Category: Software

NEW DELHI: Kalanithi Maran-promoted Sun Direct expects to grow its subscriber base from 4.3 million to six million by the end of this fiscal.

“A major part of our subscriber additions would come during the festive season. We will be having six million subscribers by the end of this fiscal,” Sun Direct COO Tony D’Silva said here today on the sidelines of India Digital Networks Summit 2009.

Indiantelevision.com had reported earlier that Sun Direct is targeting a revenue of Rs 10 billion and six million subscriber base for FY‘10. The southern DTH major, which launched a high-definition (HD) service in April this year, is still to increase the ARPU (average revenue per user) levels from the lowest in the industry. “In the southern region, Sun Direct has an Arpu between Rs 75-100, while in the northern belt it falls in the region of Rs 125-140,” said D’Silva.

NEW DELHI: IPTV has failed to take off in India due to low broadband penetration and failure of government to help establish a quality of service standard.

The government also did not pay much attention to this sector after issuing guidelines, according to Time Broadband CEO Sujata Dev.

Addressing the concluding session of the India Digital Networks
Summit, Dev said IPTV would gain in relevance as broadband
penetration grows. IPTV has a great future in video-on-demand (VoD) and gaming.

Dev complained that after paying off the broadcaster and the others, content aggregators for IPTV have very little left of revenue to pocket.

With both DTH and Cable being very strong, IPTV needs to develop its own identity, she added.

MUMBAI: WatchIndia.tv, the internet television company, has announced a special festive offer to its new members called the ‘Diwali Online TV Package‘.

The limited-period offer available at $19.99 gives a choice of 30 Indian language channels broadcast live over the web, together with access to video-on-demand (VOD).

Said WatchIndia.tv marketing liaison officer Rajeep Prashanda, “This special limited edition Indian TV online package proves again how we aim to keep close the international community of Indian ex-pats.

“We are proud to be able to offer such colorful entertainment across the globe, at a time, to perfectly complement the coming festival of lights.”The channels lined up for the Diwali season includes Zee TV, Zoom, Times Now, NDTV Imagine, 9x, 9X Music,Shemaroo Bollywood channel, Aastha, Zee Cinema, Zee Sports, Zee Marathi, Zee Punjabi, Zee Telugu, Zee Bangla, Zee Kannada, Zee Tamil, NDTV Profit, WatchIndia Gold, ETV Marathi, ETV Bangla, ETV Telugu, ETV Urdu, ETV Kannada, ETV Oriya, ETV 2, ETV Gujarati, Raj TV, Raj Digital Plus, Raj Musix and Vissa.

MUMBAI: Gone are the days of sending letters through the postal service which used to take days to reach the recepient.

With the advent of internet, there has been a surge of web-users who make use of the mailing service provided by Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Rediffmail and MSN Mail for an instant receipt and a faster follow up.

Among the service providers, Gmail, in September, witnessed an increase of almost three per cent in traffic compared to that of August and proved to be the most popular e-mail service among Indians with 18.2 million people having accessed its mailing service, reveals monthly web rankings in e-mail category ViziSense.

Yahoo‘s newly-launched home page couldn‘t make a difference even as Yahoo Mail saw a fall by eight per cent. It stands second to Gmail.

Yahoo Mail manages to bring in 16.8 million users as compared to 18.2 million users a month ago.

Yahoo was the top runner for the period between June to August with 18.30, 17.7 and 18.2 million users respectively.

MUMBAI: CNN ImageSource has off late started providing a global, free, on-demand customisation service for screeners on its site, cnnimagesource.com.

The site allows access of CNN footage to professional film, television, advertising and corporate producers from around the world 24-hours a day.

The site consists of more than half a million items, including CNN-owned footage and material from more than 650 US news affiliates that CNN represents. In addition to news footage, the website contains material covering science and technology, business, travel, entertainment, sports and user-generated content from CNN’s iReport.

Says CNN ImageSource licensing and content sales VP David Sheehan, “With an expansive archive of CNN’s award-winning reporting and compelling stock footage, CNN ImageSource is in a unique position to offer an easy-to-use website for producers to research video on their own schedule and customise and download screen material to their desktop for free at any time.”

CNN ImageSource has content in high-definition and access to CNN’s Library, containing more than three million items accumulated over nearly 30 years. CNN ImageSource has recently updated search functionality on the site.

MUMBAI: BigFlix.com has made available Daddy Cool exclusively for its users worldwide for download and free streaming on its video-on-demand service.

The downloadable options available are download-to-own for $ 4.49 and download-to-rent for
$ 1.99.

The film co-produced by Big Pictures and Maruti Pictures and directed by Hyderabad-based director K Murali Mohan Rao is a remake of the British comedy- Death at a Funeral.

The story is of a funeral for Douglas Lazarus which erupts into hysterical chaos when the grieved mourners are struck by innumerable outrageous calamities caused by delivery of wrong corpse in the coffin, stinginess, hallucinogenic drugs, romance, jealousy, in-laws and a scandalous secret all of which befall the family and friends, leading to a laugh-a-minute and ironically culminating the funeral into a funeral.

