Category: Software

MUMBAI: UK pay TV service provider BSkyB says that the total number of Sky+ boxes installed in customers‘ homes in the UK has broken through two million for the first time.

The milestone was reached after the number of Sky+ boxes grew by more than 50 per cent in 2006, putting Sky on track to pass its target of 25 per cent Sky+ penetration well in advance of the original schedule of 2010.

The company says that the rapid growth of Sky+ highlights increasing demand from customers for the ability to take control over their television viewing. With two million active boxes, almost five million viewers are using Sky+ to record without video tape, pause and rewind live TV, and record all episodes of a favourite series at the touch of a button.

To give customers even more choice and control, Sky plans to introduce a number of new enhancements to Sky+ in 2007 that will revolutionise the TV experience even further. These innovations will include the ability to use the internet to set a recording on your Sky+ box even when you are away from home. Customers will simply log on to www.sky.com to programme their box remotely.

Also in 2007, Sky will introduce a new enhancement giving Sky+ customers the chance to enjoy a selection of the week‘s best programmes on-demand. The service will be available to more than one million Sky+ and Sky HD customers from launch, making use of additional recording capacity on the hard drive of more recent boxes.

Sky CFO Jeremy Darroch said, “Sky+ has changed the way millions of people watch TV. In its own way, Sky+ has as dramatic an effect on the experience of TV as the iPod has with music. There‘s no going back once you‘ve experienced the ability to take control over the TV schedules and we‘re planning new innovations in 2007 to make Sky+ even better.

“Passing the milestone of 2 million Sky+ boxes keeps us on track to break through our target of 25 per cent penetration well ahead of schedule. The rapid growth of Sky+ shows strong customer demand for additional services and gives us great confidence as our multi-product strategy moves forward this year.”

Viewing behaviour in Sky+ homes

To coincide with the milestone of two million boxes, Sky has published new research findings highlighting how Sky+ is changing the TV viewing habits of families around the country. The data, garnered from the Sky View research panel, provides an accurate measurement of how customers are using Sky+ to record – or ‘time-shift‘ – television programmes.

Drama is the genre of programming most frequently recorded by Sky+ customers, accounting for 39.3 per cent of all time-shifted viewing. Other popular genres are documentaries (14.9 per cent), entertainment (13 per cent) and movies (9.5 per cent). In contrast, some genres of content remain at their most popular when consumed live. News and weather account for just 0.6% of time-shifted viewing by Sky+ viewers, while current affairs programmes account for 1.2%. (Source: Sky View)

These trends are reflected in the ranking of channels whose programming is subject to most time-shifting by Sky+ viewers:

With the ability to record two programmes simultaneously, Sky+ resolves scheduling clashes and allows customers to record peak-time shows to watch at a more convenient time.

Sky View research shows that, in Sky+ households, time-shifting accounts for 22 per cent of all viewing of programmes originally scheduled between 9 pm and 10 pm and 17 per cent of all viewing of programmes scheduled between 10 pm and 11 pm.

MUMBAI: The increasing influence of mobile video enabled on 3G networks will drive the uptake of many mobile sports, leisure and information services over the next five years, says Juniper Research.

The global market for sports, leisure and information content (infotainment) is set to grow from its 2006 value of just under $4.2 billion to $9.5 billion by 2011. The largest geographic market is forecast to be in Europe, which is expected to account for 40 per cent of revenues over the 2006 to 2011 period, with Asia Pacific contributing 33 per cent and the rapidly growing US market 18 per cent. The Asia Pacific region, according to the Juniper Research report, would generate the most infotainment traffic over the period, but higher price levels would make Europe the largest revenue generator.

The report‘s author Bruce Gibson said, “video has the potential to transform the user experience of many infotainment services, provided the video quality is good enough. The continued roll-out of 3G services globally will provide the platform for the development of high quality video content based services.” Types of services that will particularly benefit from enhanced video capability will include sports services, services based around TV shows and celebrities, traffic update services, news services and community applications with user generated content. Growth in sports services and services with user generated content should be particularly strong. Gibson adds, “Sports services are getting repeated boosts by high profile global and regional sporting events. 2008 will be a significant year in market growth with Uefa Euro 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. However the need to acquire mobile sports rights is keeping sports service prices high and these services require high quality and timely content.“On the other hand community applications with user generated content have relatively low cost content acquisition and minimise much of the complexity of content acquisition and updating. We see growth opportunities in both market sectors for very different reasons.”

