Friday, July 27, 2012

TV Lanka launches DVB-T pay television service

TV Lanka has launched their very own DVB-T pay television service with coverage limited to the colombo city limits. The channel list consists of a mix of HD & SD feeds. However it should be stated that the HD feeds are been broadcast to the subscribers as SD feeds and not in HD quality.

A problem we see with this is that in the case of the Taj Television channels they broadcast only Ten HD & Ten Cricket. The major disadvantage is that not all the programmes on Ten Sports is available on Ten HD since Ten HD broadcasts a mixture of content from Ten Sports, Ten Cricket & Ten Action. So it would have been better for them to add Ten Sports & Ten Action as separate channels instead of Ten HD. We see this repeated a few times with other channels too. We hope they review their channel lineup and do the needful to rectify the situation.


Given below is the channel lineup of the DVB-T service

1. TV Lanka
2. TV Lanka-movie
3. TV Lanka-songs
4. Rupavahini
5. ITN
6. Channel EYE
7. Swarnawahini
8. Derana
9. TNL
10. The Buddhist
11. BBC
12. CNN
13. Net Geo HD
14. Discovery Planet
15. Animal Planet
16. FOX traveler
17. POGO
18. Cartoon Network
19. Sun TV
20. KTV
21. STAR Vijay
22. Kaliganar TV
23. Adithya TV
24. Jaya Movies
25. Chitti TV
26. Jaya TV
27. Sun Music
28. TEN cricket
29. Neo Prime
30. Star Cricket HD
31. TEN HD
32. ESPN HD
33. HBO
34. Star Movies HD
35. Movies Now HD
36. STAR Plus HD
37. Zee TV HD
38. Angel TV
39. Peace TV
40. CH40
41. Chanel 41

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

ESS bags SLPL broadcast rights

ESS which operates ESPN, Star Sports & Star Cricket has secured multi year broadcasting rights for the Sri Lanka Premier League which debuts on August 11th. The rights have been acquired for the Indian subcontinent and covering Hong Kong and Thailand too.

ESS continues to acquire broadcasting rights for the major sporting events in this region despite an outright purchase by Star (owned by Fox International Channels) of the Disney shares (Disney operates ESPN) in ESS. We believe that ESPN would be rebranded as Fox Sports in the near future but it would function as ESPN until the handover is completed.

The acquiring of SLPL rights by ESS is indeed good news to the sports loving public in Sri Lanka since ESPN, Star Sports & Star Cricket are available on all locally operated pay television networks.

CSN is the local FTA broadcaster of the event.

Supreme Court rules out "exclusive" Olympic rights

In a move that will be hailed by the sports loving public in Sri Lanka the Supreme Court has over ruled an order by the Colombo High Court preventing MTV/MBC from broadcasting the Olympic Games. This ruling means that both MTV/MBC & SLRC can telecast the Olympics thereby ensuring better coverage of the games.

The inability of one broadcaster to telecast the games is something that we highlighted several weeks ago and it has been rightfully highlighted by the chief justice too.

This is indeed great news and we wish both MTV/MBC & SLRC all the best in their coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Monday, July 09, 2012

ESPN-Star Sports split could result in a Fox Sports Asia launch

With ESPN & Star Sports splitting their almost 16 year joint venture. Star is in the process of purchasing the shares owned by Disney who operate ESPN. This would mean that Disney-ESPN would exit the sports broadcasting business in Asia for a few years due to the existing no-compete clause in the present agreement joint venture.

Once the Disney-ESPN shares are wholly purchased by Star, it would we believe result in the launch of Fox Sports replacing ESPN in Asia. In a few years Disney is expected to consolidate their asian businesses which would mean the return of ESPN into Asia as a wholly owned operation of Disney.

This entire split which is subject to regulatory approvals is expected to be concluded shortly which would mean the launch of Fox Sports Asia will take place soon thereafter. ESPN-Star Sports would most like be known as Fox-Star Sports in the future.