Category: Software

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has today extended the time limit for comments on its Consultation Paper on “Issues relating to Tariff for Cable Television Services in Non-CAS areas” till 11 June.

Trai issued the Consultation Paper on 21 May. The consultation paper was placed on TRAI‘s website www.trai.gov.in and the comments of the stakeholders on the Consultation Paper has been invited by 4 June.

However, a press statement said that Trai has received requests for extension of time from some stakeholders for sending comments.

“Keeping in view the importance of the issue and the need for wider participation of stakeholders in the consultation process, Trai has decided to extend the last date for sending comments on the Consultation Paper by seven days,” the statement said.

The last date for sending the comments by stakeholders will now be 11 June.

All the stakeholders have been requested to send their written comments by that date, preferably by e-mail.

MUMBAI: YouTube users will soon have access to Electronic and Musical Industries Ltd‘s (EMI Group) audio and video libraries.

In a joint statement on Thursday, Internet search giant Google Inc. and EMI PLC‘s group EMI music record label announced that that they have agreed to let users of Google-owned video-sharing site access videos and music by EMI artists. Music by David Bowie, Coldplay, Gorillaz, Lily Allen and Norah Jones are part of the collection.

Although the two companies have not yet disclosed any financial details of the deal, but EMI chief executive Eric Nicoli said in a statement that “EMI Music and its artists will be fairly compensated for their work.”

As part of the deal, EMI Music will work with YouTube and parent company Google to develop revenue-generating business models. This will enable EMI to track and attach monetary value and control content.

The Youtube-EMI deal comes soon after the copyright lawsuits filed by media companies that accused YouTube of allowing its users to pirate their programmes on the popular video-sharing site.

MUMBAI: Starting from mid-June, Apple TV users will automatically be able to stream YouTube content into their televisions, announced Apple CEO Steve Jobs today.

“This is the first time users can easily browse, find and watch YouTube videos right from their living room couch, and it‘s really, really fun,” said Jobs. “YouTube is a worldwide sensation, and Apple TV is bringing it directly from the Internet onto the widescreen TV in your living room.”

Using Apple TV‘s interface and Apple Remote, viewers can navigate through YouTube‘s video various browsing categories or search for specific videos. YouTube members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos.

Apple today also announced that it is offering a new Apple TV build-to-order option with a 160GB hard drive. The new version will be larger and will offer four times the storage for up to 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.

MUMBAI: Wondershare Inc, a developer of digital video editing and multi-media software, released Wondershare Video Converter Platinum which is an all-in-one video converter.

It is a video format converter that can convert video and audio files to various formats to meet different format requirements and for playback on popular players including iPod, iPhone, apple TV, zune, PSP, pocket PC, creative zen, archos. It can also convert WMV to AVI, VOB to AVI, and even convert video to Youtube and Youtube to video.

Wondershare Video Converter Platinum is available for $35.

MUMBAI: Gearhouse Broadcast, international broadcast services provider, has announced the launch of their new company website.

The newly created site, designed by Gearhouse Broadcast’s web developers, Optix Solutions, will provide benefits to clients and visitors alike. The site incorporates the whole Gearhouse Broadcast Group which comprises Gearhouse Broadcast Ltd in the UK, Gearhouse Broadcast Pty Ltd in Australia and Gearhouse Broadcast LLC in the USA.

Using the latest web technology the site showcases Gearhouse Broadcast’s services – Project Solutions, Equipment Sales, Equipment Rental, Outside Broadcast (AUS), Production Systems (US) and Presentation Solutions.

The new design concept the firm says creates a comprehensive but uncluttered look and the completely revamped navigation allows a quick and simple search to find the broadcast service or products required. Broadcast products for sale or hire can be found by product name, manufacturer or price. A news section informs of the latest Gearhouse Broadcast’s activity and a mailing list enables site visitors to subscribe to receive exclusive promotions and the latest news.

Gearhouse Broadcast COO Warren Newbert said, “The new site is a great platform to showcase the services Gearhouse Broadcast offers to the international broadcast market. New features, enhanced navigation and all round accessibility should make it the perfect landing page for anyone with a broadcast solutions enquiry.”

