Big TV Delays Launch of New Channels

Reliance Big TV has postponed its plans to foray into broadcasting, due to economic slowdown. The company had announced in May last year to launch and operate a bouquet of 20 channels under two new entities — Reliance Big TV Entertainment and Reliance Big TV News.

"There is no change in the business plan. Since it is tough time around, we will decide the timing of the launch later. Currently, the company is proceeding with studies and analysis," said a company executive.

Reliance will consider acquiring sick broadcasters as most of them are in deep financial trouble. The company also held back its plan to launch its Digital Video Recorders owing to the global situation.

Apart from this, Big TV has been in the news for pulling out of Indian Premier League, citing contractual violations with Sony. Big TV had signed the DTH deal with IPL last August for US$ 31.16 million over four years.

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Dish TV to Provide MPEG 4 STBs, Not Service

Dish TV has announced that it will begin providing MPEG 4 Set Top Boxes soon after Reliance Big TV accused existing DTH operators Tata Sky and Dish TV of not complying with the latest set-top box technology and trying to block out from bringing the revised norms.

While Jawahar Goel, managing director, Dish TV, said, “MPEG 4 boxes are much more expensive and may put extra burden on the subscriber. Moreover, the MPEG 4 format is not in accordance with BIS (Bureau of Indian Standard) and the government’s regulations and, hence, is not interoperable with MPEG 2 boxes,”

Now the funny part of the story is that Dish TV does not plan on upgrading its transmission to MPEG 4 so although a customer may buy an MPEG 4 set top box the audio and video quality will stay at MPEG 2.

Dish TV claims that it does not make business sense for them to upgrade their transmission, keeping in mind they have invested in their own broadcast satellite recently. Dish TV says it is quite confident of meeting the competition from Big TV in the market as MPEG 4 and MPEG 2 offers virtually the same video and audio quality.

The company also claims that the only difference is in the cost of set-top boxes (STBs), which is much higher for MPEG 4. But as we know Big Entertainment has procured a huge quantity of set top boxes so the prices are comparable with the MPEG 2 STBs.

But since Big TV has still not spoken about a launch date the competitors are making hay while the sun shines, Dish TV is giving away free STB’s with their connection to expand their customer base and probably get rid of their MPEG 2 STB stock. Dish TV also recently lost its CEO Arun Kumar Kapoor, who has now been hired by Big TV.

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Bachchans Brand Ambassadors for Big TV

Big TV and Big B - Amitabh Bachchan unite to form a massive joint venture for Rs 1500 crore to focus on creating original products in the field of movies, TV, Internet, mobile and live shows.

The Bachchan family - Amitabh, Abhishek, Aishwarya - is considered to be the most popular Bollywood family, and this deal would give Big Entertainment an edge over others.

Anil Ambani group Reliance Big Entertainment will look at the business aspect of the deal that would include providing managerial resources, marketing and the distribution of projects, while the Bachchans' AB Corp would come up with the creative inputs and would be handling the entertainment aspect of the project.

This move is in line with making Big Entertainment a global media and entertainment company. Reliance Big Entertainment has already made inroads into the US market with the launch of a chain of over 200 Indian movie theaters, and a slew of investments in Hollywood companies.

Now Anil Ambani is in talks with Dreamworks, the movie studio founded by mogul Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, to strike a deal worth $550 million. If the deal goes through it would help Reliance group's chairman, Anil Ambani realize his global ambitions. It sure will be a BIG venture.

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Big TV Purchases Set Top Boxes in Bulk

Everything seems rather big with Big TV, Reliance seems to have placed an order for 5 million set top boxes in an attempt to make them cost as much as a MPEG-2 set top box that its competitors sell in the country.

Reliance ADAG has placed orders from vendors in Korea, China and Taiwan at a cost that's lower than the market price by around 25% this would help them sell their STBs at similar if not lower prices than the ones being sold in India.

Big Entertainment has already acquired 2.5 lakh STBs and the remaining amount is expected to reach them in a couple of weeks. There will be a variety of STB models including some with video recording facility in an inbuilt memory disk or DVD drive.

Recording-enabled set-top boxes will allow a user to record any program even when no one is present at home. Reliance has set a team to procure these models as per their target market, to also tune and modify features as per feedback provided by their customers.

Although all this sounds really good on paper there has not been much news over the Internet, on the set top boxes performance. Although there are some complaints of the set top box overheating and channels hanging while they are being changed, is this the reason why the Big TV launch has been postponed yet again?

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Big TV Entertainment and News

Reliance Entertainment from the ADAG group has split itself into two branches namely the Reliance Big TV Entertainment and Reliance Big TV News to foray into the broadcast business.

The reason for this is due to the governments restrictions on foreign direct investment in the news media sector. The group is proposing two general news and two business news channels in Hindi and English and wants to remain open to the idea of roping in an international player in the entertainment TV segment.

The Reliance ADAG plans on launching twenty TV channels altogether in the country to expand its reach in the fast-growing broadcast entertainment business, although what the other 16 channels will consist of are not yet known.

In a recent update Big TV claims to have already acquired a customer database of 40,000 customers. The company also announced the road map for launching competitively priced Direct-To-Home (DTH) services across 4,000 towns in the next few weeks.

Big TV DTH also claims to have completed trial runs across 2,400 towns and the service, under the same brand name.

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Reliance Entertainment Rebranding with Moniker Big

Gearing up for the launch of Big TV which is likely to be this month, Reliance Entertainment is undergoing a major re branding with the aim of having a single brand 'Big' across all its entertainment verticals, like Big TV, Big FM channel, Big Pictures, the production company, to name a few.

The media and entertainment arm of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) will now be called Reliance Big Entertainment. The company is also phasing out the 'Adlabs' brand and replacing it with Big Cinema in the next two months. For instance, Metro Adlabs will now be called Metro Big Cinema.

In fact, Reliance is also rechristening the recently acquired theatres in the US as 'Big Cinemas'. It plans to start screening Indian films - Hindi and regional - this month in 200 cinemas. They also acquired a controlling stake in Malaysian cinema. The whole process of re branding will include the change in brand communication like signage to branding on tickets to the paraphernalia used in the multiplexes.

With this aggressive approach, the brand Big is certainly going to get popular the world over. It is creating buzz before the launch of its DTH service!

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Reliance Big Acquires DTS Imaging for $7.5 Million

Emphasizing on its commitment towards the Big Entertainment segment, the Reliance ADAG has acquired DTS's Digital Images business. DTS is the digital technology company known for its DTS Digital Sound product that competes with Dolby Digital.

Anil Arjun, senior vice president, Reliance, said, “DTS Digital Images, also popularly known as Lowry Digital Images, enjoys a superb reputation as the premier film imaging and restoration facility. The company fits well with the Digital Services strategy of the Reliance ADA Group in the global media and entertainment space."

ADAG already has a controlling stake in Adlabs, which currently holds a large market share in the film processing business. Additionally, Adlabs Films is a strategic investor in Prime Focus, another end-to-end post production service house.

So this acquisition will not directly benefit Big TV unless Reliance plans on restoring older films for their Big TV subscribers to watch. Otherwise it is an enterprise related focus that has led to Big buying DTS.

Resources:

DTS Sells Digital Images Business to Reliance Big Entertainment

Big Buys DTS Digital Imaging Business For $7.5 Million Cash

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