Tata Sky eyes 8 m connections by 2012

Kolkata, Oct 17 (UNI) Tata Sky Ltd, a joint venture between Tata Group and Star, was eyeing dishing out at least eight million connections by 2012 in India with the launch of its Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite television service armed with personal video recorder technology christened "Tata Sky Plus" today.

Tata Sky Chief Marketing Officer Vikram Mehra told newspersons here that the company's subscriber base currently stood at 2.75 million in the country, including 4,800 towns, adding the new technology enabled the viewers to pause and rewind live TV.

'' With a memory capacity of 160 gigabyte, one can record up to 45 hours of live TV with Tata Sky Plus. One can even fast forward or rewind the programme during playback and the technology provides the flexibility to record two live TV shows simultaneously. However, it has been ensured that the recorded items cannot be copied to other storage devices, '' Mr Mehra elaborated.

He informed that the firm had invested Rs 2,000 crore towards setting up its infrastructure so far, adding the company had currently 35,000 dealers across the nation.

Tata Sky Plus, armed with a "digicomp" having MPEG 4 technology, a hard disk and an in-built personal video recorder, offered around 160 channels ranging from entertainment, sports, movies and music to news and documentaries, chief marketing officer told newspersons.

'' Tata Sky Plus will be rolled out in a phased manner across the country and the service is expected to cover the entire nation in the next three months, '' Mr Mehra further informed.

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