Category: Software

While ESPN Star Sports (ESS), which is already on DishTV, will only telecast the ODI‘s, Star Cricket will air the entire series inclusive of test matches. ESS will carry an English feed and Star Cricket will carry the Hindi feed.

When contacted about Tata Sky‘s discussions with ESS for the telecast of the series, Tata Sky MD and CEO Vikram Kaushik declined to comment.

India will complete all three test matches and two of its seven one-day matches on its England tour by 25 August, wherein India plays its last one-dayer in England on 7 September.

ESPN Software India Pvt. Ltd, DishTV CEO Arun Kumar Kapoor said, “With Star cricket now available on Dish TV, we fulfill our promise of wholesome entertainment to our discerning subscribers. Just before the India-England series, we ensure that our subscribers get to watch the matches.”

The service follows from the launch of BT Vision, a free IPTV service offering digital TV, pay-as-you-go content and a free personal video recorder (PVR) for its broadband customers.

Users will have to pay ?4 per month to watch 242 Premier League matches on demand on the same day as the match, or pay ?12 per month for live Premier League games from the Setanta Sports service. The Setanta service also broadcasts live Scottish matches, PGA golf and other live sport.

BSkyB owns the rights to broadcasting two-thirds of 138 live top matches from the English Premier League, while Setanta sports owns the remaining third, states an official release.

BT Vision Sport will be presented by football pundit James Richardson, former host of Channel 4‘s Gazzetta Football Italia.

Among owners of LG and Samsung phones, 12 per cent and 11 per cent reported having mobile TV features, respectively, compared with eight per cent of Motorola owners and zero per cent for Nokia owners.

Says Parks Associates director of broadband and gaming Yuanzhe Cai, “South Korea leads the world in adoption of mobile entertainment features and services. Korean phone manufacturers have been able to take that experience and translate it into success in the American market, balancing good designs and advanced feature sets with reasonable costs.”

Cai adds, “Nokia needs to introduce more advanced phone models if it is to succeed in the high-end and midrange markets. The challenge is even more acute now that the Apple iPhone is stirring up competition in the premium handset market.”

Mobile Entertainment Platforms and Services is a consumer survey of 2,000 Internet users ages 13 and older regarding their ownership and usage of mobile and portable devices.

This study tests a variety of new mobile applications and business models and explores consumer interest in convergence mobile platforms such as the iPhone, fixed-mobile convergence applications, mobile broadband, and embedded portable consumer electronics devices.

Net loss stood at Rs 897.64 million while the company claims to have added 180000 new subscribers during the quarter ended 30 June 2007.

Added Dish TV MD Jawahar Goel: “A strong regional content is one of our strongest muscles. To ensure the bandwidhth for this width of content, we have recently acquired two additional satellite transponders. Also, we have adequate capacity expansion planned for the future.”

Dish TV has enhanced its infrastructure and services in the quarter. “A dealer universe of 30,000 outlets today caters to consumers across 4300 towns. There are over 10,000 service personnel in the market, delivering installations and service support to our subscribers. The service organisation is also supported by 1000 call centre agents speaking 10 different languages from 7 different locations. Moreover there are service centers across the country, all in an effort to reach the consumer in the shortest possible time, if the need arises,” the company said in a statement.

Dishtv has content strength of 170 channels, adding eight channels in the quarter.

Dish TV CEO Arun Kapoor said, “We are poised for an explosive growth; and we will set the rules that will define the category in the country. The last quarter has been driven by consumer offers that helped us acquire 180,000 new subscribers helping us to retain dominant market leadership. This reinforces our connect with the consumers in terms of brand preference. This also supports our belief that increasingly large parts of the country are choosing to go digital on the Dish platform. These offers that we have rolled out over the past quarter have enthralled consumers with their great value for money proposition as well as helped us build awareness and usage of our unique services like sports active, movie on demand and regional content. Further, we have also enhanced our ground presence through substantial aggregation of company warehouses, distributors and dealers across markets, thereby increasing our speed to market.”

In an exclusive interaction, ESS vice president (distribution) Rajesh Kaul told Indiantelevision that the deal has been signed with Incablenet, and hectic negotiations to bring on board other national MSOs like Hathway and others are on.

With the signing of the Incablenet deal, the city of Mumbai is now covered to the tune of 75 per cent already, he told Indiantelevision.com.

For the rest of the operators who have not come on board, we are constantly in touch and we are hopeful of concluding deals with them over the next two or three days, Kaul revealed.

