DishTV does it right, upgrades its STB software to let users record TV on a USB hard disk drive
After coming up with India’s first Conditional Access Module cards to let any DTH user to migrate to DishTV whilst keeping their set top box from another operator, reports are coming in that DishTV is launching Dish trueHD+, an innovative way to enable all their existing subscribers to upgrade to DVR (Digital Video Recorder). Instead of launching another set top box with DVR features which their customers would have been needed to purchase, DishTV has released a software update for their existing HD set top box which lets users plug in their USB HDD (hard disk drive)/flash drive and record live TV on that.
Despite the fact that a user has to purchase an HDD/flash drive for this purpose, this setup is actually pretty awesome considering:
- User can buy desired capacity of HDD thereby enjoying the freedom of recording as many TV shows as possible.
- When a user’s HDD is filled up, they have an option to buy a new one instead of relying on the operator to offer an upgrade program (which, BTW, is not offered by any operator in India currently).
- Users can keep multiple HDDs with their favorite TV shows recorded and can plug them to the STB whenever they want to watch them.
- Users can keep their current HD set top boxes (which would have otherwise been exchanged for peanuts, if they had to upgrade).
Amazon launches in India as junglee.com
After much speculation, Amazon has launched in India as junglee.com – a shopping service for Indian customers. Contrary to what people had been hoping for, Amazon is not directly selling products in India. Instead, they are maintaining a catalog of about 1.2 crore products being sold online in India by multiple e-retailers and lets users search for them, read the reviews and then buy them from whichever site they choose to. In addition to product reviews, junglee.com will also have seller reviews so that users can take an informed decision. Interestingly, amazon.com is also listed as a seller. However,it might not be worth using it to purchase anything other than Kindle.
In my initial analysis I found that most products listed on junglee.com are overpriced compared to what they are priced at other popular ecommerce sites in India.
In my opinion, Amazon needs to do a lot more in order to establish properly in India. And I believe that they are planning to launch their own online store in due course of time. An interesting thing to note is that India’s top three online sellers – flipkart, letsbuy & Infibeam are not listed with junglee.com. They are the biggest online sellers in India and offer the cheapest prices on everything they sell. Another thing to note is that once someone has a good experience shopping online at a certain site, the person is more likely to trust that site for future purchases unless some other site is offering a significantly lower price. This means that junglee.com seller reviews will be most useful to first time online buyers, many of who might choose to rely on word of mouth reviews from their tech savvy friends instead of junglee.com. This makes all this effort more or less redundant for now.
I hope that amazon opens up their store soon. Although the current ecommerce sites are doing pretty well for now, however, everyone knows that everything goes down the toilet without healthy competition.
Facebook files for US$ 5 billion IPO
Facebook has filed for an IPO of US$ 5 billion. The whole process is expected to make many Facebook employees millionaires.
In his letter to the SEC, Mark Zuckerberg states that Facebook was not created to be a company, but to serve the “social mission” of making the world more open and connected and that they hope to strengthen how people relate to each other.
Facebook has more than 800 million active users and caters to 2.7 billion likes & comments every day. It is also the most popular photo sharing site on the web with 250 million photos uploaded everyday.
The full text of Zuckerberg’s letter can be found here & other artifacts can be found here.
It’s time for headphones to be smart now!
Everything is getting smart these days. So, why not your good old headphones? Parrot (a company which makes awesome bluetooth gadgets & the famous parrot AR drone) has introduced a pair of over the ear headphones which are smart. The headphones, named Zik, have bluetooth, accelerometer & NFC chip on board which can be used to:
- Swipe the right touch sensitive panel vertically to set the volume, or swipe it horizontally to skip music forward/rewind.
- Automatically pause the music playback when you remove the headphones (this one is my favorite)
- Pair the headphones to your NFC compatible phone by just bumping them together
- Stream stereo music from your A2DP compatible phone over bluetooth
- Stream music over NFC (if your phone supports it)
ESPN Star Sports HD channels now available on select cable networks across India
ESPN Star Sports, the body which owns the two first 24×7 sports HD channels in India (ESPN HD & Star Cricket HD) have signed a deal to allow select cable operators in India to show their HD channels. The channels are available to 3 cable networks – Incable, 7Star in Mumbai & UCN in Central India. Subscribers of these digital cable operators can now enjoy these HD channels by upgrading to a HD set top box.
