Debo-nair

Director Shivam Nair may have made a slow and clean film in the Abhay Deol-Soha Ali Khan starrer Ahista Ahista, but now the man has signed up for two films with Shemaroo, one of which will be a big budget action thriller. Nair is also in talks with two major companies for their next projects.

Foreign hand

What’s common among Christopher Popp, Joe Jennings, Peter Fields, Andrew Belletty, Tony Ching and now Andy Ansah? All of them are foreign technicians who have been roped in by Bollywood filmmakers to add a bit of zing and style to their film making. While Jennings and Belletty have worked on Farhan Akhtar’s Don, Andy Ansah is a football choreographer who will help Vivek Agnihotri kick off his film Goal with John Abraham.

Bushed bloggers

After a failed attempt to identify and chastise the people behind warfornews, the largely personal gossip blog on employees of news channels like NDTV, Times NOW and CNN-IBN and IBN 7, the management of Global Broadcast News, the TV 18 company that runs CNN-IBN and IBN 7, has taken another route to discourage it. Access to the blog from the servers at IBN offices has been blocked. The logic, as a top executive at a news channel explained, was that employees working in news channels are completely done in by the time they reach home and have little strength to surf the internet.

Fuzzy picture

Guess why Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) is not being able to launch its Internet Protocol TV (IPTV, which is delivered via broadband services) service in Delhi despite being ready to start services? The bizarre but true answer is that the powers-that-be have still to figure out whether IPTV is a cable television service or a value-added telecom service.

So MTNL and its partner Time Broadband Services, which has set up the content delivery network for the state-owned telecom company, has no choice but to wait for a verdict from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the telecom industry’s regulator. If IPTV is classified as a cable TV service, the project may be in trouble. That’s because to broadcast TV programmes by using IPTV technology, a set top box is required to decode the IP video and convert it into standard signals for a personal computer or a TV set. But the conditional access system (CAS) has been notified in Delhi. Under CAS, all free-to-air channels must be delivered without a set top box. Only pay channels can be routed through a decoder in CAS.

But why this nagging doubt that MTNL’s IPTV could be classified as a cable TV service? Because it uses a copper wire for connecting the last mile to the home.

SRK’s back

Shah Rukh Khan’s back is much better now. And you will know it when you see his upcoming film Don — The Chase Begins Again, which will be released around Diwali. The super hero has done a few stunts for the film. He’s managed to achieve the feat by exercising late into the night. Earlier, when he was on antibiotics, Khan would go to bed early, around 10.30 pm, to ensure proper rest for his back. For those who need details, SRK does leg and back and cardiovascular exercises, along with chest and bicep exercises as well.