MUMBAI/DELHI: Multi-system operators (MSOs) are under stress and strain to meet the demand for set-top boxes (STBs) as conditional access system (Cas) has come into effect in the notified areas of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata.

“We are moving 5000-6000 STBs a day in Mumbai,” says IndusInd Media and Communications Ltd. director-in- charge Ravi Mansukhani.

Wire & Wireless India Ltd CEO Jagjit Singh Kohli says that while he can‘t give a number in terms of the number of boxes being seeded, business has been brisk and smooth. “There have not been any technical glitches. The Cas deployments in the notified areas by all the cable operators has so far been much more than what direct-to-home (DTH) has achieved in these pockets.”.

For those who are taking the boxes, MSOs are providing all the pay channels for a trial period of 15 days. “We want to give them some time before they can decide on the channels that they want to pay for. After this period, they can choose what they want and they will be billed only for what they have decided to take,” says Mansukhani.

Adds WWIL executive vice president Arvind Mohan: “This is a transition period, so we are giving all the channels to all the STB subscribers. The processing of the forms being filled up takes some time. We are giving the subscribers a free run of all the channels. By 15 January, the entire system will be in place, and billing will be for the month depending on the channels they have selected.”

So how long does it take once a consumer orders for a STB? With so many people wanting a box at the same time, the maximum time it would take to get the system installed is a day as it has to be fed into the smart card and billing system, says Mansukhani.

Interestingly, there are indications that at the ground level there is some confusion in terms of pricing. For instance, this writer, residing in the Colaba area of South Mumbai, paid Rs 2000 on 1 January for a box while the MSO had recently announced a reduction in the price to Rs 1500. “There are some confusions still prevailing on the ground about the prices and packages on offer,” admits a local cable operator.

Speaking on behalf of the broadcasters, Star India‘s distribution head Tony D‘Silva says that it is too soon to comment on the adoption rate. “We had expected that there would be some confusion. We are adopting a wait and watch policy. In a few days time the situation should be clear.”

Zee Turner CEO Arun Poddar says that there is certainly a demand and supply mismatch across all the MSOs. He concedes some last mile operators would not be communicating adequately with consumers, thus leading to confusion.

Despite some confusion, the Cas rollout in South Delhi is happening steadily as there is a rush for the STBs.

SN Sharma of Hathway denied that there is any shortage of boxes. “This is a continuous process and we are getting consignments from our Korea company on a daily basis. There is a lag of time for getting connected because the local cable operator has a manpower shortage,” he says.

MUMBAI: Insat 4A, the satellite which Tata Sky uses for its direct-to-home (DTH) operations, saw a minor disruption in services for about 30 minutes at around 4 pm due to solar disturbances. 

Insat 4A lost earth lock when one of the momentum wheels used for stabilizing the spacecraft got switched off, Indian Space Research Organisation said today in a release.

Isro engineers at master control facility, Hassan, immediately took action to recover the earth lock and orient the satellite properly within about half an hour.

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (Tdsat) today asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to look into the issue of transponder capacity as raised by direct-to-home (DTH) service provider Tata Sky as a limiting factor.

The Tdsat has also asked Trai whether it would like to regulate prices for channels on DTH operations, as it has done in the case of cable operations in the Cas regime, or let market forces operate as they are now, in terms of broadcasters fixing their own prices.

Trai had been asked to state the time they would need to do so, and their counsel wanted two weeks. Trai has been asked to file an affidavit by 19 January.

Tdsat was hearing the ongoing case between Tata Sky and Zee-Turner, regarding the fixing of channel offered by the latter, which Tata Sky found too high. Tata Sky had filed the case earlier also because according to it, Zee-Turner had not acceded to its request to stream signals over the issue of prices, violating Trai regulation.

The matter came to head when Tata Sky alleged that Zee-Turner was indulging in cartelisation, since it was not only a MSO, but also part of a broadcaster on behalf of Turner.

