Category: Software

The initiative aims to encourage fresh talent and emerging rock bands across India. As a part of the platform, one band, every month, will get an opportunity to record a professional album and the same will be marketed by ibibo across the web and mobile.

The original compilations will be available for ringtone downloads and dedications on the web and mobile. Over the next 6 months, ibibo will produce six ‘Rising Rock bands of India‘ and give them an opportunity to perform Live in various cities.

Says ibibo.com CEO Ashish Kashyap, “It is an unique online platform that promotes rock bands and brings them closer to their fans across the country. This programme is in line with ibibo’s vision to incubate talent in the country and give young, upcoming and rising Indian rock acts a chance to showcase themselves and release their albums”.

‘The Rising Rock Star‘ panelists include eminent musicians and individuals like Amit Kilam from Indian Ocean, Randolph Correia from Shaa’ir + Func fame, RJ Malini Agarwal, Saurabh Kanwar from Channel [V] and KJ Singh.

Six rock bands will get a chance to cut an album with Counter Culture Records and ibibo.com. Each of the six rising rock bands will promote their album on a three-city tour, reaching out to audiences on-ground as well.

Having acquired companies in UK and the US, Prime Focus‘ restructuring exercise is to accelerate the growth of its three verticals.

The Mumbai-based visual entertainment services company has roped in Pixion chief executive Naresh Malik to head its film vertical in India. Under his mandate, he will be responsible to run the digital intermediate (DI) and film equipment rental (EQR) businesses of Prime Focus.

Bhaarath Sundar has been appointed as CEO VFX. He will drive the VFX team, serving both the film and advertising industries. Additionally, he will be responsible for the performance of the Hyderabad and Chennai offices.

Ramki Sankaranarayanan has been appointed as CEO advertising & broadcast India and president & CEO Prime Focus Technologies.

Bringing in 15 years of experience from across television, radio, outdoor and digital media platforms, Dundh will oversee the monetising of revenue across all Hungama business and properties.

Hungama Digital Media COO Siddhartha Roy said, “Niloufer understands the business of media sales and has skills in forming scalable alliances. With Niloufer‘s expertise in media, we endeavour to integrate digital services with traditional media practices to provide opportunities for holistic communication.”

Prior to this appointment, Dundh was chief sales officer with OOH Media and had put in her papers on 30 July.

Big TV and Sun Direct have announced their special festival offers.

Big TV has unveiled a limited period offer, ‘The Smart South-2590‘, valid till 9 September. The offer includes ‘Get Starter Kit‘ for Rs 1,490 and recharge coupon voucher of Rs 110.

The Smart South-2590 service pack comes with a total of 83 channels that includes 15 Sun channels and other south regional language channels.

The offer also enables subscribers to watch ESPN, Star Sports, Star Cricket, NDTV India, NDTV 24X7, NDTV Profit and Animax, Discovery, Discovery Travel and Living and Nick.

MUMBAI: Turner International has announced the availability of two of its channels, WB and Hollywood classic movie channel TCM, on direct-to-home (DTH) platform Tata Sky.

Following the deal, WB is now available on all the DTH platforms in India.

The two channels are available in Tata Sky’s add-on “Cosmo pack”, which is available at Rs 45 per month and for Rs 450 for a year. The other channels in the Cosmo pack are MGM and NDTV Lumiere.

Says Turner International India VP and deputy GM – distribution and business operations, South Asia Siddharth Jain, “We are delighted to have Turner’s Hollywood channels, WB and TCM on Tata Sky. Catalyzing our visibility, this partnership will enable today’s pro-sumer to view and enjoy the classic and most exciting content from Hollywood’s leading studios- MGM and Warner Bros.”

WB, launched on 15 March, is a 24-hour English entertainment channel from Turner and Warner Bros Entertainment. The channel is aimed at upscale Indian audiences with an appetite for Hollywood’s best.

For the second quarter, service and technology revenues were $48.8 million, compared with $53.5 million for the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.2 million, compared to guidance of breakeven to $2 million and $10.6 million in the year-ago period.

As expected, adjusted EBITDA was down compared to the same quarter last year as a result of lower service and technology revenues, the longer amortisation of product lifetime revenues, increased legal expenses, and less of a benefit from inventory reserve utilization.

Net loss per share was ($0.03), compared to net income of $0.03 per share for the second quarter of last year. Finally, cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments increased to $238 million and Cash Flow From Operating Activities was approximately $5 million in the second quarter.

Tivo president and CEO Tom Rogers says, “We made significant progress on developing partnerships that enable us to access previously untapped distribution opportunities, announcing important deals with RCN and Best Buy. Our audience research and measurement business continues to prove why it will be a model that supports the future of the television advertising world as we launched local markets ratings and announced an important partnership with Quantcast, providing the first combined view of television and web viewing in the home.”

Tivo has now filed complaints in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas against AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications, Inc. for infringement of three Tivo patents, including the Time Warp patent. The complaints seek damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction, similar to the one issued by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas against Dish/EchoStar.

“We will continue to pursue enforcement where necessary to stop infringement of our intellectual property,” Rogers stated.Rogers says that in terms of its advertising and audience research business, their role in a constantly changing world of television consumption is to offer solutions that can help develop a business model that works with the television industry.

MUMBAI: Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB), a supplier of technology to the global digital television industry, has announced that it is adding watermarking capabilities to its TV convergence solutions portfolio.

ADB has integrated The Civolution’s VTrack watermarking technology (www.civolution.com) into its digital TV set-top boxes that provides operators with further means of protecting content.

The integration of VTrack in ADB’s set-top boxes shows VTrack’s flexibility in integrating with different platforms ranging from cable, satellite and terrestrial to IPTV.

Says Civolution CEO Alex Terpstra, “VTrack is a robust and easy to integrate solution. Now with the increased availability of high definition and early release content, camera capture and distribution of high quality content copies is a new threat requiring fast, efficient and cost-effective solutions.’’

Using Civolution’s VTrack solution, ADB’s set-top boxes are embedding an unique watermark into video material each time an on-demand programme is distributed, enabling content owners to identify the source of any potential copies. The VTrack watermark will survive camcorder-capture and subsequent degradation of the content through internet usage.ADB CEO Francois Pogodalla says, “ADB is proud to be one of the first set-top box companies to integrate such a solution onto its products. Considering the development of home networking, which enables content to flow freely between multiple consumer devices, ADB believes that the industry will welcome our efforts to offer an extra layer of content protection, in addition to today’s conditional access solutions.”

Online video peaked in July with 21.4 billion videos viewed during the month, according to comScore Video Metrix service that measures the digital world.

In July, Google Sites continued to rank as the top US video property with a record 8.9 billion videos viewed, making up 42 per cent of all videos viewed online. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 per cent of all videos viewed at the property.

Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8 per cent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 631 million videos viewed (3 per cent).

Google Sites surpassed its all time high with 121 million unique viewers during the month (74.1 videos per viewer), followed by Microsoft Sites with 65 million viewers (9.8 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 52 million viewers (10.8 videos per viewer).

In July, ScanScout Network ranked as the top video ad network with a potential reach of 80.1 million viewers, or 50.6 per cent of the total viewing audience. Tremor Media ranked second with a potential reach of 71.1 million viewers (44.9 per cent penetration), followed by YuMe Video Network with 68.1 million viewers (43 per cent).