Category: Software

NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati has still to receive the report of the technical sub-group set up by the Union Cabinet on the issue of setting encryption mandates for Doordarshan‘s terrestrial signals.

Sources in the sub-group headed by All India Radio Director-General Brajeshwar Singh, which has so far failed to reach a conclusive decision, have told indiantelevision.com that the draft report will be circulated for their comments among the members after it is completed and only then submitted to Prasar Bharati.

This flies in the face of the assurances given on 8 March in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) by information & broadcasting minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi, that a committee looking into the issue would have its report ready by 16 March (tomorrow).

It also comes against the backdrop of the Board for Control of Cricket in India’s offer to bear the cost of encrypting all 1,400 DD transmitters, in an effort to sort out the imbroglio between Doordarshan and Nimbus with regard to sharing of live sports telecast feed with the public broadcaster.

BCCI Secretary Niranjan Shah has told indiantelevision.com that encryption of all DD transmitters would cost around Rs 20 million and could be completed in about two weeks. India cricket rights holder Nimbus has warned the BCCI it would demand compensation for “dilution of the value of its property” if the issue is not sorted out.

It is worth recalling that Dasmunsi had told the House on 8 March that “three meetings have been held and 16th (March) is the last meeting. After the outcome of the meetings, wherever necessary provision is required, can be made. We can put it in the rules. That is why, I kept Section 7 vide giving the Central government the power and I shall again report back to Parliament where the rules will be laid in both the Houses.”

The setting of mandates for encryption was suggested after private broadcasters said sharing live sporting events with DD leads to piracy. The Union Cabinet had suggested while setting up the sub-group that DD signals should be encrypted in a manner that only DD’s terrestrial transmitting centres receive the feeds.

Encryption of signals for a particular channel is an accepted practice overseas.

ESPN Star, Nimbus and Zee, among other broadcasters, had demanded that DD signals be encrypted as the public broadcaster had a reach spanning a vast area from West Asia to Singapore.

MUMBAI: The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has further raised the orbit of its recently launched communications satellite Insat-4B.

In the second orbit raising manoeuvre conducted at 12:47 [IST] yesterday (14 March), the Liquid Apogee Motor (Lam) on board Insat-4B was fired for 41 minutes by commanding the satellite from Master Control Facility (MCF), Hassan.

With this LAM firing, Insat-4B perigee (closest point to earth) has been raised to 32,878 km. The apogee (farthest point to earth) height remains at 35,736 km. The inclination of orbit with respect to the equatorial plane has been reduced to 0.19 deg. Insat-4B now has an orbital period of 22 hours 41 minutes.

The satellite will now be in the continuous radio visibility of MCF-Hassan.

Insat-4B was launched by the European Ariane-5 launch vehicle on 12 March from Kourou, French Guiana.

Insat-4B came within the radio visibility of MCF yesterday morning at 06:13 am (IST) and all the necessary operations like earth acquisition and gyro calibration were carried out before the second orbit raising manoeuvre was started.

The next orbit manoeuvre to place Insat-4B in near Geosynchronous Orbit is planned on 16 March. Deployment of the two solar panels and the two antennas will be carried out subsequently.

MUMBAI: Star has announced the launch of Star One and Vijay on PCCW’s broadband platform now TV.

The two channels join Star Plus, Star News and Channel [V] India from the Star bouquet already on now TV.

The two channels are available on channels 797 and 798 respectively at a subscription rate of HK$78 per channel to expand their offering for local South Asian viewers, informs an official release.

“We are delighted to expand our partnership with now TV through the launch of Star One and Vijay,” said Star executive VP advertising sales, distribution and marketing Bruce A. Oltchick. “We are very pleased to be able to bring that same top-flight content to South Asian audiences in Hong Kong.”

PCCW executive VP television and content Janice Lee, said, “We greatly value the opportunity to broaden our Indian entertainment channel offering by bringing these two popular channels to our South Asian subscribers.”

NEW DELHI: In two separate but related developments, the issue of voluntary Cas became central today when TDSAT stayed its own previous order on voluntary Cas in Orissa, while members of the consultative committee of Trai on voluntary Cas told the regulator unanimously that Cas must be mandatory.

The Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) today heard senior counsel for ETV, Parag Tripahti, on the review petition the broadcaster had filed on the March 1 order of the court, and stayed its own order.

That March 1 order had been issued after hearing a petition by Ortel, an MSO in Orissa which had decided to rollout Cas voluntarily and had wanted ETV digital signals, which they said they would pay ETV for.

Ortel had pleaded that ETV may be ordered to give their digital signal, and Ortel would pay ETV for each subscriber who opted to have the ETV channel.

Ortel is an Orissa MSO that has started voluntary rollout of Cas there, and had said that the ETV signals would be delivered through Cas STBs, and hence, there would be no under-declaration, as the SMS (Subscriber Management System) would be used.

On March 1, TDSAT had issued an order that it would be beneficial if Cas rollout is voluntary and ordered ETV to give digital signals to Ortel within one week.

ETV had filed a review petition on that order, and Tripathi today argued that according to Section 4-A of the Cable Television Network Act (1995), only the Central government could have order Cas rollout, and hence TDSAT had no jurisdiction over that.

The court after hearing the ETV argument stayed their original order on voluntary rollout of Cas, sending legal and MSO circles went into a tizzy as to the possible implications this could have.

Meanwhile, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India‘s (Trai) committee on voluntary Cas met today at the Trai office here and all the members stressed that voluntary Cas would not work and it had to be made mandatory, sources told indiantelevision.com.

The committee includes representatives of Incable, WWIL, Sun TV, Hathway as well as the two DTH players, TataSky and Dish TV. Both the latter too put their strength behind mandatory Cas.

The core of the argument of the committee members lie in the fact that the Central government was pushing for going digital, which is only possible under DTH or Cas. Hence, if that programme has to be ensured success, Cas has to be made mandatory across the metros.

They said that Cas will not pan out unless people are given a deadline to shift over, and even the experience of Cas this time showed that even after the enforcement, people have take a long time to switch over the Cas.

Hence, the have demanded the mandatory rollout of Cas throughout the three metros and not just parts of them.

Trai will send its report to the Centre.

Incidentally, the Delhi High Court is also hearing a case in which an MSO has sought clarification whether Trai could order Cas rollout in select sections of the three metros or does the order cover their entire area.

MUMBAI: US media conglomerate Viacom has sued video sharing firm YouTube and search engine major Google which bought Youtube last year.

Viacom has sued for massive intentional copyright infringement of Viacom’s entertainment properties. The suit seeks more than $1 billion in damages, as well as an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement.

The complaint contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom in a statement says, “YouTube is a significant, for-profit organisation that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.

“In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.

“This behaviour stands in stark contrast to the actions of other significant distributors, who have recognised the fair value of entertainment content and have concluded agreements to make content legally available to their customers around the world.

“There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process. This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity.

“After a great deal of unproductive negotiation, and remedial efforts by ourselves and other copyright holders, YouTube continues in its unlawful business model. Therefore, we must turn to the courts to prevent Google and YouTube from continuing to steal value from artists and to obtain compensation for the significant damage they have caused.”

MUMBAI: Cellcast Interactive India which works in the area of interactive television has begun operations in Sri Lanka with the launch of its award-winning interactive auction show Bid2Win on Derana TV.

Cellcast says that Sri Lanka’s rapidly expanding mobile phone base of 5.4 million users, about 28 per cent of the country’s 19 million population, along with its advanced 3G-based mobile infrastructure, makes it a prime market for its products

Bid2Win is the first direct participation TV programme in Sri Lanka, and the first to use premium SMS to create new revenue streams for mobile operators and broadcasters. Featuring prominently in Sri Lanka’s prime-time TV schedules, Bid2Win has received millions of responses since its launch in November 2006.

Bid2Win is one of a portfolio of participation-TV formats developed by Cellcast plc and has been sold to over eight markets. During the half-hour show, audiences are shown a high-value aspirational product and encouraged to send premium-rate SMS containing a unique, low bid. The auction engine evaluates the bids and maintains the “current lowest bidder” at all times. It also responds to every bidder with the status of his/her bid. At the end of the auction period (24 hours), the final winner is declared. The bidders and current winner information is shown in real-time on TV during the half-hour show and can be seen on the Internet at all times.

