ITV

Tag: DTH

  • Government plans to increase funds for M&E industry: CII

    Government plans to increase funds for M&E industry: CII

    MUMBAI: Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore assured the media and entertainment (M&E) industry that the government policies would be supportive and calibrated to enhance the modernisation and monetisation of the sector.

     

    Addressing the fourth edition of the CII Big Picture Summit 2015 in New Delhi, Rathore said, “In phase II of the auction of the frequencies for the radio, there was no provision for broadcasting news. This was changed during the phase III auction, when private radio was allowed to broadcast the news of the All India Radio (AIR) for a specified time.”

     

    Rathore mentioned that a lot of initiatives were being taken by the government to support the M&E industry in the country, such as channelising more advertisements to the digital media like YouTube, outsourcing some of the creative works of Doordarshan and AIR to the industry. More such steps would be taken in due course.

     

    In this regard, plans are underway to revamp the terrestrial broadcast of DD to couple it with internet and DTH so that there would be opportunities for making local programs based on events happening in smaller towns and rural areas. This would also give a boost to creation of contents, which have local flavour and relevance. 

     

    Acknowledging the industry demand that the monetisation of the M&E segment had not kept pace with the requirements, Rathore disclosed that the government had proposed to set up a university to develop soft skills needed for the industry.

     

    This university would specialise in providing skills to students in areas like gaming, animation and other avenues of creative pursuits relevant to the industry. He wanted industry to take a lead in this endeavour and create centers of excellence, which would enable the M&E industry to reach $100 billion by 2025. He also said that industry support was imperative to improve the content and appeal of the programs and for training media professionals.

     

    Responding to a suggestion made by the industry to bring down high incidence of tax levied on the M&E industry, the Minister said that the Good and Services Tax (GST), which the Government wanted to enact would have subsumed various taxes incidental on the industry. He hoped that the bill would be passed soon in the interest of the nation.

     

    Rathore observed that the Government was keen to create a single window clearance for shooting films in India, which could enhance the monetisation and profitability of the industry. He wanted CII to come out with a plan for creating a dynamic eco system for the film industry to flourish. At the same time, he said that inadequate number of cinema halls in India as compared to countries like the US and China could be more to do with real estate prices.

     

    Ministry of I&B special secretary J S Mathur said, “The process of digitisation in the M&E sector was at a higher pace and would show results in the coming years. He was of the opinion that smart phones, which could carry large quantum of data including films, news bulletins etc. would redefine the digital space in India.”

     

    He also mentioned that the Government was in the process of finalising the draft of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), which would enable more and more people to invest in India in various segments like content creation, production, animation, and gaming. 

     

    Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar opined that a consortium approach should be followed by the industry and the Government to promote the convergence in the M&E industry to realise its potentials. He suggested that a shared approach should be there among the players to make use of the vast infrastructure of the government through innovative schemes that would put to use smart phones as carriers of innovative contents.

     

    CII National Committee on Media and Entertainment and Group CEO, Viacom 18 Group CEO and CII National Committee on Media and Entertainment chairman Sudhanshu Vats pitched for easing of doing business and greater application of convergence of technology to tap the potentials of the industry. Monetisation of the industry can be enhanced through proper government support to the industry.

     

    Narrating the problems being faced by the M&E sector, Star India COO Sanjay Gupta said that bandwidth problems, high cost, high taxes etc were adversely affecting the growth of M&E industry. He wanted a supportive policy regime to help the industry reach $100 billion mark by 2025.

  • DD Freedish fixes reserve price of Rs 3.7 crore for 23rd e-auction

    DD Freedish fixes reserve price of Rs 3.7 crore for 23rd e-auction

    NEW DELHI: Less than four weeks after the last e-auction, Doordarshan will be holding the 23rd e-auction for its free-to-air DTH platform Freedish on 19 October in an attempt to touch the target of 112 television channels in the next few months.

     

    Doordarshan has set a reserve price of Rs 3.7 crore per slot (as in the last few auctions) for the online e-auction, though Indiantelevision.com learnt that the bid amount went up to Rs 4.7 crore in earlier e-auctions.

     

    In the 22nd auction on 22 September, it managed to auction eight slots for around Rs 31.3 crore.

     

    DD sources refused to divulge the number of slots being auctioned to prevent bidders forming consortia to bid or resort to other malpractices.

