Adaptable Smart Watch Alarm

My Current Samsung Galaxy Watch tracks my Sleep timing with fair amount. It displays the time when I fall asleep and when I woke up. Based on these timing, it displays hours of sleep along with Deep sleep, Light sleep, etc. parameters and overall sleep score in Samsung Health App.

I have set Morning Wakeup Alarm on my Smart Watch. Watch vibrates and plays Alarm tone at the set time. After 1-2 snooze I usually wakeup. After I get up and start moving, Watch identifies this as Wakeup time.

So far Watch is doing its job perfectly about tracking sleep and waking me at set time. But I am wondering if it could have feature by which it will only wake me after I get sleep of certain hours, like 7 or 8 hours from the time I fall asleep. It would be like Adaptable Alarm which set automatically after it detects I am sleeping. So, if I set to wake me up after 7 hours, and Watch detects that I slept at 11:00 PM, then should set Alarm for 6:00 AM. Similarly, if it detects I slept at 11:30 PM, then Alarm would be set for 06:30 AM.

I hope Apple, Samsung, Fitbit, and other Wearable device makers are working on this feature.

Image Courtesy: Samsung Health

Viacom18 entering Sports Broadcasting?

In recent days Viacom18 is acquiring various Sports Broadcasting rights from various Sporting bodies. Earlier they acquired rights for Spanish La Liga. Then Abu Dhabi T10 Cricket League. And latest acquisition is Italian Serie A.

In past as well Viacom18 had done Sports broadcasting for Nidahas Trophy held in Sri Lanka in 2018.

It looks like Viacom18 is looking grand entry in Sports broadcasting by targeting BCCI or IPL rights.

Reference: https://www.indiantelevision.com/television/tv-channels/sports/viacom18-acquires-broadcast-and-digital-rights-for-italian-serie-a-210820

Mumbai: Viacom18 on Friday announced that it has acquired the broadcast and digital rights for Italian Serie A for the Indian sub-continent region for the next three seasons. The latest edition of Italian Serie A will kick off on 21 August at 10 p.m. The matches will be aired on Viacom18’s TV channels, Voot and Jio.

The media company has been steadily expanding its sports offerings with the network recently entering multi-year partnerships for Spanish La Liga (football) and Abu Dhabi T10 League (cricket).

Marathi Movies on Zing Channel UK

ZEE has rebranded its free-to-Air music channel ‘ZEE MUZIC’ to ZING creating a niche channel catering music as well as non-music content. It included bollywood updates, interviews, events and movies.
From recent weeks, ZING is broadcasting Marathi Movies with English subtitles on weekends. It would be good opportunity for Marathi viewers to watch Marathi movies on FTA channel. Recently movie ‘Matichay chuli’ by Mahesh Manjrekar was telecast on ZING

Doordarshan plans DTT in India. Pvt channels may also be allowed on terrestrial

We in India are familiar and watched DD’s analogue terrestrial channels (mostly DD1, DD News and regional channel time shared with DD1). But in 4-5 years we could enjoy more DD channels in Digital mode, and if permitted some private channels could also be seen on terrestrial transmitted as ‘Digital Terrestrial Transmission’ (DTT).

In India we are so far aware of Digital TV through satellite (DTH), where digital channels are carried over satellite signals and sent to customer’s home. In DTT similarly digital TV signals are carried over RF signals, but broadcasted from terrestrial transmitters over VHF/UHF frequencies. The standard commonly used for DTT is DVB-T which is widely adopted. Besides 8VSB for ATSC (used in North America) and ISDB-T (used in Japan & Brazil) are the standards used for DTT.

DTT would have advantage over analogue transmission. On the single frequency more digital channels can be transmitted. Audio/Video quality is better compared to analogue channels. DTT also has benefit of transmitting EPG and other active services.

But DTT channels cannot be received through conventional TV. We would need Set Top Box or TVs with built in digital tuner for DTT reception.