Cellcast Interactive India CEO Pankaj Thakar says, “The Cellcast Group is a pioneer in participation content and premium rate mobile entertainment services across the world. I am delighted with the substantial audiences Bid2Win has attracted on Derana TV and I’m pleased to confirm we will shortly be introducing more of these types of shows in Sri Lanka to meet local demand.

“The launch of our programmes in Sri Lanka is the natural outcome of our successful operation in India. With proven formats and technologies and an experienced team based in Mumbai, we plan to export our mobile phone linked interactive television products to other South Asian markets. Mobile phone usage in the region continues to enjoy huge growth, and in today’s multi-channel television environment, audiences are hungry for new forms of entertainment.”

Derana TV is a terrestrial broadcasters in Sri Lanka. Cellcast CEO Andrew Wilson says, “Sri Lanka is the twenty-ninth country in which our programmes and applications have been launched, demonstrating the effectiveness of our interactive broadcast model which is delivering both new revenue streams and the active engagement of television audiences worldwide.”

In January 2007 Cellcast had launched Sumo.TV which offers India’s first end-to-end user-generated content (UGC) solution for broadcasters.

The Cellcast Group’s participation TV formats are scalable from small satellite channels to major terrestrial broadcasters, suitable for all countries, languages and cultures, and are generating significant revenues for its broadcast partners in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The group‘s proprietary programming content captures new telephony-based pay-to-participate revenue streams that are independent of subscription income and advertising.

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MUMBAI: ADAG‘s gaming portal Zapak.com is now looking to rope in female users with the launch of Zapakgirls.com.

The portal promises to offer international quality games which have simple yet mind tickling gameplay. The various genres of games available are strategy, puzzles and arcade.

Malaika Arora Khan promotes Zapakgirls.com

Additionally, there is a special audio-video tarot forecast and forums dedicated to women. Other features include fashion forecasting by designers and fashion gurus of India, Experts giving advice on various topics like ayurveda (Dr. Shailendra) and allopathy (Dr. Manju Sachdev) and audio-video series on things girls would love to know about like cooking, car care and self defence techniques.

The upcoming features on Zapakgirls.com include a section on women achievers and girls who have done something remarkable to be given a place in a section called girl of the week. To keep the excitement going, contests and gratifications will soon find way into Zapakgirls.com.

Two of the most popular games are Diner Dash 2, in which the player earns points by swiftly serving the customers at a restaurant and Plantasia, where the player has to dig the ground, plant seeds, water plants to make them grow and earn points by harvesting the flowers.

Zapak Digital Entertainment Limited COO Rohit Sharma said, “In the US, women constitute over 50 per cent of the online casual gaming community. They prefer games requiring lesser instructions and time to play. It‘s time we pampered this segment. According to reports tracking the activity of Indian women online, they have crossed the 12 million mark, which is 32 per cent of the total online population and this percentage has a potential to increase to 40 per cent in the next 2 years which makes it a fast growing segment.

NEW DELHI: Kotak Institutional Equities, among India‘s top brokerage firms, has said that for the DTH sector, subsidy on STBs would be crucial and warned that late entrants may have to pay higher subsidy and also higher costs due to shortage of transponders on the Ku band.

On the ground of transponders, it predicts the launch of Sun Direct TV ahead of Reliance or Bharti, since Sun has booked transponders on the just launched Insat-4B satellite.

A report from the company‘s study on the DTH sector says that the subsidy on each STB ought to be around Rs 1,200 to allow faster penetration by DTH players.

“We expect the imminent entry of several new DTH players in the market and potentially impact the level of STB subsidies. However, we also expect that increased distribution and faster execution leading to a steep increase in the annual net additions, compared to the current pace,” the report says.

Iterating that most costs on the DTH sector are fairly typical, it says that STB subsidies are the key variable in the financial model and valuation of a DTH company.

