. With the feature, visitors will be able to watch Indian TV and video-on-demand streams completely without charge or sign up.

The company, which currently broadcasts over 40 channels across the Internet using custom developed streaming platforms, is expecting better sampling and more traffic with the launch of the feature.
 
Until now, customers had to subscribe for a free trial in order to test the service and see the live streaming service on their networks.

Says WatchIndia.tv head of marketing Sagiv Ragastin, “Today, we are giving this option of online viewing even before subscription so people can get an initial taste of the service.”  
 
However, this offering is limited to a single Indian TV channel. Adds Ragastin, “Of course, we still provide the free trial period where one can choose the specific channels one is interested in and test the service for a full 14 days without charge.”

The TV service is available on the main WatchIndia.tv website. Visitors can choose to view the single live Indian TV channel stream or select to watch the most popular VoD clips of the week. The page is updated on a weekly basis with the live channel being changed weekly.

VoDs are updated with the latest episodes of the most popular Indian TV shows. Users can also access the TV guide to see the full program schedule for each of WatchIndia‘s channels.

MUMBAI: As Apple prepares a potential new competitor to cable and satellite TV, CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co. are mulling the idea of participating in its plan to offer television subscriptions over the Internet.

Apple is pushing to complete licensing deals and hopes to introduce the service in 2010, some of those people said. It is unclear whether any networks have signed on yet.
 
The proposed service could, in at least some scenarios, offer access to some TV shows from a selection of major US television networks for a monthly fee.

The service could undermine the big bundles of channels that cable, satellite and telecommunications companies, including Comcast Corp. and DirecTV Inc., have traditionally sold in packages to subscribers. 
 
If Apple signs up enough networks to launch a viable service, it could ultimately alter the economics of the television business.