All the cable operators in the metro cities are required to go digital by March 2012. This will be followed by digitization of the entire country’s cable system by the end of 2014. This should give the cable operators in non metro areas to educate their subscribers and start supplying HD compatible set top boxes to them. In the metro cities though, operators will have to launch lucrative schemes and high quality DVR enabled set top boxes at cheap prices if they want to rope in subscribers, as their DTH competitors already have a good infrastructure in place for this.
Nonetheless, this is great news for subscribers. In addition to HD channels, digitization of the cable industry will also enable service providers to offer high speed broadband connections to customers. A segment which desperately needs a healthy competition in India.
BigFlix launches NetFlix like streaming service in India
BigFlix has launched a NetFlix like online streaming service in India. The new service, called BigFlix Plus is available at a (very reasonable) monthly subscription price of ? 249 and offers unlimited streaming of all the available content. Currently, BigFlix’s library contains around 500 movies.
The service is currently standard definition only, with maximum resolution of 480p (the website says the movies are in HD quality, which is clearly wrong). However, the company executives claim that their infrastructure is capable of supporting streaming of 720p HD content. They will be enabling HD streaming in future. Also planned is addition of more (and popular) Hollywood content which should make the service pretty lucrative.
IRCTC launches mobile ticketing website to book rail tickets on your phone, plans to launch mobile apps soon
It looks like IRCTC is all set to revolutionize online railway ticket booking all over again in India. This time, they have launched a mobile optimized site which users can access on their smartphones to book railway tickets on the go.
The new site which is available at irctc.co.in/mobile can be used to:
- Book tickets
- Cancel tickets
- Check booking history
Unfortunately, the site is very basic in nature currently with no autocomplete for station names and no calendar popups for date entry. Also, the payment options are pretty limited at this time. However, all this should be improved in near future given that the site is currently in Beta. Also, things should be a lot better with the native mobile apps which they plan to launch in future.
[via MediaNama]
Indian cable operators planning to launch HD channels
As a result of the regulation requiring all the Multiple System Operators (MSOs) or otherwise called as “large” cable operators to go digital by 2014, major players from metropolitan cities like Hathaway and DEN are planning to launch HD channels on their platform. As per the new regulation, the cable systems in the metro cities are to go digital by March 2012 and rest of India by the end of 2014.
This could be the biggest competition to DTH operators in India which are currently the only platforms to offer HD services in India. However, owing to a steep entry cost (an HDTV and a HD STB) and high subscription prices of HD channels, the DTH operators have not been able to rope in many subscribers yet. A healthy competition in this field will help in bringing some of these prices down (at least those specific to the operator) and should result in more HD subscribers in the near future.
In addition to HD services, the digitization of the cable system in the country will mean that the MSOs will also be able to offer other value added services like high speed broadband, telephone and on demand video streaming. Digital cable usually has much more bandwidth than DTH platform which is limited by the transponder space in the satellites in space.
[via ET]
TataSky HD will add ESPN HD in time for Indian Formula 1 Grand Prix
With India’s first Formula 1 grand prix starting from 30-October-2011, subscribers of TataSky HD have been wondering if they would be able to watch the mega event in HD as TataSky does not carry ESPN HD – the official broadcaster of the HD feed of the event in India. Well, we have good news! TataSky’s official twitter account has confirmed to us in a tweet that they will, indeed be adding the ESPN HD channel on their platform on 30-October-2011:
They also announced the news in another tweet to all their followers. Awesome news for all the TataSky HD subscribers in India. No word on pricing yet, but we hope they include this as part of the HD Gold pack. Also, we are not sure if this means that they have increased their transponder capacity or not. We tried to ask them, but, apparently, they did not directly answer the question. They just said that ESPN HD is in addition to the existing 7 HD channels. Most likely, this means that they have somehow procured more transponder space, unless they are dropping some SD channels to accommodate ESPN HD. Nonetheless, awesome news!
Indian Railways to take measures to ensure a smoother ticket booking process during 8am – 9am
We all have faced issues while trying to book train tickets on irctc.co.in during 8am to 9am. Everyone knows this is because the Indian Railways opens its tatkal quota at that time and everyone logs into the site to get their hands on them. From travel agents to people traveling under urgent circumstances, everyone has faced the “Service Unavailable” error page.
IRCTC & Indian Railways are planning to put in the following measures to ensure a smoother ticket booking experience doing 8am to 9am IST:
