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NEW DELHI: The Indian DTH market is all set to explode with Dish TV going ballistic with services and marketing activities ahead of Tata Sky’s imminent launch.
 
Though Dish TV terms it as sheer coincidence that it’s unveiling a host of value-added services and as well as coming out with a media campaign over the last two days, the timing seems to be just correct.

“We had planned our value added service from before and it’s purely a coincidence that our consumer-awareness campaign, which broke a few days ago in the media, comes ahead of Tata Sky’s proposed launch,” Dish TV CEO Sunil Khanna told Indiantelevision.com today.
 
Apart from a 360 degree approach through a media campaign — goodbye to cable problems. Hello Digital! — country’s first DTH platform Dish TV is also set to unveil a host of services from Monday onwards.
 
Leading the pack of new initiatives is interactivity, which will come via Zee News.

The digi-boxes of Dish TV would now allow the unique experience of interactive viewing. Consumers can surf while watching TV for detailed stories, headlines and weather reports.

How does this work? A subscriber of Dish TV wants to see whether Indian tennis sensation Sania Mirza has won her latest match or not and cannot wait for the sports segments to come in the news bulletin.

So while a news bulletin is on on Zee News, a few presses of the buttons can take the viewer straight to the sports section for the Sania news story even as the main news bulletin continues.

“Such interactive facilities will give Dish viewers more convenience, but will also mean the broadcaster‘s (Zee News in this case) having to upload more feeds than usual to give the interactivity features a momentum,” Khanna said.

By the end of next week, Zee News’ interactivity on Dish would be completed for all subscribers, he assures.

Apart from news, Dish TV is also planning to go interactive with sports, starting with Zee Sports.

Sports interactivity will involve freezing of shots from a particular angle, getting player details immediately without having to wait for the sports channel providing it and statistics about the game in progress and sports in general.

The interactivity on Zee Sports will start with the Indian cricket board-recognised tri-nation series involving India, Australia and another country at a neutral ground from mid-September for which Zee has the telecast rights.

“At this point of time only Zee Sports will go interactive, but we are talking to Sony Entertainment TV India for introducing the features for the ICC Champions Trophy that will air on Max,” Khanna said.

Dish now has all the sports channel presently available on Indian cable networks, which include ESPN, Star Sports and Ten Sports. It also has some niche sports channels not beaming to cable subscribers.

Asked which other channels can go interactive, Khanna opined that globally interactivity works best with news and sports programming.

Next on the list is a dedicated gaming channel for people of all age groups. At any given point of time it will have eight games, which will be updated on a monthly basis.

Hassle free and simple, PlayJam software would start downloading on set top boxes of subscribers from early next week onwards.

The whole process will take a few days to be completed for all of the 1.25 million DTH subscribers of Dish.

According to Dish TV AVP (interactive services) Manish Chawla, three to four games are likely to be added every month with the overall number of games available remaining at eight presently.

The electronic programming guide had always been available to Dish subscribers, but from next week it will get fully activated with programming details of over 100 channels at one’s fingertips.

The EPG will store three days’ information, which is likely to help viewers plan their viewing, Chawla explained as proper setting of the EPG will send out alerts before a particular programme starts.

With Tata Sky (a joint venture between the Tatas and Rupert Murdoch’s Star) also planning to start its services soon, there will be hectic action in the Indian DTH market.

Hong Kong based Media Partners Asia (MPA) says that India remains the most significant and accessible cable and satellite (C&S) opportunity in the Asia Pacific region.

India began commercial DTH operations in October 2003 and by December 2004 reported over three million subscribers. MPA said India is poised to become Asia’s leading cable market by 2010, the largest satellite market by 2008 and the most lucrative pay TV market by 2015.

MUMBAI: The worldwide subscriber base for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services is expected to expand by a factor of more than 26 from 2005 to 2010, spurring a competitive battle between video providers both old and new, iSuppli Corp. predicts.

Global IPTV subscribers will grow to slightly more than 63 million in 2010, rising at a stunning Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 92.1 per cent from 2.4 million in 2005, as presented in the figure below.

The IPTV subscriber base will generate more than $27 billion in overall IPTV services revenue in 2010. While video services will account for the largest portion of these dollars, value-added media services and IPTV operator advertising will combine to represent more than 14 per cent of IPTV services revenue in 2010. Furthermore, across all IPTV services, the corresponding content licensing revenue will reach $11 billion in 2010. “The fight to capture the expanding base of IPTV subscribers will put telecom operators on a collision course with existing pay-TV market competitors and with a new class of broadband video portals as they roll-out progressively more sophisticated offerings,” said iSuppli vice president multimedia content and services Mark Kirstein. iSuppli categorises market deployment of IPTV services in three phases. The current global IPTV market is early in its first phase: basic service deployment. The second phase will add an array of value-added and interactive services. Phase three will bring dramatic improvements in integration and interactivity. Thus, in this pending battle for subscribers, providing a competitive video offering is merely the cost of entry for IPTV operators. Differentiation of IPTV services will be essential to bringing new capabilities to TV-based entertainment and attracting subscribers. Areas of differentiation will include: Interactivity, such as communication, community, voting, interactive advertising and television commerce (t-commerce). Integration across multiple platforms, across voice and data services and across content types, i.e. video, voice, music, gaming, data services and user content. Personalisation, including intelligent TV recommendations, individualised advertising and non-linear video programming, such as Video on Demand (VoD) and Digital Video Recording (DVR). Value-added services, including on-demand gaming, music, media applications, home networking management, security and data. Beyond the video service providers themselves, an array of companies will benefit from new opportunities arising from their roles as the “arms suppliers” for the battle over the next generation of television distribution. These companies include infrastructure gear manufacturers, set-top box makers, software vendors and semiconductor suppliers, iSuppli predicts. On a geographic basis, the European market has taken the early lead in the global IPTV market, both for subscribers and for revenue. However, Asia will generate faster growth than the other regions and will achieve the largest subscriber base by the end of this year. The Americas region will lead the world in terms of IPTV dollars starting this year because it will yield the highest Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today refused to pass any interim order on petitions filed by Dish TV and Star India relating to a disputes tribunal directive on channel pricing for the DTH platform.

The apex court admitted both the petitions, but is yet to decide on the next date of hearing.

Dish TV, the country‘s first pay DTH platform, had petitioned to get Star channels at a cheaper rate than what had been directed by TDSAT (Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal). On the other hand, Star‘s contention was that the disputes tribunal had no jurisdiction over pricing issues and had accordingly sought a stay on TDSAT‘s order.

An executive of Dish TV said, “We‘d have to wait for the court directive. But in the meantime, a deal with Star can be concluded at the prescribed rate of Rs 27 per subscriber.”

Earlier, TDSAT had said that Star should make available its channels to Dish TV at half the rate at which they are available to cable ops presently. This worked out to RS 27 per subscriber.

It was only yesterday that Star delivered to Dish TV the integrated receiver decoder boxes that would enable the DTH operator to access its channels for redistribution purposes.

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