DTH
Star, Zee at odds on DTH set top specifications
NEW DELHI: The issue of standardisation of set-top boxes for KU-band direct-to-home (DTH) television service continues to be a thorny issue contributing to a delay in the start of any such venture in India.
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) — as it happened again in a meeting on Thursday — is finding it difficult to make any sort of recommendation to the Indian government on the STBs owing to a lack of consensus amongst the various stakeholders in the industry.
“One of the main stumbling blocks has been the clause in the DTH policy guidelines that mandates an open architecture for the STBs,” a senior BIS official, on condition of anonymity, told indiantelevision.com after yesterday’s over two-hour meeting, adding that rival broadcasters have been staunchly sticking to their opposite stand on interoperability, amongst other issues, which is making the Bureau’s task difficult.
Is interoperability possible, as has been mandated in the guidelines by the Indian government? Experts opine that that technically it is possible, but practically an ‘open’ box is rarely used for DTH anywhere in the world as it does not make huge investments in such projects a viable proposition.
Yesterday’s meeting was attended by a strong team from Star, including the Hong Kong-based Altaf Ali Mohammed, president digital platforms group, who oversees its DTH project, representatives from ASC Enterprise/Zee and CETMA , among others.
Since no decision could be arrived at yesterday, another meeting has been called for on 28 April where BIS has said it should be decided how things can be taken forward, including a consensus on interoperability. BIS is also of the viewpoint that it has to work within the limitations of the policy guidelines and things mandated therein.
“If the DTH players are so upset with the guidelines, then they should petition the government to go in for modifications. BIS cannot recommend such a step and it will work within the framework of the policy,” the BIS official explained.
The open architecture conundrum, as rightly pointed out by BIS, is the result of lack of consensus on the issue.
At one end of the spectrum is media baron Rupert Murdoch’s pan-Asian venture Star Group that has applied to the Indian government for a DTH licence through a company called Space TV. Star’s stand from the beginning has been that open architecture is a non-starter and this clause should be changed if the BIS sub-committee, examining this issue at the behest of the information and broadcasting ministry, recommends so to the government.
At the other end of the DTH spectrum is Murdoch’s one time Indian ally, Subhash Chandra, sometimes also referred to as Asia’s Rupert Murdoch by South-East Asia based newsmagazines.
While Space TV is yet to get a nod from the government on the DTH licence issue, one of Chandra’s companies, ASC Enterprise, having got the green signal for DTH and the official letter from the I&B ministry recently, is taking a stand that it would do everything as per rules specified in the guidelines. This also includes going in for interoperability where the boxes are concerned.
This divergent view has thrown a spanner in Star’s scheme of things, which has also been petitioning that another clause in the guidelines relating to revenue sharing with the government should be modified. And rightly so also.
A typical DTH venture would attract investment between $ 400-500 million. Having invested such a sum, no media organisation would like to throw away the advantage of captive subscribers. Moreover, as Star has pointed out, since such ventures take a long time to break-even, the 10 per cent annual revenue sharing should be modified to profit sharing.
In India, despite small steps forward, DTH at present continues to be DTN (direct to nowhere).
DTH
Prasar Bharati’s WAVES earns Rs 2.9 crore in first year
Platform scales content, users but monetisation gaps limit revenue growth.
MUMBAI: Big waves, small ripples at least for now. When Prasar Bharati launched its OTT platform WAVES at the 55th International Film Festival of India in November 2024, it pitched a bold vision: a homegrown rival to global and domestic streaming giants, blending video, audio, gaming and commerce into a single digital ecosystem. Five months into FY2024–25, however, the platform’s revenue stands at just Rs 2.90 crore, a figure that underscores the gap between ambition and monetisation.
On paper, WAVES looks anything but modest. The platform has ingested 13,608 titles, totalling 9,495 hours of content, with over 13,000 titles already live. It has streamed more than 575 live events from the Mahakumbh Amrit Snan and the 76th Republic Day parade to the Hockey India League, Kabaddi World Cup and Mann Ki Baat while offering 74 live TV channels and 12 radio channels. With over 10 lakh registered users and more than 200 content partners onboarded, the scale resembles that of a fully operational streaming service rather than a pilot project.
The architecture supporting this scale is equally robust. Built under Prasar Bharati’s Central Archives vertical, WAVES runs on a cloud-based infrastructure with DRM, encryption and an integrated analytics dashboard. It includes dedicated units for content ingestion, quality control, publishing, graphics, marketing and billing, and is distributed across platforms such as OTTplay, Tata Play and BSNL. The offering extends beyond video to include audio-on-demand, e-games and even e-commerce via ONDC integration.
Yet, the numbers reveal a core disconnect. Despite its scale, WAVES generated just Rs 2.90 crore in a market where India’s OTT industry crossed Rs 23,000 crore in 2024. A key bottleneck lies in monetisation infrastructure: subscriptions cannot currently be purchased within the app and must be completed via an external website. In a mobile-first country where over 95 per cent of OTT consumption happens on smartphones, this extra step creates friction that most users are unlikely to overcome.
Ironically, content is not the problem, it is the platform’s biggest strength. Prasar Bharati holds one of the world’s richest broadcast archives, including 45,154 hours of digitised Akashvani programming and 35,723 hours from Doordarshan. For WAVES alone, over 3,800 hours of archival content have been made OTT-ready, including classics such as Ramayan and Shaktimaan, alongside rare cultural recordings and historical broadcasts.
There are early signs that this library holds commercial potential. Revenue from archival content licensing rose sharply to Rs 3.38 crore in FY24, up from Rs 67 lakh the previous year. Meanwhile, free digital platforms continue to drive massive reach, the PB Archives Youtube channel clocked 119.78 million views and added 4,02,000 subscribers in FY2024–25, crossing 1.7 million in total, while DD News has over 5.84 million subscribers.
That, however, presents a strategic dilemma. While free distribution builds scale, it also conditions audiences to expect content at zero cost making it harder to transition to paid models. WAVES, designed as a hybrid AVOD-SVOD platform with advertising and subscription layers, is yet to fully crack this balance.
The broader challenge is not technological but strategic. In an ecosystem dominated by platforms offering seamless payments, aggressive pricing and high-budget originals, WAVES is still bridging the gap between being a content repository and a commercially viable product.
For now, the platform reflects both promise and paradox. It has the scale, the content and the infrastructure but until monetisation catches up, WAVES remains less a revenue engine and more a digital showcase of what India’s public broadcaster could become.
