Troubled by low off-take, BSNL's Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service will try to make a splash in the home entertainment market by rolling out a digital recording feature that will ensure that users never miss a favourite programme.
MyWay, which is content partner for BSNL Chennai Telephones, is ready with add-on Set-Top-Boxes that will enable users to record any programme, movie or song of their choice from a bouquet of 40 channels to start with.
The personal video recording (PVR) equipment is being provided at a discounted price of Rs.1,250 apart from pen-drives with content capacity ranging from eight hours to 250 hours. The PVR assembly also has a pre-set feature where one can schedule the recording in advance for an upcoming programme.
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To protect copyright, the pen-drive can be viewed only through the IPTV circuit and the files get re-formatted when loaded on to any other system, officials said.
The service provider will also extend free of cost retrieval of the previous seven days' programme content for users with existing STBs.
The entire content over a week will be stored in a remote server and can be accessed any time by a user.
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“A big advantage with the record feature is that one can pause, rewind or fast forward through commercials,” a BSNL official said.
MyWay managers feel that the new value-added services would help revive the fortunes of IPTV, which has not exactly set the market on fire despite being touted as a rival to Direct To Home entertainment.
Since being launched in October last year, the IPTV subscriber base has hardly added 2,000 connections.
“The retrieval on demand feature on IPTV is user-centric and is a key differentiator from other forms of televiewing,” a MyWay official said.