“By the time the first ball is bowled in the first test between India and England, we expect the entire country to be able to watch the high quality action from our cricketers,” he added.

When asked about other MSOs who are still to conclude any deal, Rajesh said, “We have always stressed upon the fact that we do business based on our good relationship with cable partners and MSOs across the country.”

Star Cricket can be seen now across all major cities including metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore and major as well as smaller district towns of Haryana region (Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Ambala, Sonepat, Rewari, Hissar), UP (Haridwar, Meerut, Lucknow, Aligarh, Kanpur), Gujarat (Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Rajkot, Kutch), Kerala (Calicut, Cochin, Trivandrum, Trissur, Kottayam), Karnataka (Bangalore, Gulbarga, Bijapur, Bidar), Tamil Nadu( Kumbakonam, Ramnad, Nagapattinam, Krishnagiri) West Bengal (24 Parganas, Durgapur, Jamshedpur), Assam (Guwahati, Shillong), Andhra Pradesh (Vizag, Rajahmundry, Warangal, Tirupati, Anantpur), Maharashtra (Pune, Sholapur, Nasik, Thane), Goa and Pondicherry, Kaul said.

ESPN Star Sports has already announced a target of 100 per cent increase in affiliate sales this year, banking on massive inventory of cricket in the next 15 months spread across the three channels.

The content includes India‘s tour of England (3 tests and 7 ODIs) (July – September 07), The Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa (September 07) and India‘s tour of Australia involving 4 tests and a tri series with Australia, Sri Lanka and India involving 15 ODIs (December 07 -March 08).

The Asia Cup and the ICC Champions trophy to be played in Pakistan next year will also be broadcast on ESPN, Star Sports and Star Cricket.

Users of this device in New Delhi will be able to view Doordarshan‘s recently launched DVB-H Mobile TV service currently comprising 8 free-to-air Doordarshan channels including DD News, DD National and DD Sports. This will give TV enthusiasts the opportunity to watch live cricket, serials, movies, news and music anywhere, anytime.

Nokia India director multimedia Vineet Taneja said, “With the growing popularity of mobile devices and its capability to offer instant access to information and entertainment, the launch of the N77 complements our existing N92 device and offers more choices to our customers. This also redefines the television viewing experience in a compact and optimized new package irrespective of time and destination.”

“The wide 2.4” flat screen with up to 16 million colors and high quality stereo sound makes it the ideal personal mobile device for enjoying live TV and music on the move,” he further added.

The device has the capability to remember the last channel a person was viewing before switching it off. It allows users to set reminders for a particular program and have alerts for the show timings, just at the push of a button.

Through the programme guide in the mobile TV application, users can also view program information up to seven days, browse TV channels and select the TV program they are interested in viewing. Some of the other features include 30-second replay and live TV watching after replay.

It has built-in interactive service functionality, like SMS voting for deciding what music video will be played next. It has 2GB of memory that can store upto 1500 tracks. It also has integrated stereo speakers and users can connect the N77 with compatible headphone set.

This is Reliance Communications largest acquisition and would accelerate the company‘s penetration into the lucrative $ 100 billion global enterprise data market.

By synergising Flag and Yipes, Reliance is looking to become a leader in Ethernet which will be worth $ 25 billion market wordwide by 2010.

Yipes is strongly positioned in Ethernet, by far the highest growth segment in the US datacom market, with an annual growth rate of over 30 per cent. It has a strategic network presence in the top 14 US metros, which account for 40 per cent of the total US datacom market.

Yipes has nearly 1,000 enterprise customers and provides mission critical communications platforms for entire industry communities.

Says Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani, “This is the largest acquisition that Reliance Communications has ever made. The acquisition of Yipes drives forward our strategy to offer the most sophisticated, cutting edge data communication products and services, specialising in application and content distribution, spanning developed and emerging markets.

” We see enormous potential to rapidly expand Yipes coverage in the US and to globalise Yipes service by leveraging our customer relationships and network reach around the globe. We confidently expect this acquisition to significantly enhance the growth rate, profitability and returns of our global data business. “

Established in 1999, Yipes has pioneered Metro Ethernet and has developed edge proprietary products to meet the exacting requirements of its customers. Ethernet is the fastest growing segment of the data communications market, driven by the migration of enterprise customers from older private network technologies. Infonetics Research forecasts the Ethernet services market will surge by over 30 per cent CAGR from 2006 to 2010 when it will top $ 25 billion worldwide.

Yipes has nearly 1,000 enterprise customers, concentrated across four industry verticals – financial, legal, government and healthcare – which currently account for 50 per cent of the Ethernet market.