MUMBAI: Hungama Digital Media, in association with Samsung has launched ‘The Blue Blaze‘, a PC and mobile game and digital promotions of Blue. The film being presented by Shree Asthavinayak Cine Vision, stars Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt and Zayed Khan, Lara Dutta and Katrina Kaif.

‘The Blue Blaze‘ is a thrill-a-minute multi-level game which delivers an innovative and exciting experience to the player, pitting him against the perils underwater. Developed around the deep sea explorations of the film, the game is all set to give one the adrenaline rush and accelerates as each new level unfolds.

Commenting on the launch, Hungama Digital Media Brand Manager Punyashlok Bhakta, said, “The digital platform is posing opportunities for concepts like Blue to connect with the audiences and create curiosity through experiential concepts.

“Bollywood fans enjoy new concepts that break the monotony of their regular internet world. An underwater action thriller is a perfect setting for digital innovations and we hope to create the ‘Blue‘ experience as the film releases of the film on October 16.”

MUMBAI: Modern Times Group (MTG) ‘s Viasat Broadcasting will soon begin marketing and selling its pay-TV channel packages to subscribers of the Estonian broadband and IPTV services provider Elion. Of Elion‘s 175,000 broadband customers, 88,000 subscribe to its IPTV offering.

Viasat‘s Estonian free-TV channels (TV3, TV6 and 3+) will be immediately available to Elion subscribers through the platform‘s existing IPTV packages and the company will offer its pay-TV packages to the customer base, priced at between EEK 99 to EEK 305 per month.

Viasat‘s premium offering on Elion‘s IPTV network will comprise the Viasat Gold package of 12 Viasat channels and 25 third party channels. This follows a similar tie-up with Telia in Sweden in May 2008 and builds on previous IPTV agreements with ten broadband network operators in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Owned by AS Estii Telekom, the largest telecommunications provider in Estonia, Elion, the only IPTV service in Estonia, has a 54-per cent share of the broadband market.

Said MTG CEO and president Hans-Holger Albrecht, “This agreement with Elion is the latest step in the rollout of our ‘anytime, anywhere‘ strategy, whereby we seek to make our free-TV channels as broadly available as possible, and to attract subscribers to our pay-TV content on multiple distribution platforms,”.

NEW DELHI: The Government is in favour of a three-tier system for regulating broadcasting in the country – self-regulation by the channels, adjudication by broadcasting bodies like the Indian Broadcasting Foundation or the News Broadcasters Association, and final intervention if necessary by an independent regulator.

Stating this, Information and Broadcasting Ministry Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) Zohra Chatterjee said today that while the government did not want to regulate and wanted an independent regulator, there was unfortunately lack of support from the media which only wanted self-regulation and this was often not workable.

However, she said the government was concerned about promoting digitisation and offering greater value added services to the consumer through this mode.

Addressing the India Digital Networks Summit (IDNS), organised jointly by Indiantelevision.com and Media Partners Asia, she said the government had set a deadline of 2017 for the national broadcaster Doordarshan to go completely digital and switch off analogue. She was also in favour of a voluntary switch-over to digitisation within two years. She was not in favour of switching off analogue till what she termed as ‘the sunset hour’.

Zohra said mandated conditional access system (Cas) for TV had also not taken off. She regretted that the billing system for Cas was not satisfactory.

However, she hoped that the HITS policy (Head-end in the Sky), to be announced within the next few months, would help as that would speed up the digitisation process. This will also help all channels to reach rural areas, instead of just Doordarshan which was the country’s only terrestrial channel.

She said the government was considering certain amendments in the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 to check malpractices like under-declaration and violation of piracy by placing provision for de-registration and penalties wherever necessary.

The Government has a three-tier monitoring process: there were certain authorised officers under the Act, District Monitoring Committees had been put in place, and there was an Inter-Ministerial Committee at the centre headed by the Additional Secretary in the I&B Ministry.

Zohra wanted the broadcasters to conduct consumer awareness workshops to help the switch over to CAS or digital networks.

NEW DELHI: The fifth annual India Digital Networks Summit (IDNS), jointly organised by Indiantelevision.com and Media Partners Asia, is set to kick off tomorrow in New Delhi.

Endorsed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, the day-long summit will see representation from heads of DTH (direct-to-home), Cable TV, distribution and broadcasting industries.

The industry stalwarts will discuss the critical issues that are to shape India’s digital and pay-TV marketplace. The focus of the summit will be on the key policy issues, industry trends and business models that will drive industry dynamics after 2010.

The tone of the summit will be set with keynote addresses from I&B ministry joint secretary Zohra Chatterji, Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) chairman JS Sarma and ChrysCapital MD Brahmal Vasudevan.

The debate on “Managing DTH growth and consolidation” will be led by Tata Sky CEO Vikram Kaushik, Sun Direct COO Tony D’Silva, Airtel Digital TV CEO Ajai Puri and NDS Asia-Pacific SVP Sue Taylor.

The session on cable TV will examine issues relating to funding, M&A opportunities and digital upgrades of networks. The panel will consist of Digicable CEO JS Kohli, IndusInd Media & Communications MD and CEO Ravi Mansukhani, You Telecom India CEO EVS Chakravarthy, Atria Convergence Technologies MD Sunder Raju, MSO Alliance president Ashok Mansukhani and Tandberg Television VP business development Noel Matthews.