Friday, 18th April 2008

SPORT SHORTS

* StarHub will air all 59 matches of the inaugural Indian Premier League (IPL) live on its recently launched Cricket Channel. The cricket matches will be available to customers of StarHub Digital Cable’s Cricket Group at no additional cost. The IPL will feature the world's top cricketers in 59 Twenty20 matches over 44 days from April 18 to June 1, starting with the tournament between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Kolkata Knight Riders at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. StarHub’s Cricket Group is comprised of three channels: STAR Cricket, featuring cricket action from around the globe; Neo Sports, showcasing home matches by the Indian and Bangladesh cricket teams; and Cricket Extra, which caters to the occasional simulcast of live cricket events and airs selected cricket tournaments that are not made available on STAR Cricket or Neo Sports. World Screen, 17th Apr 2008

* Hong Kong-based Broadband Network Systems (BNS) has been appointed by Taiwanese flagship carrier China Airlines to provide content for its in-flight entertainment system. BNS’s content department, Content 360, will provide a selection of documentaries, lifestyle, kids, sports, events and comedy programs from major Western and Asian production companies to expand the entertainment choices for China Airlines’ passengers. World Screen, 17th Apr 2008

* IEC in Sports has been appointed to distribute television coverage of the HSBC Asian Five Nations, a new competition for developing rugby union-playing countries in the region. The Asian Rugby Football Union has chosen IEC in Sports as the television co-ordinators to provide production, live delivery, graphics and English commentary from all venues. At least one live match will be available each week, along with highlights from the other games. The Asian Five Nations will involve the national teams of Japan, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Korea and the Arabian Gulf and the first edition kicks off on April 26. Meanwhile, IEC in Sports has renewed its deals to represent three events on men's tennis' ATP Tour. Sportcal.com, 17th Apr 2008

* Taiwan’s Cable Broadband Institute (CBIT) has joined forces with the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) to call for a lighter regulatory regime for pay-TV in the country. CASBAA has released a report analyzing the market structure, while CBIT has introduced a white paper featuring a series of recommendations for changes to Taiwan’s pay-TV regulatory environment. Marcel Fenez, chairman of CASBAA said: “It is remarkable that while Taiwan is the largest producer of LCD TV panels in the world with one of the highest cable TV penetration markets anywhere, it has yet to undergo a digital transformation. The status quo restricts content choice and services that are already available to other consumers in the rest of Asia. This position needs urgent attention.” Rapid TV News, Televisionpoint.com, Worldscreen, 17th Apr 2008

* Kuala Lumpur is the new home for Asia Media Monitors Sdn Bhd as its digital media hub for Southeast Asia. CEO Neil Duncan said the new Kuala Lumpur office would collect media data and news items from its offices in the region and re-distribute them to their clients worldwide. "The advantages afforded by the Multimedia Development Corporation ensured Malaysia is on our shortlist. Other key factors is the availability of a well educated, multilingual, multicultural workforce who possess excellent IT and business skills. "The digital and communications infrastructures are also instrumental to our decision to open our latest office in Kuala Lumpur," he said before the launch of the Asia Media Monitors today. Hailing from Australia, Media Monitors is a unique business service, providing up-to-date media content and news items hot off the press almost immediately to meet clients' needs. Yahoo! Malaysia, 18th Apr 2008

* Arqiva’s Satellite Media Solutions division is joining forces with SAT-GE, a subsidiary of General Electric, to provide an Asia Pacific satellite-based high definition video platform. Collaboration and co-ordination by both parties has already begun on the new platform that will enable broadcasters to distribute and contribute HD and SD channels to Asian-Pacific broadcasters and cable head-ends. The new HD platform will be uplinked onto GE 23 at 172 degrees East to provide a broad satellite footprint for coverage from the US into key locations including Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, The Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. MPEG-4 encoding will be employed in a fully flexible range of bit rates including 12 and 8 megabits per second for HD, and 4 megabits per second for SD. ATV, 17th Apr 2008

