Mumbai, August 20
IPTV service provider Goldstone Technologies has entered into an agreement with US-based Echelon Studios to source around 3,500 video titles. This deal will boost the Hyderabad-based IT company's video library content and is slated as one of the largest acquisition by an IPTV service provider in the world. The agreement includes sourcing of movies, cartoons and sitcoms, and has been signed for a five-year period. The deal is signed under a revenue-sharing mode, the company said in a statement here today. The tie-up will widen Goldstone's array of western video content and will reiterate its objective of movie-on-demand to global masses. Goldstone will offer the movie-on-demand services along with IPTV services in India and Asia Pacific countries like Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
"We are walking on the path we had clearly chalked out, by increasing our presence in the global market, step by step. This tie-up will give us access to huge quality, video content and will definitely help us boost vide-on-demand subscribers," Goldstone Technologies Chairman Nandan Kundetakar said. This is the second such deal signed by Goldstone. Earlier, the company had signed an agreement with Bollywood film production firm Shemaroo Entertainment to source 2,000 hours of content. The company had entered into an agreement to sourcing 500 Hindi movie titles, 100 regional movies and over 100 hours of non-movie content from Shemaroo.
The agreement has been signed under a revenue-sharing basis for a five-year period. On a rough estimate, this would come to over 2,000 hours of movie entertaiment, while Goldstone also has a provision to extend the period of the contract and the number of titles. The company intends to broadcast the content under an 'on-demand mode', meaning subscribers can access the library of movies at their conveniences, like surfing the net. Goldstone will stream Shemaroo's content along with host of several live Indian TV channels across international markets and India in streaming video formats and speeds of 600 kbps.The 500 movies titles in Hindi include most of the superhits and classic movies, including the Amitabh Bachchan starrer like Chupke-Chupke, Benaam, Khuda Gawah, Milee, Great Gambler , Baaghban, while others like Nakhsa, Dus (Abhishek Bachchan), Antony Kaun Hai, Murder, Aap Mujhe Ache Lagne Lagey and Ladies Tailor among others.
Under the regional language titles, the Goldstone has signed up for 100 top movies in Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu, while song sequences and selected scenes are also included. In the non-movie content, the companies have signed up for plays in Gujarati and Marathi. According to US-based Multimedia Research Group, there will be 14.3 million IPTV subscribers across the world by end of 2007 and these would increase to 63.6 million by 2011. Goldstone had signed agreements with 12 new national and international channels to provide live channel content over its IPTV platform. These include European, Indian, Chinese, Sri Lankan and Nepalese channels. It has set up a network operating centre (NOC) in Singapore from where the services would be delivered globally.
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