Videocon to launch DTH by October-end; plans to invest Rs 10 bn in 2 years

[sathish456]

Quote:

MUMBAI: Videocon Group will launch its direct-to-home (DTH) service by October-end and plans to invest Rs 10 billion in the venture over two years.

Bharat Business Channel Ltd , the company which will launch the DTH service, has signed up with SingTel for six Ku-band transponders. The DTH venture is being headed by Anil Khera who was earlier in charge of Videocon's Sansui and Kelvinator brands.

"We have taken six Ku-band transponders on SingTel's ST-1 satellite. We are investing Rs 10 billion over two years and are launching the DTH service by October-end," Khera tells Indiantelevision.com.

Videocon will operate its DTH service under the D2H brand. The company will use MPEG-4 compression technology and plans to kick off the service with 200 channels.

Videocon will manufacture the set-top boxes (STBs) at its Aurangabad factory. It will use Irdeto's encryption technology.

The uplinking will be at Greater Noida, adds Khera.

Reliance ADAG's Big TV and Bharti are also preparing to launch their DTH service this year. While Dish TV is the current market leader with 3.3 million subscribers, Tata Sky has over two million and Sun Direct one million.

Indiantelevision.com

[ravi sankar]

this is really good news more n more service providers are coming every one has target to launch minimum 200+channels but only tatasky is lagging in the count will ts catch the 200 mark if so how will they launch a new sat or will they change the compression to mpeg-4