Thoughts of A Lively Mind

DRM, CAS and why the Indian Digital TV market was stillborn

Anil Dash: Dos and Don'ts for Beating the iPod (and iTunes)

Teaching consumers about DRM is like giving your cat a bath: You're only going to piss her off, and she'd do a better job of it on her own anyway. Explain your lack of DRM in terms of user benefits instead of technology, and you'll avoid disgruntled customer testimonials.

This reminds me of the way in which Digital TV was pushed in India - it was marketed as TV with CAS (Conditional Access System) - a means for pay channels to get paid for the customers who subscribed to the service. The resulting disaster:

• Chennai (Madras) got Digital TV with two partial deployments by SCV/SunTV and Hathway
• Rollout started in New Delhi - but were halted when consumers and "interested" (as in monetarily) parties took this to court and halted the whole process
• It is understood that only a few thousand customers today are on the two operational systems
• Set top boxes - the rumor in the cable tv industry that there are close to 200,000 set tops just sitting gathering dust in warehouses around India

Resuscitation attempts:
Hathway and a few other operators have finally begun marketing this as Digital TV, with traction in Bangalore, Mumbai and a few other cities. Instead of insisting customers purchase Set tops, most operators now bundle the set top free with service, against a security deposit. And now, DTH - satellite based TV service appears to be the next big move in this industry - this time luckily there is no mention of CAS/DRM - even though it is generally accepted that this will exist.

Note: I am a subscriber to digital TV service from Hathway in Chennai - service hasn't really seen any upgrades/feature additions/refinements since it was launched in 2003 - and the signal quality drops significantly in evening hours, when customer support is unreachable as their offices close at 6.30 PM.