India has adopted DVB-T standard. Turning digital, will improve DD’s transmission strength to accommodate about 6-8 channels/transmitter. Interested private broadcaster could use the additional channels to offer paid TV services to nearly 120 million homes. They could also put up digital transmitters at their own cost on DD’s towers and add more channels to the bouquet

Doordarshan has already conducted trials of its digital terrestrial transmission services in Delhi. In 2006, the projected cost of migrating to digital had been estimated at Rs 3,531 crore by a Committee of Financial Restructuring of Prasar Bharati. Earlier, an expert group set up by the Prime Minister’s Office had set 2015 as the deadline to phase out analogue TV transmission completely. Prasar Bharti was to start DTT in 2010; the report of this group had, keeping the Commonwealth Games in mind, even coined a slogan ‘Digital Delhi by 2010’ for the Capital.

Reference: DD may go digital, open up for pvt broadcaster

ESPN enters UK

US broadcaster ESPN last night won a £90million contract to show 46 live Premier League games next season.

Espn, owned by Disney, picked up both packages which were put up for auction by the Premier League after they were taken away from Setanta.

And in a separate deal, they also won the rights to screen 23 games for three seasons from 2010 in what is a double blow for Sky.

Sky have long feared ESPN bidding for Premier League rights as the US giant represents a huge threat to their domestic dominance.

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said. “ESPN have a formidable worldwide reputation and I am sure we will enjoy a long and fruitful relationship.”

So now SKY’s dominance in UK’s sport broadcast market could come to end after entry of strong player like ESPN. It would be good if ESPN could also get rights of other sporting event like Cricket of UK, so they could offer some refreshing broadcast for UK Cricket

Loksabha Election Results 2009 – My Analysis

The results of India’s Loksabha Elections are out, and were beyond anybody’s expectation, neither the party that won, nor the parties that lost. Cong has won with this large margin almost after 2 decades, this has almost brought Cong rule like it was after independence. All other parties like Left, SP, LJP, MNS and main opposition parties lost very badly.
Some of the reasons of the results could be:
1. Global Financial Situation: With the financial situations globally very bad, Indian may have felt, its better to play safe and country run by a party who is headed by a economist, who looked more liable then BJP’s Advani who didn’t came up with any strong solution for this. And with such financial situation, 3rd/4th etc front getting elected was never possible.
2. Terrorism: Terrorism could have been the reason to get current govt out of power, but the irresponsible statements by opposition parties may have lost the chance for them. Besides past record of BJP was not good to prove their point to tackle terrorism.
3. Leader: What ever number of persons aiming for post of PM, there were only 2 people capable for the post. Manmohan Singh & L K Advani. Singh though termed as weak PM by opposition parties, he had respect from public, besides he never let his image drop from minds of people, while Advani has changed his image several times. From hardliner to soft stance secular. But still people may not willing to accept the change of image of Advani causing low response to his party.
4. Leaders of 2nd rank: 2nd rank leaders from both Cong & BJP were fully involved in campaign. Cong used Rahul, Priyanka, Milind Deora, Sachin Pilot, J Schindia. Rahul may appear dumb at present, but his father & Grand-mother also had same reputation when they joined politics, but later became centre of power. Rahul could also become centre of power. On other BJP’s 2nd rank leaders were never in sync. Spat between Rajnath & Arun Jaitley was well-known. Narendra Modi campaigned mostly, but may be his magic was not acceptable outside Gujarat. So Cong also scored on its 2nd rank leader’s image.
5: Media Support: The credit of victory of Cong should also given to media. Major media groups constantly put news/articles against BJP, but never uttered any criticism towards Cong. Media project negative image of BJP heavily which may have resulted soft-minded voters turning their back to BJP.

