Category: Software

MUMBAI: Dish TV will have to wait for infusing further capital to fund its aggressive growth plans. The issue up to Rs 7.5 billion worth of preference shares to the promoters has been put on hold due to regulatory issues.

“Consequent to recent amendments in regulatory guidelines relating to issue of preference shares, it has been decided to keep in abeyance the decision relating to issue of preference shares,” Dish TV has told the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The board had earlier approved issue of non-cumulative, non-convertible redeemable preference shares of Rs 100 each up to Rs 7.5 billion on a private placement basis to the promoter group.

However, the government‘s norms for preference shares as laid down on 30 April states that foreign investment through non-convertible shares would be treated as debt or external commercial borrowings.

Reserve Bank of India had already said foreign investors will not be allowed to purchase additional shares in Dish TV India on account of FII shareholding reaching 49 per cent limit of the company‘s paid up capital, according to a PTI report.

Dish TV has also informed the BSE that the authorization proposed to be sought from its shareholders through the extraordinary general meeting, scheduled for 25 May, has been deferred.

The DTH business, however, has a dose of funding available as the promoters recently had offloaded nine per cent stake in the company to a few institutional investors to raise Rs 4.45 billion. The capital raised would be used to fund the expansion plans of the demerged distribution companies, Dish TV and Zee‘s cable company Wire & Wireless India Ltd.

Dish TV plans to pump in Rs 10 billion over two and a half years in a bid to ramp up its subscriber base.

MUMBAI: Pritish Nandy Communications has signed a five film deal with Motion Pixel Corporation, the Florida-based animation company which has the animation studio Estudio Flex in Costa Rica.

The deal between the two companies includes five 3D animated Bollywood films with Indian and international actors, songs, dances, item numbers and everything that Bollywood is special for. The first of these five films is currently in production and is a version 2.0 of one of PNC‘s most successful live action films.

The deal is worth $25 million. The deal will see PNC handle the creative aspects of these animated films from the development of scripts, movie soundtracks, including contracting top Bollywood and international stars to do voice-overs for the animated characters. MPC will handle all components of the animation through Estudio Flex.

The Bollywood film industry is one of the fastest growing film segments in the world, producing over 300 feature films a year. The animation market is a new extension of this industry and could see Bollywood‘s turnover multiply many times over simply by creating international language versions of what are essentially successful Bollywood movies. These five movies will, for instance, be put out in many languages of the world as well as in several Indian language versions.

MPC chairman Manny Bains says, “We are extremely excited to be working with PNC, an industry leader in Bollywood and my good friend Pritish Nandy. Our commitment is evident by working exclusively together in this area for years to come. We believe that taking both the multi-billion dollar animation sector and the ever growing global Bollywood market ahead in tandem could well surpass all industry expectations.”

Pritish Nandy says, “We have seen some of the animation work done by Manny and his team at MPC and they will totally redefine what we know as animation movies in India. These are not kid flicks like Hanuman and Krishna. These are movies that everyone will watch, irrespective of their age and language preference. From action movies to romances to comedies and horror, we will cover every genre out here and surprise the Indian market with the quality and imagination that MPC‘s animation skills will provide these films. This is the first of its kind and you will now see Bollywood movies truly going global instead of attempting the usual crossover experiments. This is going to be a genre by itself. “

The first of these joint venture animation movies is expected to be ready for release in the first half of next year.

MUMBAI: Hathway Cable and Datacom Private Limited, a part of the Rajan Raheja group has launched its Broadband Internet services in Coimbatore based on Docsis technology.

The MSO also has plans to target residential, small medium enterprises and corporates through aggressive marketing and customer relationship.

Hathway‘s Broadband Internet is presently available in the cities Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mysore, Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Baroda, Delhi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jaalundhar, Kanpur.

NEW DELHI: The Indian gaming industry, presently estimated at $100 million, is expected to triple by 2009 with an estimate of $300 million.

This signifies a growth of 94 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Interestingly, this segment was estimated at only $30 million in 2005 and $8 million in 2003, showing a CAGR of 78%.

Of this, mobile gaming contributes 58 per cent of the total revenue and can go up to 70 per cent with increase in use of mobile phones, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). Gaming includes consoles, online, multiplayer, casual and mobile games, according to another report by global consultancy firm KPMG.

Though still very small compared to the developed gaming markets such as the United States, Japan, Korea and China, India has a definite cost advantage since a PC game can be developed in the range of $0.5 million to $3 million as compared to $6million to $7 million in the USA.

The Indian gaming industry is also beginning to benefit from outsourcing and firms in India are now making modules of games for international companies, thus reducing their costs. These include Microsoft Corp, US-based Electronic Art Inc, UBiSoft Entertainment of France, Konami Corporation of Japan, US-based Activision Inc, and Take 2 Interactive Inc. A few components of ‘Perfect Dark Zero’, a game released by Microsoft were developed by Dhruva Interactive based in Bangalore.

According to industry sources, the ratio of revenue from services and original content development has already reached to 80:20, and is expected to improve to 60:40 in a couple of years.

Indian animation companies like DQ Entertainment Ltd, Animation Bridge, Paradox Studios, ColorChips, Toonz Animation, Hungama and Ittina Studios have entered the field which was until now monopolized by companies such as Dhruva Interactive; Indiagames Ltd, Mauj Telecom, and Mobile2Win.

These companies are also creating their own games. The success of India’s first content animated feature film ‘Hanuman’ produced by Percept Pictures and Sahara India Group has motivated game developers to look at Indian content to base their games on. Several companies like Indiagames, Paradox Studios, Fantasy Labs and Ittina Solutions have already started local content for mobiles, PCs and consoles. DQ Entertainment has planned to produce three animated feature films and also develop games around them.

Interestingly, Indian game developers are also tapping the popularity of Bollywood movies, and a game based on the super hit Hindi movie ‘Don’ was introduced recently.

Meanwhile, a recent study by IMRB International, a market research firm, on behalf of the Internet and Mobile Association of India showed that online gaming market in India has been estimated at $5 million (Rs.210 million). While 58.4% of this revenue comes from organised cyber cafes, subscriptions contribute about 31.4% and advertising brings the remaining 10.6% revenue.

MUMBAI: Even as the government is working to increase its WiMax services and has started pilot projects, the public-sector RailTel is planning to provide broadband services at select railway stations with this technology under public-private partnership.

Railway ministry sources told indiantelevision.com it will now be possible to provide broadband services and Voice Over Internet Protocol services at the railway stations as well as towns and villages in the vicinity of railway stations. Any passenger with suitable laptop/other device will be able to access internet facility.

The investment on infrastructure to provide these services would be made by the private sector.

Meanwhile, Communications and Information Technology Ministry sources said Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) was planning to invest on WiMax infrustructure in 10 cities- Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad for urban applications, and Hissar, Pinjore, Rohtak and Panipat for rural applications.

The BSNL has finalised a tender for WiMax systems and the finalised rate for procurement is Rs 19.2 million. The equipment has been received and one system has already been installed at each of the ten selected cities.

NEW DELHI: Telecom-specific Special Economic Zones are to be set up soon to turn the country into a telecom manufacturing hub.

The Communications and Information Technology Ministry sources told indiantelevision.com that an ‘Export Promotion Forum’ was also being set up under the aegis of the Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association of India to promote export of telecom equipment and services.

In fact, these sources said that as a first step, the Commerce and Industry Ministry has already notified 42 Sector specific Special Economic Zones (SEZs) for Electronic Hardware, Information Technology including Information Technology Enabled Services (IT/ITES) under the provisions of the SEZ Act 2005.

Of these, the largest number of ten SEZs would be in Andhra Pradesh, followed by nine in Tamil Nadu, eight in Karnataka, three each in Kerala and Maharashtra, two each in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and one each in Chandigarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, and West Bengal.

