I&B Ministry
400 cable operators demonstrate outside I&B Ministry
NEW DELHI: Senior officials of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry met members of the Indian Broadcast Foundation (IBF) and the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) along with other stakeholders to discuss hurdles in the way of digitisation of cable television.
The discussion primarily centered on carriage fee and the format of agreements between the various stakeholders including subscribers.
The broadcasters were emphatic that carriage fee should be done away with it. Senior officials including joint secretary (broadcasting) Sanjay Murthy agreed to consider the various issues that were raised at the meeting.
A ministry source told indiantelvision.com that the meeting was part of a series that was being organised to ensure smooth switch over to digital addressable systems.
Around 400 local cable operators, who are members of Cable Operators Welfare Federation (COWF) demonstrated outside Shastri Bhavan, which houses the ministry, to gain entry and express their point of view at the meeting. Around 150 of them were later detained by the police and taken to Parliament Street police station where they were later let off.
The ministry source, however, said that local cable operators (LCOs) who are the members of the taskforce had been invited to the meeting but only one of them had attended.
I&B Ministry
Prasar Bharati sets EPG standards for DD Free Dish platform
New specs define 7-day guide, LCN mapping, and device compatibility.
MUMBAI: Your TV guide just got a backstage pass structured, scheduled, and far more in sync. Prasar Bharati has released detailed technical specifications for Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) services on DD Free Dish, laying down a standardised framework for how channels and programme information are organised and delivered. At the core of the update is a defined EPG data structure, covering genre-based categorisation, scheduling formats, and Logical Channel Numbering (LCN). The aim is simple: make navigation less guesswork and more guided experience across the platform’s over 40 million households.
The specifications also introduce a seven-day programme guide window for each channel, alongside clear rules for channel grouping and LCN mapping effectively deciding not just what you watch, but how easily you find it.
On the technical front, the document outlines requirements for Program Specific Information (PSI) and Service Information (SI), including descriptor usage across tables such as PAT, BAT and NIT. It further details service lists and network linkage parameters, giving OEMs and developers a clearer blueprint for integration.
Importantly, the framework is designed to work seamlessly with television sets equipped with in-built satellite tuners, enabling users to access DD Free Dish directly without additional hardware, an incremental but meaningful step towards simplifying access.
The platform will continue to operate on GSAT-15 transponders, using MPEG-4 compression and DVB-S2 transmission standards, ensuring continuity even as the interface evolves.
While largely technical, the move signals a broader push towards standardisation and user-friendly discovery in India’s free-to-air ecosystem because sometimes, the real upgrade isn’t what’s on screen, but how easily you get there.
