The Indian arm of the California-based animation and graphics workstation company, SGI, organised a seminar on 5 December at Hotel Le Meridien Mumbai focusing on interactive television and digital asset management. Australia-based SGI Media Commerce business development manager (Asia Pacific) Greg Doyle jetted down to India to highlight SGI‘s solutions around the ITV domain along with SGI India director marketing Avinash Fotedar.
The duo talked at length about SGI products such as the VOD (Video on Demand) and NVOD (Near Video on Demand) software and Media Servers which are mainly targeting media and entertainment enterprises including broadcast, cable networks satellite providers and telcos.

The duo says they offer asset management solutions with Media 360 using Ascential software which allows organisations to acquire, index, manage, track and store multiple media content targeting the Internet, educational institutions, government organisations, and for science and research

SGI media servers support most digital, MPEG-2, DVCPRO-25,and uncompressed formats, he reveals. These servers enable feed, acquisition, simultaneous ingest and play out-to-air multiple channels, ad insertions, digital news editing systems creation of play lists and also distribution between networked facilities. Costly satellite transmission and tape transfers are made redundant with this technology

According to Doyle, SGI has a vast range of products. Says he: "The range is limitless today. SGI servers enable a system to be scaled from two to 512 processors with up to 80GB per second of sustained I/O bandwidth, enabling a production system supporting thousands of digital video streams simultaneously," he points out. Wherever we do not have the complete know how , we tie up with established people to offer solutions, we have tie ups with Oracle Video server, Marconi, Streammaster from Motorola, Viagate technologies to name a few."

Doyle believes that there is a lot of potential for interactive television solutions in the Indian market. "We do not have any installations in India as yet, but we decided to hold this seminar to showcase our technology and gauge the response from industry."

But he adds that internationally, media servers have found a lot of acceptance, both in the US, Europe and Japan. Says he: "Tens of thousands of servers in the US play directly to air in cable channels in the US. In south-east Asia, a government telecom body in Taiwan has already acquired our NVOD and VOD servers at a cost of US$3 million. We feel that Taiwan ,China and India are the biggest markets for our technology today

He adds that SGI offers other solutions for weather prediction, mapping, science and technology, space, aeronautics, oil and gas exploration, graphics and designing.

Star seems bent on getting viewers‘ opinion on every issue related to the reality show Temptation Island it has started airing on Star World.Although an overwhelming 58 per cent of responses to the online poll Star conducted on Indiatimes voted against an Indian version of the show, the channel is not giving up. The channel has initiated a new poll asking viewers if they would prefer the desi version to be shot in Goa. Interestingly, the less-than-a-week old poll has received a stout 71 per cent endorsement. Only 29 per cent of those who cast their vote in the online poll said they would not prefer Goa as the locale where the reality show, just two weeks old on the channel, could be shot. Two per cent of the voters had earlier said that they were not sure, and 41 per cent had given a thumbs down sign to an Indian version.

The channel pushed ahead with the launch of Temptation Island on 23 November, even though one of its earlier Indiatimes polls perched precariously at 50-50. Only half the number of voters had said that India was ready for a show like Temptation Island.

Obviously, the channel feels that those who log on to Indiatimes are the viewers most likely to watch shows like Temptation Island. That explains another poll that appeared on the site some week ago, asking voters whether they would like to watch Temptation Island at 10:00 pm on Thursdays. Sixty-five per cent of the voters had approved of the time slots.

When the show launched in America in January 2001, it got high ratings amidst shocking reviews and strong criticism. Aired on Fox channel, the series had the highest ratings in more than six years among adults in the 18-34 demographic. As for India, only two episodes have been aired so it‘s early days. However, if the first show‘s ratings are anything to go by there is still a long haul ahead. AC Nielsen‘s TAM data gave it a 0.08 TVR while ORG MARG‘s INTAM gave it a 0.14 TVR (all-India C&S homes 4+).

Meanwhile, the information and broadcasting ministry which had said it would be closely monitoring the show for indecent exposure (remember the pre launch campaign that went - Lust, sex, betrayal ?) does not seem to have found anything objectionable in the content of the show.

TV Lanka, a worldwide digital satellite television channel has made its debut on the LMI1 satellite.
The state of the art 24-hour channel is being promoted by Electroteks, a global satellite communication network. It will be one of the first worldwide digital satellite TV channels operating from the region, media reports say.

The Sri Lankan media also say that the network will operate two full time digital video and six audio/music channels to run cultural and entertainment programmes in addition to news. TV Lanka, reports say, will be used to boost the Sri Lankan image worldwide and could be a catalyst to promote Sri Lanka in the SAARC countries. It is projected as a free to air channel for Sri Lankan expatriates in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.

TV Lanka, the reports say, is a fully Sri Lankan owned and operated service without any foreign skill or funding.

Sri Lanka already has the government owned and operated Independent Television Network (ITN), Young Asia Television (YATV), ETV 1 and ETV 2 and the Telshan Network‘s TNL TV.