India has already become the third largest telecommunication network in the world after China and the United States.

The Ministry has set a target of 500 million phone connections by 2010 and nine million broadband subscribers will be added by the end of the year of which seven million will be by the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited.

Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran had recently said that broadband connections posted a growth of 70 per cent to touch 2.3 million at the end of March, as compared to 1.35 million last year. The broadband subscribers were 2.21 million in February last, thus adding 0.09 million subscribers in the month of March. The total number of existing ISP licencees is 382.

The total number of telephones in the country is now more than 206.8 million with teledensity of 18.3% as against 142.1 million with teledensity of 12.74% during the corresponding period of last year, registering a growth rate of 45%.

The GSM segment has shown an increase of 6.1 million during the month of March 2007 and the fixed segment by 0.5 million, while the CDMA segment declined by 2.8 million. As a result, the credit of net increase in the subscriber base thus became 3.8 million only.

Under the Bharat Nirman Programme, 41706 villages out of the 66,822 villages have been provided with Village Public Telephones (VPTs). The remaining 25116 villages are to be covered by November this year.

Ministry sources added that with the passing of the Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Bill 2006, it will be possible to provide Universal Service Obligation (USO) support to provide mobile services and broadband connectivity in rural areas. USO subsidy support scheme will be utilised for shared wireless infrastructure in rural areas with about 8000 towers by 2007. Measures are being taken to increase availability of spectrum including the release of substantial quantum from Defence.

The Government has also said it favours the entry of foreign telecom operators in the country to take advantage of the additional 42.5 MHz spectrum becoming available for third generation mobile telephony and introduce competition. A new 3G Spectrum Allocation Plan is also expected to be announced by the Department of Telecommunications after additional spectrum become available by July.

Rural areas of the country will have a total of 50 million telecom subscribers this year by setting up 8,000 transmitting towers, and the overall telecom base of the country will reach 250 million by August from 206.83 million at present. The total telephony subscriber base (wireless and wireline) was 206.83 million at the end of the fiscal year, with an annual addition of 66.51 million subscribers during 2006-07.

The wireless services subscriber base at the end of March this year stood at 166.05 million as compared to 98.78 million in the same month last year, registering a growth of 68 per cent. According to figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the month added 3.53 million wireless subscribers as against 6.21 million subscribers in February this year.

NEW DELHI: With the craze for high definition TV sets with crystal clear digitised images being reflected in the new product launches and sales promos of companies, people are missing out on the advancement of HD sound and that, unfortunately, does not come automatically with HD TVs.

In fact, most are even unaware that in the rush to compress a thousand songs in a portable player, the MP 3 format gives us sound that is 90 per cent less perfect than the originals, and some companies are working to undo that and restore MP 3 to what they call “sound of the 70s”, clear, rich and original.

High Definition TV will be one of the great success stories of 2007, according to a BBC report.

For most, the attraction is a bigger telly with a better picture – but what about the sound? What is HD sound anyway? And do we need anything more than our shiny new TV to get it? BBC‘s Dan Simmons ‘looked into‘ the sound, literally.

Dolby and DTS are passé now, and next generation of Dolby and DTS – Dolby True HD and DTS-HD (or Master DH Audio to give it its full name) are making their impacts felt.

Clare Newsome of www.whathifi.com says: “We‘ve got the next generation of Dolby and DTS – Dolby True HD and DTS-HD (or Master DH Audio to give it its full name). From the names ‘master‘ and ‘true‘ you‘re being told that it‘s uncompressed.

“You watch something like ‘Casino Royale‘ and it‘s just amazing, a whole extra level of cinematic. And the chances are that will sound better than you‘ve heard in a small multiplex.”

Newsome says: “There is no standard for HD sound. A lot of people are staring to put it on products and there‘s a lot of potential for confusion out there.”

Whilst it‘s important to understand that manufacturers could slap the label HD on any half decent audio system the lack of a standard hasn‘t meant a lack of progress.