     

    Doordarshan DDG C K Jain told this website that Freedish will be encrypted shortly from Mpeg2 to Mpeg4 to keep a tab on the number of subscribers, but it would remain free-to-air.

     

    The e-auction will be conducted by C1 India Pvt. Ltd., Noida.

     

    The Rs 3 crore reserve price in the 15th e-auction was raised to Rs 3.7 crore in the 16th auction.

     

    Currently, Freedish has 64 channels including its own channels, and Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV.

  • Tata Sky selects IBM hybrid storage to mitigate data loss risk & swift data access

    Tata Sky selects IBM hybrid storage to mitigate data loss risk & swift data access

    MUMBAI: Direct to home (DTH) operator Tata Sky has selected a new IBM hybrid storage system to help it better serve its 30 million customers.

     

    Additionally, IBM has also opened its first public cloud data centre in India, which is located in Chennai. Part of IBM’s $1.2 billion investment to expand its global cloud footprint into every major financial market, the Chennai data center underscores IBM’s commitment to India, a key growth market for the company.

     

    Tata Sky’s transition to IBM Cloud infrastructure has helped its business become more agile and reduce latency seen in day-to-day processes.

     

    “As the fastest growing, direct-to-home, digital television satellite service provider in India, Tata Sky simply cannot operate without mission-critical storage that provides the utmost business continuity and operational efficiency in both our primary and disaster recovery sites,” said Tata Sky CIO N. Ravishanker.

     

    The technology deployed at Tata Sky relies on mitigating risk of data loss and at the same time, accessing data swiftly. “With IBM DS8000 hybrid flash storage, our response time has significantly improved and queries now return in less than one second, bringing higher efficiencies,” he added.

     

    The company is using IBM DS8000 systems as its primary storage for all critical workloads, including CRM, billing and disaster recovery.

     

    Constant uptime and the risk of data loss is always at the forefront of data-driven enterprises, like Tata Sky, as well as banking, financial and healthcare operations. By 2020, 15 per cent of digital businesses will fail due to inadequate protection against downtime.

     

    Security is also essential for both customer trust and business operations. The cost of a single data breach can spiral to $3.8 million, up 23 per cent since 2013. The DS8000 family meets these challenges by significantly improving the management of growing storage demands required by the realities of today’s digital businesses.

     

    To accelerate business critical computing, IBM announced a new IBM DS8880 family of enterprise hybrid storage, a powerful, next generation system designed with real-time data insights for clients requiring increased performance, data protection and uncompromised, nonstop availability. 

     

    With the DS8880 mission-critical applications are accelerated — up to two times faster than previous generations, making it an ideal storage option for banking and financial industries, for use with electronic medical records, as well as for ERP, CRM and retail systems that need reliable, agile and constant access to data. 

     

    The latest architecture also mitigates risk since all components are redundant and can be upgraded online. This minimizes downtime to approximately 30 seconds per year — even less if a multi-site disaster recovery solution is also installed.

     

    With a large-scale disaster, business continuance is just as important as data protection and the DS8880 allows remote mirroring that can be integrated with a high availability server capability to provide the highest levels of availability.

     

    For those customers like Tata Sky that are looking for integration with cloud-based and mission critical environments, the DS8880 family offers powerful integration with IBM z Systems and other IBM compute platforms to improve business processes and services by enabling systems for the dynamic demands of analytics, big data and cloud environments. It maximises utilisation of resources, including staff productivity, space and cost with streamlined management and operations and 30 percent reduction in footprint5 on a new 19-inch rack.

     

    “In today’s fast, analytics data-driven, cloud-based world, our clients need storage options that they can rely on and that directly impact their ability to deliver high quality service to their customers and outperform competitors. As part of IBM’s bold commitment to storage, today’s launch of the DS8880 family offers an ideal solution for clients like Tata Sky that require high performing, mission critical acceleration to manage the changing conditions in the modern enterprise,” said IBM Storage general manager Jamie Thomas.

     

    The new DS8880 family of storage incorporates a high performance flash enclosure module providing optimised performance for mission critical applications. Additionally, the system can scale three petabytes, offering advanced features for compliance and security. The DS8880 graphical user interface (GUI) also includes intuitive navigation and streamlined configuration processes, providing customizable views, interactive menus and a configuration wizard to help administrators configure an entire solution in less than 30 minutes.

     

    The new family of storage is available worldwide beginning 14 October, 2015 with a starting price of $50,000 and with new licensing packages for simplified ordering and installation.

