ITV

Tag: accuracy

  • MRUC to work towards bringing adequacy & accuracy in TV measurement

    MUMBAI: While television channels in the country are increasing by leaps and bounds, so are television homes. As a result of this, television consumers are also getting diverse. In order to understand the television consumer in a better way, Media Research Users Council (MRUC) held the first TV User Body Meet on 9 September in Mumbai.
     
     

    The meet was presided over by Lintas India Media Services director Lynn de Souza, Leo Burnett India chairman and CEO Arvind Sharma, MRUC technical committee chairperson Roda Mehta and Raymond member of board of advisors Nabankur Gupta.
     
     

    The User Body Meet was attended by Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea, Hawkins Cookers Ltd chairman and CEO Brahm Vasudeva, Hindustan Lever Limited group media manager Central Asia Rahul Welde, MRUC director general N P Sathyamurthy, MRUC technical committee member Amit Ray, MediaCom South Asia president Jasmin Sohrabji and Intellect head Premjeet Sodhi among others.

    Keeping in mind the ever changing television landscape in the country and with addressability likely to increase in the coming years with DTH coming in, MRUC is of the opinion that access to television – for both advertisers and viewers – is likely to undergo significant changes in the coming year. Also, revenue and delivery models of the networks are also likely to explore hitherto unfamiliar territory.

    As a result of this, the MRUC committee is looking at bringing about some major changes in the way television ratings are measured as the current television ratings are no longer an adequate indication of how viewers relate to the medium.

    Considering the fact today there are two ratings measurement bodies – Tam and aMap; de Souza started her presentation by saying, “We are not here today to play a ‘rate the ratings’ game.”

    MRUC’s directive was to see what can be produced to get accuracy in the ratings and evaluate the present systems and see of there is a way to find the right solution. “MRUC’s mandate is to see what users want and today neither of the ratings systems is good enough as they are not covering the entire country. We are here to find what is the new thing that we can come up with?” said Mehta.

    She further added that what was needed was a system that would cut costs, speed up the process, provides accurate data than what is currently available.

    The next MRUC User Body Meet will be held in Delhi on 16 September, wherein these issues will be discussed with a different set of representatives from the broadcast, advertising and media industries will be present.

    De Souza assured that once that was done, MRUC will be forming two new committees – the technical committee and the business committee and act on the suggestions that were presented by the industry and work towards bringing about adequacy and accuracy in the television measurement systems in the country.

  • Specifications for Indian STBs elaborated upon at SCaT

    Specifications for Indian STBs elaborated upon at SCaT

    MUMBAI: One of the sessions at the ScaT workshop in Mumbai dealt with Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Specifications for Set Top boxes. Col V C Khare, a member of the BIS Committee for Set Top boxes dealt with the issue.
     

    ” In the context of the CAS amendment Act, a set top box is required to decrypt content from the pay channels while also delivering the FTA content which is to be bypassed through its circuits.” 

    The committee, Khare said, had to set standards for set top boxes. “We faced many challenges. One was that no country has formulated any standard for the set top box. CATV service delivery networks in India are apathetic towards hardware selection, deployment, conformity and service quality. Also, encryption is neither standardised nor uniform. The device had to be user friendly as well as responsive to SMS. We also had to ensure that the standards did not favour a particular manufacturer or technique. Also, the input level threshold had to be determined to decide on output levels to drive the television receiver of the viewer.”

    The requirements for an Indian STB include:

    1. Input signal levels to correspond to accepted levels for TV receivers i.e. 60dBpV for analogue and 47dBuv.

    2. Carrier to noise 44 dB is minimum

    3. Rception by STB to conform to IS 13420 for downstream and IS 14231 for upstream.

    4. Manufacturer/ service provider has to specify CAS

    5. In view of uni-directionality of CATV networks there must be a provision for SMART cards.

    6. There must be total flexibility of any SMS which could communicate encryption logic to decryption circuit of STB

    7. Connectors have to match networks and viewers TV receivers in India.

    8. It must be able to operate in areas suffering from low voltage like Bihar and the North East.

    9. A built in device must exist which can detect a pirated pay TV signal

    He concluded by saying, “Indian standards for set top boxes are neutral, interface specific between cable drop and TV, futuristic since advanced versions would also comply. The standards are also user and manufacturer friendly. For me, the acronym of standards is statutory, tangible, accuracy, non-controversial, discreet, authenticated, recognised, documented and symbolic.”