While the Tata Sky counsel was addressing the court, the Zee counsel intervened to say that though Tata Sky was challenging Zee‘s contentions on the ground that it was an arm of broadcaster Turner, the same was the case with Tata Sky, which had an agreement with Star television, and could simply not seek to plead as just a DTH operator.

Tata Sky had said during the arguments that it had to operate through various transponders, and the total capacity of these was limited; but Zee rebutted that over and above the channels Zee was giving Tata Sky, the latter was still able to beam local channels, so the issue of a limited capacity of transponders did not hold good.

This is when the court decided to rise and discuss the issue between the brother judges.

On resumption of hearing, the court, instead of allowing the parties to continue arguments, directly addressed the Trai counsel and said that there are “larger issues that are worrying us”, and asked Trai to come out with their position.

While the counsel for Tata Sky referred to an earlier judgement of the same court (July 14, 2006), the court said certain issues may have been overlooked and hence, it was only Trai that would first need to state its position.

MUMBAI: Hinduja TMT has initiated talks and would prefer inducting a strategic rather than a private equity investor into its demerged media company.

The possibility of roping in an investor would be only after the listing of the two entities. The demerger process is underway and a listing is expected by February-end after the restructuring process gets the necessary regulatory approvals.

“We would prefer to go with a strategic rather than a private equity investor. We feel inputs from a strategic partner would give us a competitive edge,” said IndusInd Media and Communications Ltd (IMCL) director-in-charge Ravi Mansukhani.

On being queried as to whether global major Liberty was in talks, Mansukhani said “there were a bunch of them” who were interested in India‘s cable story. “All investors are waiting for conditional access system (Cas) to roll out before they come with definite valuations,” he added.

Unlike Zee‘s Wire & Wireless Ltd (WWIL) which is keen to acquire 51 per cent in cable networks, IndusInd Media and Communications Ltd (IMCL) is adopting a different business plan where it wants to partner rather than buy out operators.

The Hinduja Group, which operates its cable TV business under Incablenet brand, is planning to offer cable TV operators a share in the demerged media company based on the subscribers they declare. No decision has been taken as to the exact ratio that would be on offer.

“Our expansion plan includes offering shares in HTMT (after demerger) to operators as they form an integral part of our distribution chain. Our idea is to partner with the local cable operators rather than buy them out,” said Mansukhani.

HTMT is unifying its media subsidiaries under one umbrella while spinning off its IT/ITES business into a separate entity. As part of the restructuring, In2Cable (subsidiary which is into broadband business) and InNetwork Entertainment (content) are being merged into IMCL (cable TV distribution under Incablenet brand). The parent company for the consolidated media business will be HTMT (an existing listed entity). The demerged IT/ITES entity will be listed under HTMT Technologies.

MUMBAI: Online video sharing site YouTube and Warner Music Group (WMG) have announced the YouTube New Year‘s Eve Countdown presented by Chevrolet.

The promotion will celebrate New Year‘s as it happens around the world with new videos featured every hour from New Zealand to Los Angeles.

As New Year‘s Eve rings in around the world, special messages from YouTube celebrities Boh3m3, Smosh, Terra Naomi, Renetto, Chad Vadar, The WineKone and YourTube News, as well as award-winning artists from WMG labels Atlantic Records, Warner Bros. Records and Warner Music International will be featured on the homepage.

In addition to videos from YouTube personalities, WMG will provide special video content from New Year‘s celebrations with its artists as well as music videos and concert footage. ‘Almost-live‘ videos from New Year‘s concerts will be uploaded directly from the venues as the events occur with ShoZu-enabled mobile phones, featuring Fueled By Ramen/Atlantic Records artist Panic! At the Disco from New York City‘s Times Square, Atlantic Records artist Paolo Nutini from Scotland and Warner Bros. Records artists The Flaming Lips and the Goo Goo Dolls from Los Angeles, Mike Jones from Houston, Muse, My Chemical Romance from New York City‘s Times Square and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The New Year‘s Channel will also feature comedy skits from select performers as well as specially recorded live songs for the event.

