ITV

Tag: mulls

  • Sahara mulls IPTV for residential complexes

    NEW DELHI: The buzzword today is IPTV. Telecom companies like Reliance Infocomm have already expressed their intention to get into the arena. Now it is the turn of Sahara Group to announce its grandiose plans, albeit restricted to the company’s own residential complexes at this stage.
     

    Speaking at the first session of day two at Convergence India, Sahara India Media and Entertainment VP for engineering and operations R S Chauhan said, “Sahara is building state of the art residential complexes in 217 locations in India. We aim at providing a better lifestyle through our complexes and we are considering IPTV as one of the many premium services we shall offer.”

    The session on Broadcast technologies/ Digital Entertainment was chaired by Chauhan. The other panelists comprised Harmonic Inc regional sales director Tat Ng, Conax R&D manager B W Nicolaysen, Motorola senior director advanced tech or broadband Dr Ajay Luthra and Irdeto Access business development manager Rahul Nehra.
     
     

    Motorola’s DR Luthra made a strong case for the latest Mpeg 4 standard, saying that it gave better quality at half the price of Mpeg 2. The standard, he said, would go a long way in reducing bandwidth demands for bandwidth intensive applications such as VOD and NVod.

    Irdeto’s Nehra spoke about encryption, especially for IPTV. Nehra said that from a consumer’s point of view, he wanted the entire universe of content, with no latency while switching channels, to be transparent and have friendly billing mechanisms. Also, consumers could choose from a number of service providers.

    Making a strong case for the need for encryption throughout the life cycle of content whether it be real time or time delayed, Nehra quoted the CII – KPMG report saying, “The Indian broadcast industry loses around $ 8 billion a year to piracy.”

  • Zee Music mulls Mid-east foray; to change profile

    MUMBAI: In a bid to drive growth, Zee Music is all set to create space in the south Indian market by tweaking its programming to suit local tastes. Besides, the channel is exploring a foray into the Middle-East market by the end of 2005 with a dedicated localised feed.
     

    Zee Telefilms sources confirmed that the Middle East foray is definitely on the drawing board as part of an expansion plan to not only have a wider presence outside India, but also to attract local advertisers of the region.

    “As and when the plan is put in place, Zee Music will sport a different look for the Middle East region from what is seen in India. The customisation will include local programming too,” a source close to the development said.

    This move relating to Zee Music is on the lines of Zee Network announcing last year the launch of a dedicated Zee TV beam for Singapore, apart from further extending its South East Asia beam to include Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan. Such moves offer viewers of various geographical regions outside India to watch television shows at their local time and not on a deferred basis coinciding with Indian standard time.
     
     

    At the moment, Zee Music’s global footprint exists only in the UK where the channel beams as a free-to-air channel. The music channel’s offering ranges from Bollywood to Bhangra and from Asian pop to remixes. The outline of the channel has been designed to include programming such as Upbeat, Jus’ Bhangra, Sorted, Mint and Mutz Cutz to target the Brit-Asian youth.

    Meanwhile, Zee Music, primarily showcasing Hindi film and non-film music, is also attempting to expand its viewership base in the non-traditional and non-Hindi speaking markets of South India.

    The music channel would be introducing English music to cater to the south market. Zee Music business head Bharat Ranga confirmed this proposed move, but did not specify other programming details.

    These days the channel banks heavily on interactive live programmes such as Suniyo-re and Please Tho Play.