NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has been asked to make efforts to complete all procedural formalities so as to facilitate the expeditious execution of Doordarshan’s Freedish project.

 The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, which deals with MIB issues, in its report emphasized that popularization of Freedish may indeed prove to be one of the major keys, which can turn around Doordarshan in a big way, especially when it is competing with private TV channels who are providing hundreds of channels to its viewers.

The Committee recognized that the idea of providing Freedish and progressive FM-ization can play vital role in shaping future roadmap for revival of Prasar Bharati.

As part of its Freedish endeavour, Doordarshan has upgraded the technical infrastructure of DD Freedish DTH platform and is presently providing free to air 64 SDTV channels in MPEG-2DVB-S.

The technical infrastructure of the remaining 48 SDTV channels has also been installed and tested. Once these channels are made Conditional Access System (CAS) enabled in free-to-view mode, subscribers can view these channels with a one-time annual registration.

Doordarshan is planning to commission these 48 SDTV channels in Freedish MPEG-4 DVB-S2 channel mode only after implementing the CAS Service, upgrading its platform to 112 channels.

This will mean upgrading its platform to 112 SDTV channels in 2015-16, but this is subject to approval of the Home Ministry regarding security clearance of one of the shortlisted CAS service providers, which is a Chinese party. The Ministry wrote to the Home Ministry on 9 March this year seeking its views on the matter.