  • NSTPL application disposed as Govt. cancels tripartite agreements for DTH loan

    NSTPL application disposed as Govt. cancels tripartite agreements for DTH loan

    NEW DELHI: The Noida Software Technology Park Ltd (NSTPL), which is one of the two headend in the sky (HITS) players in the country, today withdrew its petition against the Government on being informed that a provision for tripartite agreement to provide loans to direct to home (DTH) operators had been cancelled.

     

    The note was produced before the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Arbitration Tribunal (TDSAT) by counsel Sandeep Mahapatra of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

     

    According to the note issued by the Ministry, the provision had been made for financial loan or assistance in the DTH sector by assigning licence agreement as security to banks and financial institutions.

     

    This was to be done in the form of a tripartite agreement with the bank or financial institution, the operator and the government.

     

    An order to this effect had been issued by the Ministry on 3 December, 2009.

     

    The order has now come into immediate effect. 

    Tribunal chairman Aftab Alam and members Kuldip Singh and B B Srivastava said that in view of the decision of the government, which was also conveyed to NSTPL, the “application no longer survives and is accordingly disposed of.”

  • Star Gold to premiere ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ in 4K on DTH

    Star Gold to premiere ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ in 4K on DTH

    MUMBAI: Breaking new ground every now and then in the television space, Star India is yet again taking the lead by premiering the Salman Khan starrer Bajrangi Bhaijaan in 4K on three direct-to-home (DTH) platforms.

     

    Bajrangi Bhaijaan will be the first Hindi movie to be premiered in 4K on Tata Sky, Videocon and Airtel DTH’s Star Gold 4K channel. This also marks the launch of the Star Gold 4K service, which is especially delivered for the film premiere. However, it will be available only for two days (10 & 11 October) on the three DTH platforms.

     

    Along with Star Gold 4K, the movie will also be simulcast on the Star Gold HD and SD on 11 October, 2015 at 12.30 pm.

     

    With the service, the channel aims to provide its viewers a superlative viewing experience of the film. As a build up to the 4K premiere, the channel will showcase specially created promos and short format content videos in the same service. The content will be delivered in the same way as Video On Demand content is housed by the respective DTH operators.

  • Dish TV takes HD offering to 47 with Ten Golf HD addition

    Dish TV takes HD offering to 47 with Ten Golf HD addition

    MUMBAI: With the addition of Ten Golf HD, direct to home (DTH) operator Dish TV has taken its high definition channels and services count to 47, which is the highest in the country so far.

     As of August, rival DTH operator Videocon d2h offered 39 HD offerings to its subscribers.

    Ten Golf HD, the 24-hour sports channel dedicated to golf, takes DishTV’s HD sports channel count to seven. DishTV subscribers will be able to watch it on channel number 81. As was earlier reported by Indiantelevision.com, Ten Golf HD was slated to launch on 7 October.

    Dish TV India chief operating officer Salil Kapoor said, “Latest trends suggest that the growth of the HD category over the past year together with rising sales of flat panel TV’s (LED/LCD) has added a new dimension to the superior HD viewing experience. With the usage of DTH connections with HD boxes, the experience quotient for the subscribers is all set to go up. We are proud to announce addition of Ten Golf HD channel on our platform.”

     “Dish TV has a complete offering and mix of HD entertainment, music, news and regional language channels and has maximum content with 47 HD channels and services, making it the highest in the country,” he added.

  • Bloomberg TV makes Philippines debut

    Bloomberg TV makes Philippines debut

    MUMBAI: Bloomberg TV Philippines debuted this week with live programming broadcast from its new studio in Manila.

     

    Bloomberg Television Philippines is a partnership between Bloomberg TV and Philippines’ media companies Cignal TV, which is also the country’s largest direct to home (DTH) satellite provider.

     

    The debut signalled a further step in BTV’s commitment to deliver the best global and locally relevant business news in key Asia markets, with the Philippines being the third-largest English speaking market in the world.

     

    The First Up Philippines one-hour show went live on air at 7 am local time on Monday, featuring a rare interview with billionaire port operator and casino tycoon Enrique Razon and reports from Bloomberg journalists in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore.

     

    Thought Leaders, a weekly show, featured Philippines Finance Secretary Cesar Purusima.

     

    Future programming will include an in-depth focus on next year’s Presidential election and interviews with candidates as part of the channel’s commitment to fast and accurate daily global broadcast material with unique, tailor-made local content.