YouTube director of advertising strategy Jamie Byrne says, “Our community served as the inspiration behind this idea. In 2006 we witnessed an influx of New Year‘s resolution and celebration video postings as the New Year began. Thanks to support from our users, Chevrolet, and exclusive content from Warner Music Group artists, we will be able to offer a special venue for the community and the world to share their New Year‘s celebrations and begin a new tradition.”

YouTube is encouraging users to upload their New Year‘s resolutions and wishes for a chance to be featured on the homepage alongside the YouTube celebrities and Warner Music Group artists. Users can upload their videos in a special New Year‘s YouTube group at www.youtube.com/group/newyears.

Warner Music Group states that it is continually seeking new ways to empower our artists and their fans. This New Year‘s Eve Bash with YouTube further redefines how its artists and fans are coming together around the world through platforms that are transforming all of our lives.

On 31 December and 1 January 2007, Chevrolet will serve as the exclusive sponsor of YouTube which will feature a special edition homepage to host all of the specially created New Year‘s content.

Chevrolet GM Ed Peper says, “New Year‘s Eve is a truly global holiday and Chevrolet is a truly global brand. We sell cars and trucks in more than 120 countries around the world, so we‘re very happy to be part of YouTube‘s worldwide stage to showcase how different cultures celebrate New Year‘s Eve”.

Featured New Year‘s YouTube messages will be posted by WMG artists including Adrienne Pauly, Beatsteaks, Big and Rich, Blake Shelton, Bloc Party, Brainstorm, Crime Mob, Cute Is What We Aim For, and Danity Kane.

MUMBAI: 5Fad, the web site of digital music service in China, has announced that it has signed a partnership contract with BrainMedia LLC. (music hookup) to launch a mobile streaming service that will enable customers in China to enjoy 3G quality services on their existing 2.5G data network.

Currently, 5Fad has released a music wireless search and music streaming service and will be beta testing in a controlled test group environment. Users only need to download the 5Player in order to enjoy stereo CD quality music from their mobile handset.

BrainMedia CEO Jim Herbert said, “The mobile handset has become the focus of the personal multimedia experience. This 5Fad/BrainMedia Mobile Streaming Service is one of the most important developments for the wireless value-added service industry. We look forward to joining 5Fad in opening up China‘s vast market and become the leader in this market.”

5Fad CEO Duanping Wu added, “China is the biggest wireless communication market, having over 500 million mobile subscribers, achieving above 40 per cent of the global market share. The Mobile Music market is estimated to grow its revenue over tens of billions RMB. With the 3G deployment, more and more domestic companies will enter this market and face fierce competition. Now 5Fad has actively seized the first position in the 2.5G mobile streaming service market. So its future will be very promising.”

The official commercial release of the mobile streaming music service using the 5Player will be in the first quarter of 2007.

MUMBAI: LG wears Prada! Consumer electronics major LG Electronics and luxury brand Prada have announced a partnership to develop an iconic mobile phone.

The first Prada telephone by LG will combine high-end technology with avant-garde design offering the best in both style and performance. This forward-thinking product is the result of a different approach to the typical fashion designer and mobile phone manufacturer co-branding exercise.

Leveraging on their respective expertise and know-how, Prada and LG have jointly explored and developed all aspects of this new product. The collaboration focussed on the key elements inside the phone, such as software, user interface and music as well as its look, for example design and packaging.

The initial launch is planned for early 2007, with distribution starting in Europe (firstly in Italy, the UK, France, and Germany), followed by countries in Asia such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. The Korean version of the phone is scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2007.

LG Electronics Mobile Communications president and CEO Mun-Hwa Park says, “ Prada’s legacy for classic and sophisticated design meant they were the perfect partner to develop this shared vision of innovative technology and ultimate style. We are passionate about developing exclusive phones that appeal to consumer’s desire to express their personality through their choice of mobile and feel very strongly that Prada shares this belief.”

Prada president and CEO Patrizio Bertelli said, “As we do with ready-to-wear and accessories, we were looking at a break-through. Consistently with our approach, we are not branding an existing product. Rather we have been working with LG to give this new phone a very strong character and unique style, both in its contents and in its design. We, just like our partners at LG, are known for the attention to detail and uncompromising quality of our products. And we find these characteristics in the new mobile phone.”