Rem Control India

I CONTROL
Your humble television set is now at your service. Simply use the rem control and feed your fancies.

Have you ever wistfully watched the clock tick past the time of your favourite sit-com while you sit at work? Have you ever cursed that toothpaste advertisement which comes up just when the suspense in the Hollywood flick is at tipping point? Have you ever wished you could see that last-minute goal over and over again? Well, all your wishes could now be true, thanks to icontrol.

Aksh Optifibre Ltd, in collaboration with, MTNL and BSNL, has launched India's first IPTV service. For the uninitiated, IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television, or in plain speak Interactive Personalised Televiewing. Often mistaken for Internet TV or TV on you- computer, IPTV uses the same transmis­sion technology that is used for the Internet to transmit television content to your TV, instead of the traditional broadcast methods. Among othher things, this gives you better picture quality.

But what does that mean for the viewer? Ashok Wahi, head of strategic initiative at Aksh Optifibre says: “icontrol is a new way of experiencingtelevision like never before.” icontrol brings a host of unique features to the customers, like time shift TV live replay and video on demand. Time shift TV allows you to watch any pro­gramme on any channel over the past three days at any time. How does this work? The telecast data for the past three days is stored in a large database at the server end of icontrol. All that the user has to do to view any programme is to access that information from his or her home. There is no data storage over­head involved at the user end. The viewer can also skip through, forward, rewind or pause any pro­gramme being viewed with this feature.

Can't believe what that news presenter just said? By all means, you can now replay it! Working on the same principle of storing the live telecast at the server end, the viewer can replay live telecast with the flick of a button. icontrol has also tied up with Eros and Shemaroo to provide Video on Demand. The user has a selection of more than 200 movies in various languages to choose from, which is refreshed every month. icontrol also gives you the same freedom in watching movies that a DVD would—forward, rewind and pause the movie, bookmark and resume at your convenience.

Along with viewing enhancements, there are also other interesting features icontrol places at your disposal, including interactive gaming and messaging. Play games like Sudoku and tic-tac-toe with other users in your icontrol group or send messages. Or use A-tube, an all-purpose yellow pages service on your television. All these features are accessible through a simple, user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) with the help of a single remote control.

You can install this service all you require is a television set and a phone call to one of the icontrol customer care help lines. Currently, icontrol is offering over 130 channels at the cost of Rs 199 per month, with Rs 200 as a one-time registration fee and a fully refund­able deposit of Rs 999 for the set-top box. The number of channels is also set to increase, and with that, various schemes to suit different tastes will also be offered. At present icontrol has over 10,000 subscribers across India and this number is expected to increase to 50,000 by January 2009 and to one lakh by March 2009. The only problem as of now is the extended installation time one to three weeks.

Many other features, like A-Shop or icontrol Shopping, more games, more channels, a greater selection of movies and video conferencing are in the pipeline. With a plethora of services at times it seems to be more than a user needs, icontrol is making TV viewing a controllable experience for the viewer as he next generation of TV viewing icontrol is living up to its name, giving the viewer a lot of control over the way of watching television.