A first for DTH

Four Direct to Home (DTH) players will offer their viewers Rishi Kapoor’s Chintuji alongside its theatrical release. Eros International has roped in Tata Sky, Dish, Big and Airtel to exploit the DTH platform simultaneously with the theatrical one. This will be the first Hindi film to be released on both in theatres and the DTH platform simultaneously. For Eros, the success of Aa Dekhe Zaara on DTH, which according to market reports, saw numbers in excess of 50,000 downloads, has been a trigger. Other films like Billu and Heroes also did well. Going forward, Eros would like to exploit the DTH platform for his forthcoming releases like the Bobby Deol and Kangana Ranuat starrer, Vaada Raha... I Promise, which releases next week, apart from films like Pankh and The Great Indian Butterfly lined up for release this year. Almost all these films are small budget in the range of Rs 5-10 crore. Following Rishi Kapoor’s debut on DTH will be UTV’s Kaminey and Aagyat, which also will be available across the DTH players platform in the next two weeks. The DTH market, in the past five years, has grown to a subscriber base of around 12 million with Dish and TataSky grabbing the larger share of the pie.

DTH snippets

The direct-to-home (DTH) space, which has so far been witnessing a price war owing to stiff competition, will soon see prices going up by as much as 15%. This is because the weakening rupee against the dollar may increase the cost burden of set-top boxes (STBs), which are imported by DTH operators. Operators, in turn, may increase their prices, which will come into effect from the first week of December. Industry sources said that market leader Dish TV is planning to increase monthly subscription by about 12-12.5%. Since the past few months, all DTH operators have been absorbing the burden of taxes, which may now be transferred to the customers. The price rise comes at a time when most DTH operators are considering introducing high definition (HD) services in India. This would require DTH operators to buy hi-end MPEG4 enabled STBs. The price rise may now force DTH operators to delay the plans of launching HD enabled STBs in the near future.
Tata Sky which has already introduced its personal video recorded (PVR) service is currently charging a high premium for the service. Dish TV had plans to start selling its high definition (HD) STBs by December 2008. BIG TV plans to launch its HD services by Q4 of current fiscal. BIG TV is currently evaluating two variants for its HD service.

DTH operators scout for transponders

With the DTH space hotting up, existing players are fighting it out with new entrants to rent and buy up transponder capacity on satellites. This alone determines the number of channels a DTH company can offer. Dish TV appears to have gained the first-mover advantage by buying up 7 additional transponders on ArabSat 4C and Protostar — the two satellites scheduled to be launched on July 4. Other players such as Tata Sky and Videocon are also scouting for transponders. Bharti Airtel and RCOM’s Big TV have booked their transponders too.
Dish TV would double their transponder capacity and would rent about 14 transponders with the launch of two satellites.It would help the DTH platform to offer about 350 channels from 200 channels that it currently offers. The company would have to invest about Rs 60 crore annually for this transponder capacity space.The extra channels that any DTH company offers would also help garner additional money through carriage fee. Dish TV is learnt to be targeting Rs 100 crore through carriage fee from various television channels. Archrival Tata Sky has about 12 transponders currently. Though there is no new addition to its transponder capacity, the company is learnt to be looking for ways to increase transponder capacity in the near future to be able to carry larger number of channels.
Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group’s DTH arm, Big TV, is learnt to have booked seven-eight transponders on Malaysian satellite MEASAT-3 and claims it would be able to offer 250 channels using MPEG 4 technology. Similarly, Airtel is believed to have got six transponders and is expected to offer 175 channels.