Yipes has developed communications platforms that act as the oxygen for entire industry communities. For example, Yipes is the leading direct communications provider to the New York Stock Exchange, Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Nasdaq and interconnects with multiple market participants and intermediaries.

Says Yipes CEO John Scanlon, “Yipes pioneered Metro Ethernet services, extended it across the US and is poised to expand globally. With Reliance Communications, we aim to replicate our success in the US across the rest of the world. The financial sector, in particular, presents a key opportunity for us as we are well positioned to capture the market by meeting the fast-growing and stringent connectivity requirements of financial exchanges around the world. The financial connectivity market alone is expected to reach $ 6.3 billion by 2010 and grow at around 35 per cent per annum.”

It will try to differentiate itself from sites like Youtube using the pitch ‘We‘re going to make you a star baby‘ under which users who submit clips stand chance to win cash-prizes and even an Academy award nomination.

Unlike Grouper which shared amateur video content, Crackle will feature videos by aspiring professionals, including some funded by Sony. Sony hopes this will attract advertisers who were not particularly enthused by amateur video sharing.

It has also set up Crackle studios comprising a team of 15 employees who will produce segments for the site. They will also accept submissions from the public, although they will not be paying for them.

“We‘re out of the user-generated-video business and in the emerging-talent business,” said former Grouper founder and current Crackle co-president Josh Felser. “We‘re liberating the next-generation directors and producers from YouTube.”

Sony hopes to use Crackle to discover a new generation of filmmakers and is open to accepting proposals, which on acceptance will be funded by the company.

The company will sponsor contests to find the best original animation and award creators with a cash prize and a trip to Los Angeles for a pitch meeting with executives at Sony Pictures Animation, which has made such movies as this summer‘s Surf‘s Up.

The animated short films have the chance to release in theaters making it eligible for an Academy Award. They would also be invited to attend ‘Siggraph‘, the annual computer graphics conference in August 2008.

The videos can be posted on blogs, MySpace, Facebook and other websites, and viewed on the Sony PSP hand-held game console and Internet-connected Sony Bravia televisions.

MUMBAI: Logitech which makes computer mice has introduced the Logitech MX Air Rechargeable Cordless Air Mouse, a versatile laser mouse that works on the desk and in the air.

Similar to the way people use a remote to control a television, when holding the MX Air mouse, people can now lean back and relax while navigating the computer and enjoying media content.

The firm notes that for many, the computer is now much more than a productivity tool. It serves as a hub for digital media, demanding a new way for people to control, consume and enjoy music, photos and videos on the PC. To enable effortless in-air navigation, the new mouse combines three important technologies – Freespace™ motion-control, gesture command and wireless – so people can point, select and play media files with just a flick of the wrist.

Logitech senior VP, GM of the Control Devices business unit Rory Dooley says, “The MX Air mouse offers a radically new way for people to control their PC entertainment. It is for anyone who has listened to music on their PC and been frustrated by having to return to the desk to change songs or volume.

” It’s for people who want to share vacation photos with friends and family without being tied to the desk. It’s for any of the millions of people using the Internet to browse and watch videos on sites such as YouTube or Grouper. And it’s for people with a living-room computer or media PC who want to navigate their media content on their terms.”

Freespace motion control technology is designed to provide accurate, responsive navigation without the limitations encountered by previous in-air pointing devices. This patented technology is based on a combination of MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) sensors, DSP (digital signal processing) technology and RF (radio frequency) wireless technology. These combined technologies allow a user to hold the mouse in any orientation, point in any direction, and enjoy effortless, intuitive cursor control. Additionally, sophisticated algorithms distinguish between intentional and unintentional hand movements – effectively canceling the slight involuntary tremors everyone experiences when holding a device in the air.

Gesture-based commands add a new level of sophistication to the MX Air mouse. To change the volume, people press and hold the volume button and simply gesture to the right to increase volume, or to the left to decrease it. For music applications, a small circular motion to the right activates the skip track command, while a circle to the left repeats the song.

In place of a traditional scroll wheel, the MX Air mouse features a touch-sensitive scroll panel. A swipe of the finger across the surface enables the inertial scrolling mechanism, which adjusts its speed according to the speed of the finger swipe. Media functions such as Play/Pause, Volume/Mute, Back and Select can be easily accessed in the air by pressing the large, orange backlighted buttons with the thumb.

MUMBAI: As part of a social initiative, Intel has joined hands with a non-profit foundation to give away laptops to poor children around the world.