DTH SERVICES IN A PERPLEXED SITUATION

DTH services were announced last year with much fanfare but are a non-starter till date due to the confused state of mind of our government. Earlier Doordarshan wanted to take the advantage of this direct to home technology but gave upto after the command was shifted to a new incumbent. All of a sudden it dawned on the authorities that DTH was only for a few and did not fulfill the social objectives of the National Broadcaster. No regulations existed in India that could harm DTH. Taking advantage of the situation and to have the benefit of being the first with their experience in heralding satellite revolution in India, Star TV announced its DTH plans. Hardly had their full-page advertisement appeared in the newspapers that the alarm bells started ringing in the government quarters announcing an apprehension of a similar chaos originating in the skies as it happened on the ground in the case of Cable TV.

DTH SERVICES IN A PERPLEXED SITUATION

DTH services were announced last year with much fanfare but are a non-starter till date due to the confused state of mind of our government. Earlier Doordarshan wanted to take the advantage of this direct to home technology but gave upto after the command was shifted to a new incumbent. All of a sudden it dawned on the authorities that DTH was only for a few and did not fulfill the social objectives of the National Broadcaster. No regulations existed in India that could harm DTH. Taking advantage of the situation and to have the benefit of being the first with their experience in heralding satellite revolution in India, Star TV announced its DTH plans. Hardly had their full-page advertisement appeared in the newspapers that the alarm bells started ringing in the government quarters announcing an apprehension of a similar chaos originating in the skies as it happened on the ground in the case of Cable TV.

DTH The Green Light Is On

First came the channel boom. The skies became overcrowded as more and more transnational broadcasters directed their operations towards this region. Initially all the channels were free-to-air but with the mushrooming of channels and the comparatively low growth of advertising on which the channels were solely dependent forced the broadcasters to go ‘pay’. Making Indian viewers pay for viewing programmes did not prove to be an easy task. As a result pay channels are still struggling to gain a foothold in the country although they have been there since two years. 

Against this backdrop India is standing at the threshold of yet another revolution in the cable and satellite industry, the DTH revolution. Direct-to-home television or as it is popularly called DTH has become the most talked about topic in the country today. 

DTH The Green Light Is On

First came the channel boom. The skies became overcrowded as more and more transnational broadcasters directed their operations towards this region. Initially all the channels were free-to-air but with the mushrooming of channels and the comparatively low growth of advertising on which the channels were solely dependent forced the broadcasters to go ‘pay’. Making Indian viewers pay for viewing programmes did not prove to be an easy task. As a result pay channels are still struggling to gain a foothold in the country although they have been there since two years. 

Against this backdrop India is standing at the threshold of yet another revolution in the cable and satellite industry, the DTH revolution. Direct-to-home television or as it is popularly called DTH has become the most talked about topic in the country today. 

DTH The Green Light Is On

First came the channel boom. The skies became overcrowded as more and more transnational broadcasters directed their operations towards this region. Initially all the channels were free-to-air but with the mushrooming of channels and the comparatively low growth of advertising on which the channels were solely dependent forced the broadcasters to go ‘pay’. Making Indian viewers pay for viewing programmes did not prove to be an easy task. As a result pay channels are still struggling to gain a foothold in the country although they have been there since two years. 

Against this backdrop India is standing at the threshold of yet another revolution in the cable and satellite industry, the DTH revolution. Direct-to-home television or as it is popularly called DTH has become the most talked about topic in the country today. 

THE WAVE OF THE NEXT GENERATION

The boundaries between the entertainment media and communication enterprises are fast breaking down and future shifts in frequency reuse are already on the anvil. The task today is one of the how to move away from “one-to-many” broadcasting to accommodate narrow casting and interactivity for individual households. In this process the core of convergence of communications technologies is ease and extent of reach and access, range and reliability of value added services and of course speed and reduced tariffs of communication flows. Ultimately however, the relevance is in the contents and not in the means of delivery. On these aspects depend both scope and significance of convergence. 

THE WAVE OF THE NEXT GENERATION

Source: http://cablequest.org/articles/broadcast-technology/item/1304-the-wave-of-the-next-generation.html

Source: http://cablequest.org/articles/broadcast-technology/item/1304-the-wave-of-the-next-generation.htmlThe boundaries between the entertainment media and communication enterprises are fast breaking down and future shifts in frequency reuse are already on the anvil. The task today is one of the how to move away from “one-to-many” broadcasting to accommodate narrow casting and interactivity for individual households. In this process the core of convergence of communications technologies is ease and extent of reach and access, range and reliability of value added services and of course speed and reduced tariffs of communication flows. Ultimately however, the relevance is in the contents and not in the means of delivery. On these aspects depend both scope and significance of convergence. 

Once barriers for channeling broadcasting and telecommunication on a single network are removed, convergence becomes commercially viable. That, direc TV in USA now hopes to increase its subscriber base ten fold by year 2000 aligning with AT&T, is a good example. As if realising all this, the Telecom Commission in India has been of late exploring the possibility of interaction between telephone and cable TV. MTNL is even working out a proposal for use of cable networks to carry voice and data services. Rightly, the Commission is expected to come up with plans to facilitate such a process.