  • MIB cancels tripartite agreements in DTH sector for loan assistance

    MIB cancels tripartite agreements in DTH sector for loan assistance

    NEW DELHI: The Government today cancelled the provision for tripartite agreements to provide loans to Indian direct-to-home (DTH) operators.

     

    According to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), the provision had been made for financial loan and assistance in the DTH sector by assigning licence agreement as security to banks as well as financial institutions.

     

    This was to be done in the form of a tripartite agreement with the bank or financial institution, the operator and the government.

     

    An order to this effect had been issued by the Ministry on 3 December, 2009.

     

    The order has now come into immediate effect. 

  • India early adapter of new technology but not IPTV: Dataxis

    India early adapter of new technology but not IPTV: Dataxis

    NEW DELHI: India stands out as an early adapter of latest technology despite being a price sensitive market, according to a Dataxis Research report.

     

    While on the one hand, India has the highest DTH subscribers as well as HDTV subscribers, on the other, public sector companies MTNL and BSNL have given up their hopes on IPTV. Airtel, ACT and Reliance are retaining the service only in few circles.

     

    India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the three countries with active IPTV subscriber base in the SAARC region.

     

    IPTV is still evolving and is not widely accepted as a pay-TV model by SAARC countries. The total active IPTV subscriber base in SAARC (adding these three countries) will be around 270,000+.

     

    Sri Lanka’s IPTV subscriber base contributes to nearly 48 per cent of the overall SAARC IPTV subscribers, followed by Pakistan and India with about 33 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.

     

    Sri Lanka and Pakistan are showing high interest in pushing IPTV. On the other hand, Nepal’s internet service providers are planning to launch commercial IPTV services by the end of 2015.

     

    Meanwhile, the video markets of 12 East Asia Pacific countries tracked by Dataxis are forecast to generate total digital video revenues of $4.31 billion in 2017 – surpassing the physical video market for the first time driven by fast-growing, high-speed broadband penetration.

     

    APAC Video Market 2015 analyses the transformation of the video market across the 12 countries covered over the period 2007-18, including physical and digital video unit sales, rentals, revenues and forecasts, as well as profiling each market and the individual digital video services available.

     

    The four main markets in the region (Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea) together accounted for about 96 per cent of total digital and physical video revenues end-2014, with Australia and Japan alone generating about $5.4 billion in physical video revenues, representing more than 90 per cent of total physical revenues across the region.

     

    However, South East Asia is plagued by piracy and the official physical video market is almost negligible. Unauthorised CDs, VCDs, DVDs and CD ROMs proliferate due to the lack of affordable digital content and low disposable incomes. Indonesia, for example, had 5.75 million Pay-TV subscribers by end-2014, but only two Pay-TV players offered VOD services and Dataxis estimates that just 1.5 per cent of Indonesian TV households will be VOD-enabled by 2018. 

  • The Epic Channel goes HD on Tata Sky

    The Epic Channel goes HD on Tata Sky

    MUMBAI: With increasing penetration of High Definition (HD) television sets, more and more channels are now adding the HD feed for a better consumer experience.

     

    The Epic Channel, which focuses on the Indian history, folklore and mythology genre, recently launched its HD version on Tata Sky. 

     

    The Epic Channel HD will be available on the direct-to-home (DTH) platform’s channel no 133.

     

    The Epic Channel will shoots all its content in HD so viewers can experience the shows on Indian history and mythology in HD.

     

    The Epic Channel managing director Mahesh Samat said, “Since the inception of the channel, Epic has stood out for its unique and unparalleled content offering. We have grown considerably and built a loyal viewer base over the course of the year and with the channel now being available in High Definition on Tata Sky, the viewer’s experience is only going to get enhanced. This makes it a complete viewing experience for Tata Sky subscribers, letting them watch the best in Indian history and mythology.”

     

    Tata Sky chief contend and business development officer Paolo Agostinelli added, “High definition content truly does justice to the intriguing historic and mythological story telling that Epic channel brings to the viewers. We continue to bring the best viewing technology for our Tata Sky subscribers and this is one of the biggest reasons why we have a growing subscriber base.”

     

    The channel’s standard definition (SD) feed is currently available across key DTH players like Tata Sky, Airtel, Videocon d2h, Dish TV, and Reliance Digital TV along with major cable players like Hathway, Den and more.