But now everything‘s just got one step better. Unlike standard broadcasts most HDTV automatically includes surround sound, and there are now brand new sound formats for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs which, for the first time, have the space to carry uncompressed sound.

This delivers a perfect replica of the movie‘s soundtrack through the players‘ HDMI socket.

The HDMI cable typically would run from the player to the amp, which takes the audio and passes on the picture via another HDMI cable to the TV.

The amp decodes the sound signals and sends them to the surround sound speakers. The sound can also be channelled through 6 analogue phono outputs, but this is a more messy solution as far as cables are concerned.

“Trouble is we don‘t yet have all the kit we need to experience it!” Simmons says.

Newsome assures, however, that from this summer there‘s a lot of new kit coming out, a lot of it quite affordable, and a lot of it will include these new HD formats.

Experts says that don‘t rely on your TV speakers – HDTVs may offer the best in vision but the built-in speakers deliver a fraction of what‘s on offer because all HD broadcasts are now in surround sound by default.

Even fancy wireless speakers are not trustable. Some won‘t cope with the new sound formats, so check first. In this case you‘ll need to select a compressed sound format like standard DTS.

BBC quotes Geraldine De Bonus, www.creative.com as saying: “With the change from CD Discmans to MP3 people haven‘t realised but they‘ve lost a huge amount of audio quality. By ripping a CD track to MP3 or WMA a lot of audio is lost.”

Unless you‘ve been ripping or copying your CDs in a lossless format chances are you‘ve crushed the amount of data a CD would have given you by 90 per cent – just to get in onto a portable player.

Lossless compression is where a file is reduced in size, but where the algorithm used to do so also allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed file. More: Lossless data compression

Creative has been improving audio with its soundcards for more than 20 years – mainly aimed at gamers. But as we begin to store more of our media on hard drives it‘s created kit that tries to upgrade our low-grade MP3s to how they should sound.

Darragh O‘Toole of Creative explains: “If you‘re looking at the ‘before‘ and ‘after‘ sound (shown in EM graphs) waves you can see that in the MP3 version all of the changes in audio energy levels are actually dumbed down, curtailed. So we understand what has happened during the process.

“If you look at the ‘after‘ phase [of our new system] you can see how we‘ve restored these. So the strength and energy has been restored to things like the bass drums, you‘ll hear it come much more alive with crisp snare drums and nice, tight high hats at the high end.”

In March, SRS Labs, (NASDAQ:SRSL), a leading supplier of audio, voice and surround sound technology solutions, announced the availability of new SRS WOW HD(TM) and SRS Mobile HD(TM) audio drivers for Windows Mobile 6.

Windows Mobile device manufacturers may license these audio solutions to enable a 5.1 surround headphone listening experience for mobile TV and video applications.

Further, device manufacturers and mobile operators can rest assured knowing that these audio technologies have achieved “Designed for Windows Mobile” certification through the Windows Mobile 2 Market certification and marketing program.

Designed for mobile broadcast services like Digital Video Broadcast – Handheld (“DVB-H”) and for digital video downloads, the SRS Headphone 360(TM) technology in SRS Mobile HD is a full audio rendering solution that enables handset makers and mobile operators the ability to deliver an immersive surround sound headphone experience with low battery impact for the exploding Mobile TV and mobile video market.

With SRS Mobile HD, Windows Mobile users can experience “personal” 5.1 home-theatre surround on the go, through their own favourite headphones or earbuds the SRS software on the handset does the processing.

“With the release of Windows Mobile 6 comes a new wave of functionality for business professionals and consumers alike,” said Mike Canevaro, senior director of business development, SRS Labs.

Each of the audio drivers is easy-to-implement and sit within the audio path. They enhance any audio going through the ARM-based multimedia applications processors such as Texas Instruments‘ OMAP devices and Marvell‘s PXA-27x (formerly Intel Xscale) processors. Additionally, SRS Labs delivers a full consumer graphical user interface that can be customized by the handset maker.