It explains that the STB subsidies would depend on the number of operators and the intent of the individual operators regarding market share and pricing, as well as some other factors.

“It is possible,” the report looks ahead, “that the late entrants may resort to higher subsidies in order to accelerate their pace of net additions compared to incumbents and try to gain market share.

Incidentally, RN Choubey, Advisor, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had told indiantelevision.com last week that if the DTH operators really have to penetrate the market deeper than they have, they would have to keep the entry point cost for the customers low.

At the present moment, they are charging steeply for the STBs and offering some opening bonanza, which is in fact keeping the ARPU very low, as the Kotak analysis (reported earlier on indiantelevision.com) notes.

Essentially, therefore, both Kotak and the sector regulator have the same advice for the DTH players: make it less costly to buy a box and enjoy greater and faster penetration.

“For our preliminary modelling we assume a subsidy of Rs 1,200 for a new subscriber and keep this constant for the entire period of our forecast. We amortise this over 48 months,” it advices the DTH players. The period of forecast is 10 years, till 2017.

Kotak does not see other costs as a major variable in their valuation for the DTH industry, saying, “Much of the costs are fairly typical and well known.”

It also does not see costs as an area of difference across operators. The only cost difference would be in broadcasting unique content, whenever the government allows that, the study suggests.

A DTH operator, provided the government allows this, could add unique content to garner more market share.

Kotak has modelled longer term content costs to be 45 to 50 per cent of revenue before taxes, but including license and spectrum fees, which last could be higher for new entrants.

The study has modelled transponder charge at $ 1 billion to 1.1 billion per transponder, with14 channels on each transponder.

It reiterates that theoretically a transponder could carry larger number of channels but the quality suffers, and in the age of heightened competition, this would affect an individual DTH player, if he tries this.

“We do not see this as a differentiating factor between financially strong players,” the report holds.

MUMBAI: MTV.com the online site of the music channel experienced record traffic and video streams since the beginning of the year. MTV.com recorded 1 million streams from its MTV Mobile service in the month of December ‘06 and January ‘07.

MTV.com delivered a record 84 million streams in January and followed it up with 85.1 million streams in February. Last month also saw mtv.com deliver an average of 3 million streams daily, the first time the site has reached that threshold.

The streams were driven by record numbers of unique or first time visitors. In January, mtv.com attracted 24.2 million unique visitors which is an all-time-high for the site. It is also a huge 56 percent increase over January 2006.

“Viewers are constantly telling us they want to dig deeper into the content they see on-air, and they are obsessive about following our programming from one platform to the other-and back,” said MTV president Christina Norman. “When the TV show The Hills inspires a community of fans to connect with their favorite cast members and devour exclusive content online and on the handset, the payoff for viewers is a more immersive experience all the way around”, she added.

MTV also said that the live reunion show The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Duel in January was mtv.com‘s most successful live streaming event.

MUMBAI: NDS, digital payTV technology solutions provider, has announced the appointment of Kishore Shirekar as general manager of its India operations, with immediate effect.

Shirekar will report to NDS Asia Pacific vice president and general manager Sue Taylor.

In this newly created position, Shirekar will be responsible for commercial operations and customer support at NDS India, and will be based in the Mumbai office. He will develop new business for NDS endtoend payTV solutions in India, and manage NDS support operations for existing customers in India Tata Sky, Hathway Cable and Datacom, informs an official release.

Commenting on Shirekar‘s appointment, Taylor said, “Kishore has an outstanding record of achievement at generating new business in the Indian payTVindustry. He has a strong understanding of the characteristics of the Indian payTV
market, particularly with DTH broadcasting operations, which will beinvaluable to NDS and to our customers in India as payTV undergoes a period of rapid transformation. We feel fortunate to have himjoin NDS India.”

Shirekar said, “I see this new role as a great opportunity to change the way Indian payTV viewers are informed and entertained. By working with Indian payTV operators to offer new digital andinteractive services, I can lead a team that is changing the future of Indian payTV. I am excited andlook forward to building on the foundation thatis in place at NDS Mumbai and to take that to the next level.”