* Number of consumers accessing banking services on mobile phones is set to increase tenfold over the next four years, to reach 816 million by 2011. Industry analyst Juniper Research said this week that financial institutions are delivering an increasing variety of products in the mobile environment, from fund transfers, bill payment and presentation to account management and customer service. As a result, the annual number of global mobile banking transactions is forecast to rise from 2.7 billion in 2007 to 37 billion by 2011, as a greater number of services are deployed worldwide. However, Juniper cautioned that a number of hurdles have yet to be overcome, including financial regulation, payment transaction costs, revenue share issues and customer support difficulties. Telecoms.com, 17th Apr 2008


MORE NEWS

India/New Media: Indian Media is Full of Opportunity

With technology advancing at a mind boggling speed and consumers embracing new ways to access and consume content at an even faster rate, the entertainment content business globally is experiencing dynamism of the kind it has never seen before. Content on the go, anytime, anywhere, and a near infinite amount of choice in variety, genres and formats, makes the business like a million piece jigsaw puzzle and almost impossible to find order in the chaos.

Result? The need to explore and monetize every emerging platform and access technology. And with so many platforms, digital video production is the buzz word. Shoot it in HD and then output to various formats and resolutions. Amongst many focused tracks at the NAB Show 08 was one on Broadband TV.

Interesting pointers shared across the sessions at that track included:

Growing demand for Webisodes
In the session on Redefining video for multiple streams, Dmitry Shapiro of Veoh Networks shared: "Short form programming has become very appealing to consumers and the good news is that advertisers believe in it as well. There is a complete business case for webisode productions."

People watch longer versions on the web too!
Dmitry further added that it was not just shortform, his insight was that consumers watched long-form content on the broadband internet too. "It doesn't matter which screen they are viewing it on as long as they are getting what they want and where they want it. People are watching long-form, youngsters especially watch a lot of regular TV shows via broadband on their laptops," Dmitry said.

Video Snacking
In his keynote, NBC Universal VP for Consumer & Broadcast technology Sheau Ng said: "From content creation to production, to distribution to consumption, there is a new phenomena called video snacking. People watch their internet video during lunch time and though it is relatively new to tell, mobile is yet another platform for video and this is just the beginning."

Even as he elaborated on video snacking and business opportunities that is thrown open, Sheau Ng hit the nail on the head saying, while all else changes, there is one constant about the entertainment business - that is good content and good storytelling that connects with the audience. He shared a quote from Henry David Thoreau about the invention of the telegraph, "'It's an improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."
On linear content, social networking and communities, Sheau Ng said: "We expect the expansion of our business on the internet will continue for the foreseeable future." He laid strong emphasis on social networking and communities.

Sheau Ng pointed out, "Our need to belong and need for social context to everything we do and a strong sense of belonging to a community existed since our ancestral cave dwelling days. Today, location is not the only basis for community, digital technology has enabled many ways to form communities based on several parameters and social networking has found place in our local vernacular. "Over the past 18 months, we have moved a significant amount of our shows and TV content onto the web too, available as downloads and streaming. And we are not alone, virtually all TV networks have moved in a similar way from linear to non linear."

"KULU.COM is a JV between us and Newscorp. Users can share video clips by embedding them into their messages. We also have NBC Direct, an innovative application where users feed in their favorite TV shows and new episodes will be downloaded automatically and added to their PC/Laptops for viewing online or offline."

Personalised Advertising
The sessions also revealed that an important shift was taking place in advertising. "Personalized ad placement becomes extremely useful to every one involved and the collaboration among content technology and service industries can be quite bright for all of us," said Ng.

Content: What you want, when you want, where you want
Kevin Wirick, VP-Marketing IP Video Solutions, Home & Networks Mobility for Motorola spoke about the kinds of new services that consumers want and how networks would need to evolve to meet the same demand. The big trends, according to Wirick, were Video Explosion, From Prime time to My Time, and Broadband on the go. "DVR, VoD, stream to PC, download with commercials, download without commercials, transferring on personal media, broadband mobile - there are many ways in which consumers watch programs today," saidWirick. Though today DVR capacity is average 160 GB harddrive, in a couple of of years it will be a 1000 GB which can store Mpeg HD 340 hours of content.

He gave his take on the Ideal mobile tv experience which would allow to navigate using program guide and channel zapping; have links to related information; view short episodes; have programme interactivity; and downloads. The key points throughout the sessions in the broadband TV track were: necessity of good content; emergence of video production; and the business viability of short form content for the web as well as mobile broadband. Indiantelevision.com, 17th Apr 2008