MUMBAI: Pyramid Saimira Theatre’s subsidiary company Pyramid Saimira Entertainment will be launching its Direct to Home (DTH) service across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Pyramid Saimira Theatre’ will also be raising additional funds to the tune of $400 million through FCCB / GDR / ADR.
For the DTH service, the company has tied-up with UK-based pan European DTH platform, Spize TV for the same. The partnership is for content agglomeration, new channels and services that will be launched with Spize TV.
Pyramid Saimira Entertainment had earlier picked up an equity stake in Spize TV.
SpizeTV is a pan-European direct-to-home (DTH) TV platform offering Asian and niche content to viewers in Europe. Spize TV is available on the EuroBird-9 (EB9) satellite, which allows viewers to benefit from the 500+ free-to-air channels on the HotBird satellite by a simple dual-LNB upgrade. The technical details of SpizeTV platform are EB9 @9° East, 11,843 V, Txp 56, Symbol 27,500 and 3/4 FEC.
Spize TV will have North bouquet (Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Bangla and Gujarati other lingua), a South bouquet of Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Singhalese, and Malay. It will also have Chinese and Spanish bouquet shortly.
Spize TV will start the platform with the complete suite of the ARY Network channels (ARY Digital, ARY OneWorld, QTV, and The Musik) and also the two B4U Network channels (B4U Movies and B4U Music) in its North bouquet. Other channels will be added in due course. The "South" bouquet currently has DAN (Tamil) and TV Lanka (Sinhalese).
Since the "soft launch" of the bouquet, the channels are available, and the formal full scale commercial launch for viewers will be in April-May 2008.
Spize TV will have both Viaeccess and Irdeto conditional access systems to allow both bouquets to watch a mix of channels including LIVE international Cricket matches played in India and Pakistan.
SpizeTV will be arranging the installation of ‘dual-LNBs’ on the existing viewers’ of HotBird dishes to allow them to continue watching their other favorite channels on the HotBird satellite, as well as a large bouquet of channels on SpizeTV on the EB9 satellite.
Pyramid MD P S Saminathan says, "Spize TV is yet another giant baby step for our global entertainment strategy. With this we are now creating last mile access which will synergize and will also leverage our content significantly. This also sets us well on the way on our European expansion strategy. Personally for me this is a re entry into cable & satellite space and this will a start of an exiting journey in this space."
Pyramid Saimira Theatre is also planning to increase the borrowing limit of the company from the present Rs 1,500 crores to Rs 3,000 crores.
