Crown Media Holdings on Wednesday announced the formation of Crown Interactive, a new division of the company designed to leverage the wide array of products and services from Crown Media‘s affiliated companies, Hallmark Cards and Hallmark Entertainment, in the burgeoning interactive television marketplace.

Crown Interactive has formally begun its beta testing stage in Singapore, offering video-on-demand (VOD) on a non-exclusive basis in conjunction with Sharkstream, a streaming portal specialising in interactive multimedia entertainment for the Asia Pacific region. Sharkstream is a subsidiary of Indian media company United Television (UTV).

Consumers throughout Singapore can now view full screen streaming video of some of the best titles from the Hallmark Entertainment library, including, "Gulliver‘s Travels", "Merlin", "Cleopatra", "Jason and the Argonauts" and "Arabian Nights". Other cutting-edge interactive services and capabilities including video greetings and e-commerce should be added to the Singapore platform during its beta phase period with a full roll out of Crown Interactive in the region scheduled to begin during the second quarter of 2001, according to a press release.

By leveraging Hallmark‘s readily available, cross-divisional assets, including technology, creative resources, infrastructure, content and professional relationships worldwide, the Crown Interactive platform will become a comprehensive, user-friendly broadband service for consumers and platform operators, available through both PC-based systems and digital set-top boxes.

The Ninth Convergence India 2001 international exhibition and conference is being organised by Exhibitions India from 21-23 March at the Pragati Maidan in New Delhi.

The three-day event will attempt to link broadband options in the digital marketplace with cutting edge technologies in the field of broadband networking infrastructure and services highlighting communications, high-speed digital network for the distribution of digital entertainment, interactive services, and multimedia communications.

The exhibition is expected to attract 400 exhibitors from 20 countries. According to a press release issued by Exhibitions India, Convergence India 2001 will also highlight futuristic technologies to project "convergence" as an empowering tool for IT, broadcasting and telecommunications.

The animation segment of the Indian television industry is all set to become an international hub if the the fantastic response received by Indian companies at The National Association of Television Program Executives 2001, a premier international television programming convention held recently at Las Vegas, Nevada, is anything to go by.

Held from 22 to 25 January, the 38th NATPE is an annual affair dedicated to facilitate the continued growth and convergence of all content across multiple distribution platforms. "It is a good platform for networking, with quite a few deals taking place," Amit Khanna, chairman of Reliance Entertainment, said on Tuesday.

"India is fast emerging as an entertainment hub for Asia. The very fact that there was a special session - Adventures in Indian Television - devoted to India proves the point," Khanna said. Regarding the response to the session held on India, Khanna said: "It was well attended." The special session was chaired by Bhuvan Lall, executive director of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, while on the panel were eminent personalities in the Indian entertainment sector. Among them, along with Khanna, were V Chandrasekaran, chairman & CEO, Pentamedia Graphics Ltd., Bill Dennis, president & CEO, Toonz Animation India Ltd, Dheeraj Kapuria, North American Head, Zee TV, Firdaus Kharas, chairman, UTV International LTD, and Ramesh Sharma, chairman & managing director, Moving Picture Company.

Discussions centred around the potential the Indian market held, whether international channels and production companies could take advantage of the developing multi-channel and convergent environment in India, and the kind of programming and formats that were likely to work in the country.

"This time around the animation media got a good business thrust," said Khanna. In the past two years animation had an export market of $5 million and in this year itself it has a potential of touching $50 million.

In the near future, a lot of original animation programming from Toonz Animation India LTD, Pentamedia Graphics LTD, UTV International LTD, and other such companies from India are likely to make a splash internationally.