What next: For Cong its celebration time, before they settle to form new cabinet. Now that it has majority it will not have problem of giving ministries to worthless people from their earlier alliance.
But for BJP, it would be tough time. BJP had crumbled completely after 2004 defeat. This defeat is even bigger. Although BJP operates in democratic manner, it needs central authority person heading (like Sonia for Cong) to keep control on 2nd rank leaders. Senior leaders like Advani should step down and party should strengthen 2nd rank leadership, for that party should lead by younger leaders with mass appeal. It should also create leadership at state level in most of states where it has to depend on alliance partners (who could not always be trusted, like BJD & JD(U) & perhaps Shivsena).

Its good that India gets stable govt for next 5 years, and lets hope India comes out of financial crisis strongly and continues to progress.

Test Cricket becoming extinct?

The sad news about test crciket is coming from most traditional cricketing nation – England, where for 2nd test between England & West Indies only 3000 tickets were sold in the stadium of 16000 capacity. Its contrasting to situation of T20 & IPL response. T20 is pulling crowd every where, and even IPL (India’s domestic tournament) proving crowd puller in foreign nation (South Africa) after it was shifted there for security reasons. Even ICC getting aware of it by arranging T20 world cup immediately after 2 years where as ODI worldcup which is arranged after 4 years. But nothing is done for Test Cricket’s revival.

Testing time at Riverside with tickets hard to sell

The full house is far from assured, especially for the first day’s play, for which only 3,000 tickets have been sold. At a ground with a capacity of just under 16,000, fewer than 30,000 seats have been sold for the match as a whole, around half of which are for the third day on Saturday. For the television cameramen charged with picking out densely populated areas of the ground, it could be a challenging few days.

Now it would be interesting how Ashes 2009 gets the response from the English public & viewers worldwide on Television. If Ashes also fails to make its mark, Test Cricket is soon on verge of being extinct…

Radio on DTH, will we get it in India?

Radio on DTH splits broadcasters

Should radio be a part of the direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting bouquet? The question has the country’s media industry sharply divided.
Though some DTH platforms offer radio (mainly state-owned All India Radio and satellite radio WorldSpace), the government is yet to take a decision on whether to allow such a service.
One of the issues raised by some media players is that FM radio licences are city or town specific, and that offering FM stations on DTH could be a violation of government norms.
Replying to a consultation paper floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on the matter, WorldSpace has said that carriage of radio channels as part of DTH TV service is well-accepted in most parts of the world, including the US, Europe and the Middle East. According to WorldSpace, radio channels that are approved by the competent authorities to offer national level services may be permitted to provide content to DTH operators in India.
FM radio player Entertainment Network India Ltd (ENIL) wants radio on the DTH platforms for greater reach. Unlike TV signals, radio requires lower bandwidth. “So, there won’t be much additional burden on carrier capacity and on transponder bandwidth,” ENIL has said.
On the other hand, Radio Mid-Day, another private FM radio player, has said that DTH service providers “cannot provide our Mumbai radio stations to their customers outside Mumbai.” Also, any service by DTH “to provide our channels should be after taking our prior consent and after paying requisite fee,” it said.
Dish TV, the first DTH operator, has said that DTH operators should not be allowed to provide radio channels as it may be a violation of the licensing conditions and uplinking/ downlinking guidelines. If DTH operators are allowed to offer radio stations, many government norms need to be reviewed and changed, Dish TV has said.
The Zee Turner Alliance, too, has opposed the idea. “DTH platform owners should not be permitted to carry radio channels as the licensing for the radio services is separate and distinct,” it has said. It has argued permitting radio channels on DTH would result in infringing of territorial limits specified by the existing radio licences.
Other DTH service providers, including TataSky, Reliance Big TV, and Sun Direct, have however, stand in favour.
TataSky has stated that it is a common practice in many other countries to offer radio on DTH and even on cable. There is no conflict of business interest with an existing radio system as DTH is a paid service, it has said.
Reliance has compared this scenario with the telecom sector. “Like in the case of telecom service providers, which can provide mobile TV in addition to traditional voice and data, DTH operators can carry TV signals containing audio and video, and also audio signals of a radio channel,” Reliance has argued.