BANGALORE: Nokia Siemens Networks Communications India (NSN) has won its first contract from Aircel, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Maxis Group, to build and operate a greenfield GSM network in Kolkata.

The Rs 3 billion contract includes supply of GSM/EDGE equipment, implementation, project management and managed services, such as operating and maintaining the network infrastructure.

NSN will deploy equipment like Flexi base stations, mini-ultra base stations, 3GPP-based mobile soft-switching solution including MSC Servers and Media Gateways PDH, SDH. The network will be supported by the multi-technology, multi-vendor NetAct network and service management system, and will be ready for commercial operations by December 2007.

As per industry sources, NSN has been a major supplier to all the other GSM service providers’ in India, viz. Bharati, BSNL, Hutch and Idea cellular. In this particular contract, among the other major contenders were Motorola and Ericsson. Ericsson has already supplied equipment to Aircel for their some of their existing circles. The Kolkata circle is their tenth one.

An NSN release quotes Maxis ceo and Aircel-director Sandip Das, “Today’s announcement is a critical juncture in our network rollout strategy, as NSN have joined the consortium of our prime network partners. The Kolkata rollout completes our East/North-East geographic footprint, besides lending us its strategic commercial importance in the region.” He added “We chose NSN as they met our three key criteria – rich technology features, extensive managed service experience and speedy network deployment commitment.”

The release further quotes Aircel ceo-north and east – Rohit Chandra as saying “Our partnership with NSN will provide us with the latest GSM technologies such as the multi-radio Flexi Base Station Platform that will not only help us provide services today but will also makes our network ready for 3G and WIMAX services as and when the regulation permits.”

As per the release, NSN – Head India Sub-region Ashish Chowdhary, said with regards to Aircel’s provisioning of mobile services in a greenfield network by going for Managed Services right from the start, “This will not only help them in achieving OPEX savings but also allow them to focus on their customers’ acquisition and service strategies from the first day of commercial operations.”

Aircel which was acquired by Maxis Communications Berhad, Malaysia for $1.08 billion, with the deal injecting S280 million cash has a subscriber base of over 6.2 million with a claimed market leadership in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Assam, and is present in 9 telecom circles -Assam, Bihar, Chennai, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, North East, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Aircel has secured licenses for the remaining 14 of the 23 telecom circles. Additionally, Aircel has also obtained the nod from Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to provide International Long Distance (ILD) and National Long Distance (NLD) telephony services.

BANGALORE: Accenture has come up with a unique initiative targeted at recruiting potential employees and retaining existing employees, during the Aerosmith rock show to be held in Bangalore on 2 June.

According to an official release, the strategy is aimed to cope up with the increasing attrition at Bangalore, which is an IT hub.

The Accenture Zone enables visitors to download Aerosmith videos and audio content prior to the concert as well as 30 days post the show. As the user waits for the downloads, the scroll on the screen demonstrates information about the company and relevant information on careers at Accenture.

In addition to online promotional activities, the company also plans to set up a booth at the venue of the rock show where various activities and information about the company will be available for visitors.

Two lucky Accenture employees will be provided with free tickets to the show as well as a chance to meet Aerosmith just before the concert. All employees of Accenture India across business divisions have the option of buying discounted tickets for the show.

MUMBAI: Advanced digital video solutions provider Optibase Ltd announced that UTStarcom will integrate Optibase‘s IPTV encoding platforms in its end-to-end rolling stream IPTV solution for deployment with Aksh in India.

Aksh will utilize Optibase‘s integrated carrier-grade TV streaming platforms in order to provide advanced H.264 high-quality encoding.

Aksh optifibre managing director Dr.K.S.Choudhari, on commissions of the Optibase H264 platforms commented, “The video quality and customer response time of Optibase is commendable. We see a long term relation with this company.”

Optibase executive vice president of sales Udi Shani said, “Our collaboration with UTStarcom and the installation at Aksh is an important strategic step for Optibase. We believe that our expertise in high-quality video streaming over IP networks combined with UTStarcom‘s integration capabilities creates a winning IPTV solution.”

