The Comedy Central Saga & Indian feeds

If any of you Dialog TV subscribers are wondering what happened to Comedy Central over the weekend - those of you who have subscribed to our Facebook page & Twitter have already been updated with the information. The channel has been suspended from broadcasting by the Indian government due to violation of broadcasting decency rules according to reports in "IndianTelevion.Com: I&B suspends telecast of Comedy Central & ManoranjanTV for alleged content violations".

Broadcasting suspensions are quite common in India, another channel that faces frequent suspensions is AXN India, fortunately for those of us in Sri Lanka, we are provided with the Asian feed of AXN. The present Comedy Central issue makes a strong case on why Sri Lankan Pay Television companies should avoid Indian feeds of channels. A majority of channels provided by local pay television operators are Indian feeds which are plagued by Indian ads, caters to the whims and fancies of the Indian public and also dance to the tune of the Indian government.

Cost is a factor why local pay television operators provide Indian feeds over Asian feeds, another reason is that the parent company of the channel concerned decides which feed a country receives depending on the rights allocation of the programming on the channel (eg: Fox International channels decided that Sri Lanka should switch to Star Movies India after Fox Movies Premium was launched). 

In spite of all these Sri Lankan pay television companies should concentrate on getting Asian feeds of channels instead of Indian ones. In the case of Comedy Central India, it is expected to resume broadcasting from June 4th once again, until then the only jokes that will be available on this channel will be in the form of a test card.

In other news Channel No. 71 "Dialog Test Channel" is showing a test card, which could mean that Dialog TV maybe planning to add a channel to it.

Please keep us updated on the latest on Dialog TV as the days progress.

MPEG4 conversion & Pay Per View/On Demand TV....

After some relative activity on Dialog TV over the past few months, things seem to have quieted down a bit in the recent past. After that SMS in early march about the free replacement of decoders for the premiere subscribers nothing much seems to have happened.

We believe that the free replacements are almost complete, maybe about 99% complete. We could expect the announcement that Dialog is converting existing premiere package channels to MPEG4 soon. This would certainly increase the space on existing transponders paving the way for Dialog to add more channels.

It is sad though that three slots are being totally wasted on Dialog TV, one in the SD channel list called "Dialog Test Channel" and the other in the HD list called "Test 2" and "Test 3". Unconfirmed information, it could also be called rumors are in the circles that Dialog TV will be launching Pay Per View Television/On Demand TV in the very near future, which is why they are tinkering with those three test channels which are unused.

Either way Dialog TV shouldn't waste too much time, they should also introduce a new package providing the non-HD channels in the HD pack as add-on to premiere package subscribers at a fee. Not everyone has HD TV sets as yet and many are resisting conversion due to the lack of HD TV. If Dialog provides those non-HD channels as an add-on pack, then it is a potential revenue earner for Dialog TV.

We are expecting a few big announcements from Dialog TV pretty soon.

Please keep us updated on the latest on Dialog TV as the days progress.