All these changes mean our digital sound is likely to stage a very unsung, overlooked, and quiet revolution.

MUMBAI: Almost half of Europeans are already watching television shows through their broadband internet connections, a new study has revealed.

In a study of 2,500 broadband users across the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, 45 per cent said they frequently watch TV over the internet and this figure is set to grow over the next few years as major broadcasters continue to digitise their material.

The French were the most demanding for online content, followed by the Brits in second place and Italians in third in the research by Motorola.

The TV itself is evolving, according to the study, becoming an interactive entertainment and communications tool. On average users are now connecting three devices to their TV sets, and close to a third of all Europeans are attaching a digital camera to download and view photos.

45 per cent of Europeans believe they will be making video calls using their TV by the time the 2012 Olympics are on.

Motorola notes that the results show that viewers across Europe are no longer satisfied with fitting into schedules dictated by broadcasters and are turning to the choice and flexibility offered by TV over the internet.

What is being seen is a nation of citizen schedulers who are in control of their entertainment, allowing them to watch what they want, how and when they want it.

57 per cent of respondents want the ability to go online via the TV set during a live broadcast, for example to get sports statistics during a match or check out retail stores for fashion show items

35 per cent of viewers want the ability to pause, fast forward or rewind live broadcast programming

MUMBAI: Wire & Wireless India Ltd (WWIL) has entered into initial agreements with 18 independent cable operators across the country for acquiring controlling stake but the cash transaction is yet to be complete.

The Zee Group‘s demerged cable company would have to cough out Rs 500 million towards this, a source in the company says. “The deals are stuck in various stages of commitment and the payment is yet to be made,” he adds.

WWIL was on an overdrive to snap up customers and had plans to put in Rs 1.14 billion over a two-year period. But the activity has slowed down as penetration of digital set-top boxes (STBs) has been low. The company is also waiting for the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to come out with a plan for widespread digital roll out.

WWIL is expected to have a turnover of Rs 2.2 billion and a loss of Rs 400 million for the fiscal ended 31 March 2007. The company‘s net sales for the third quarter of the fiscal stood at Rs 407.6 million while net loss was at Rs 171.4 million.

WWIL has aggressive plans to expand its digital cable business and had earlier projected a fund requirement of Rs 7.14 billion over two years.

MUMBAI: DTH service provider Tata Sky has introduced three new packages – the Starter Pack, the Family Pack and the Western Pack in addition to its existing Super Saver Pack.

As had been reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com two new channels from BBC, CBeebies and BBC entertainment made their debut across India on Tata Sky. Shradha MH One, DD Lok Sabha TV and Akash Bangla were also recently launched on the platform.

The Starter Pack costs Rs 160 per month. It comprises of 35 channels including ESPN and Star Sports along with two interactive services (ActveTM Wizkids and ActveTM Games). The Family Pack costs Rs 250 per month. It comprises of 71 channels including all popular Hindi, Regional and Sports channels along with 4 interactive services (Actve Khabar, Actve Star News, Actve Wizkids and Actve Games).

The Western Pack is priced at Rs 250 per month and spans 67 channels covering all English, Regional and Sports channels along with three interactive services (Actve Newsroom, Actve Wizkids and Actve Games).

The Super Saver Pack spans 94 channels covering all Hindi, English, Regional and Sports channels along with six interactive services (Actve Sports, Actve Games, Actve Wizkids, Actve Newsroom, Actve Khabar and Actve Star News). It is available for Rs 300 per month.

Tata Sky MD and CEO Vikram Kaushik says, “Over the last eight months, the quick adoption of our service across the country has accorded Tata Sky the status of the fastest growing DTH platform in the world. This itself is testimony to the success of the pay TV market in India.

“As a customer focussed company it is our constant endeavour to offer our subscribers with maximum choice and value. We are the first in the Indian pay television market to offer our customers pan-India the freedom of genuine choice, at affordable prices with the launch of the three new channel packages.”