Aksh Optifibre Limited (AOL) is involved in exclusively manufacturing optic fibre cables and fibre to home cables. In 2006, Aksh came forward to manage the software, hardware, service set-up and content delivery of the IPTV service launched in Delhi. The company has entered into a seven-year agreement with MTNL to provide IPTV services in Delhi and Mumbai.

UTStarcom provides IP-based, end-to-end networking solutions and international service and support. Rolling stream is designed to support new services including broadcast TV, network PVR (n-PVR), video on demand (VoD), and near video on demand (NVoD) over existing network infrastructures.

Optibase provides professional encoding, decoding, video server upload and streaming solutions for telecom operators, service providers, broadcasters and content creators.

MUMBAI: Pixion, the postproduction arm of Century Communication Limited (CCL), has roped in David Crawford to spearhead its VFX team in India.

Crawford is the man behind Hollywood Blockbusters like Spiderman, Titanic, Mission Impossible 2, XXX, Vanilla Sky among others. He has over a decade long experience in Hollywood, advertising and post- production. He has also worked on ad films for brands like Nike, Volvo and Burger King among others.

Pixion CEO Naresh Malik said, “David who has worked on International visual effects magnum opus projects, will strengthen our capabilities manifolds. With such great initiatives going in hiring best of the talent, we are sure to impart in the required direction for the company to deliver on the consistent growth trajectory”.

Pixion is working on around 40 films under various banners to be released in coming six months and around 80 films are in the pipeline for the year ending 2008, according to a release.

The past few years have seen a marked increase in high-end post production in Asia and especially in India. This trend is the result of three main factors. One is the paradigm shift for high quality production of content for domestic markets. Another is the cost advantage of outsourcing post production to India. There is also the crossover phenomenon – the production of Asian content for international markets, states an official release.

MUMBAI: Australian integrated media firm Seven Media and Tivo which creates digital video recorders, have announced that Seven will be bringing Tivo to Australia next year.

Under the mutually-exclusive agreement, Seven Media Group will lead the creation of the digital platform to enable Tivo‘s digital video recorder and service, including the Tivo user interface.

The platform will be available for use by other broadcasters and broadband content owners to create a compelling, interactive, free to air digital terrestrial television offering. The TiVo Service will be available across Australia and will include internationally recognized TiVo features like SeasonPass recordings and WishList searches and allow users to access broadband content on their TV.

Through its new partnership with TiVo, Seven will deploy TiVo‘s leading interactive advertising capabilities to develop new integrated interactive advertising strategies for their very substantial number of broadcast advertisers.

Tivo president and CEO Tom Rogers says, “Every night, the vast majority of Australians turn to free to air broadcasters for their television entertainment. The Australian television market is on the cusp of a significant migration to digital television that will greatly expand the choices available on free-to-air television.

“We are excited to play a key role in driving this transition by partnering with the top television network in the country to establish Seven‘s leadership of this transformation.

“This new partnership with Seven will utilize Tivo‘s content search and discovery features, Tivo‘s powerful advertising capabilities and broadband video straight to the TV set. This relationship demonstrates our ability to deploy the Tivo service on the digital terrestrial, or DVB-T standard, which has now been globally adopted and will represent more than 100 million homes by 2009. It demonstrates the opportunities Tivo has to work with leading broadcasters who have substantial marketing clout to drive Tivo DVR penetration by adopting our hardware and software approaches to this globally important standard.”

Seven Media Group CEO David Leckie said, “This association unites the strengths of free to air television and Tivo to deliver new digital services to the Australian consumer. Free-to-Air television is well positioned in Australia to benefit from the Tivo service in offering viewers the chance to easily find and automatically record the programming they want, schedule their viewing time and vastly extend their overall television viewing experience.

“Through TiVo, Seven will leverage our broadcast television and publishing businesses, deliver new advertising and marketing solutions, and expand our presence in new communications platforms, as we work in partnership with Yahoo!7 and Engin. As a broadcaster, we are uniquely positioned to promote DVRs while simultaneously defining the future of television advertising.”

A number of major media organisations have expressed interest in participating on the platform. Engin will play a pivotal role in distribution and support of Tivo in Australia . Seven and Engin are finalizing distribution arrangements with other partners.