I believe TRAI should provide satellite license to radio channels along with some regulation for the content. Also the radio channels should be asked to produce a seperate beam/signal for DTH targeting whole nation unlike Region/City specific which radio channels has. Lets see what happens.

Adobe Flash platform coming to televisions and set-top boxes

Adobe Flash platform coming to televisions and set-top boxesAdobe’s Flash to Come to TVs

Adobe’s Flash software will be built in to many of the microchips used inside television and digital boxes, enabling developers, broadcasters and content providers to make applications and software that deliver a rich web-browsing experience. It will allow people to check their emails, the weather and live travel updates through their TV set. Adobe says it expects the first generation of Flash-enabled devices to hit the market next year.

Several manufacturers, including Sony and Samsung, already make internet-enabled televisions capable of running small programs, known as “widgets” that give access to a variety of popular services. Television makers are keen to ensure that TVs are not usurped by computers as the centre of the digital home, and piping the internet and web-based TV services, such as BBC iPlayer and YouTube, directly in to the living room, is seen as crucial to this.

Adobe says it hopes the next-generation Flash-enabled devices will bring high-definition video streaming, interactive news tickers and quizzes to television viewers. It has signed content deals with movie rental service Netflix, Disney and the New York Times to create the first applications for the platform.

For this programme, the company has tied-up with Broadcom, Sigma Designs and MediaTek-all of whom are in the business of making system-on chips for set top boxes. The program will be incorporated on the chips made by these companies. This will throw open a hitherto untouched market for Adobe Flash, which has traditionally been restricted to PCs and of late, mobile phones. In fact, almost 98 percent of PCs have flash installed. As for mobile phones, the shipments of devices enabled with FlashLite support is expected to cross the 1 billion mark in 2009, according to data compiled by Strategy Analytics. The report adds that by 2010, it is expected to more than double and reach a staggering 2.5 billion! The digital TV market too is growing and is expected to clock a 12 percent growth year on year till 2012 – in the U.S., according to latest data.

Adobe says the first devices will be for the digital televisions and will be seen later this year. These will be followed by set top boxes with the SoC chips. Strangely, Adobe has not listed any TV manufacturers who have agreed to incorporate flash. Competition is already there for Abobe on the form of Microsoft – which has Flash rival Silverlight in its kitty. However, Silverlight does not have the market penetration of Flash which has rather become the de-facto standard for displaying rich web content.

Expect the first devices supporting the new Adobe platform by the second half of this year, in the U.S.

Videocon eyes one crore DTH subscribers; to start services on May 1

Videocon eyes one crore DTH subscribers; to start services on May 1

Diversified business house Videocon Group is making an ambitious foray into the direct-to-home services with plans to garner one crore subscribers in the next six years.

The group, which made an announcement of Rs 1,000 crore for the DTH venture earlier, made a soft launch of its ‘Videocon D2H’ services last evening in Macau in front of its 2,500 dealers, who where specially flown in there.

“The full commercial roll-out will start from May 1. In the first year, we are looking at 15 lakh subscribers and add similar number every year. The target is to have one crore subscribers in six years,” Videocon Group Chairman Venugopal Dhoot told PTI.

He said the company is set for a mega roll out of its DTH services as the 2,500 dealers will have around 15,000 showroom across the country.

“That gives us an advantage. Besides, we will also be offering TVs with in-built set-top boxes (STBs), which no one in the market offers,” Mr. Dhoot said.

He said over 40 engineers of the group spent nearly two years in developing the TV sets with in-built STBs.

The DTH services will leverage on Videocon’s brand equity. “We had also unveiled a new brand logo for the group, which will be common for DTH, mobile services and the consumer durables segment,” he said.

Asked about the pricing of its DTH offering, he said: “It will be competitively priced with those of the existing players. We will also have packages which are innovative and give customers value for money.”