OpenTV Launches on DishTV, India's First and Fastest-Growing Satellite Service

OpenTV Launches on DishTV, India's First and Fastest-Growing Satellite Service

Deployment Achieved in Record Time

SAN FRANCISCO, March 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- OpenTV Corp. (NASDAQ:OPTV), a leading provider of enabling technologies for advanced television and cross-platform interactive services, today announced that it has successfully integrated and downloaded its Core2 software to over 1,400,000 set-top boxes for DishTV. DishTV, part of the Essel Group of companies, has launched advanced digital television services that include a new guide, interactive cricket, multi-angle interactive news, and a suite of games from OpenTV's PlayJam service. The integration and deployment of the software and services took less than four months, an industry record for a launch of this size.

The next phase of deployment will introduce further applications as well as a PVR built around OpenTV's PVR2 software. With over one million subscribers and an expected annual growth rate of 100% per year, Essel Group expects to deploy similar OpenTV-enabled services to a portion of its Siticable customer base, India's largest at approximately 6.5 million subscribers, as Sitibase converts its cable systems from analog to digital. Conax conditional access is used by DishTV.

According to Mike Ivanchenko, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, Asia Pacific, at OpenTV, "We're delighted with the speed with which our team was able to launch DishTV services. The Indian market is a huge opportunity for OpenTV, and being able to serve a vast and growing number of subscribers quickly and without technical problems is imperative in order to be successful. With analysts projecting a compound annual growth rate of 10% for the Indian pay TV market, we expect to see 70 million digital subscriber households by the year 2010, and OpenTV is well-positioned to be able to meet their needs for advanced digital television services."

"Working with OpenTV has resulted in a mutually beneficial partnership that has dramatically accelerated the growth of digital television in India," said Jawahar Goel, Additional Vice Chairman of Essel Group. "The basic boxes we have deployed are perfectly suited to the Indian market, but difficult to deploy. OpenTV's speed in launching with these boxes will enable subscribers to immediately take advantage of 'enhanced cricket' and other interactive services for which viewers have been clamoring."

About Open TV

OpenTV is one of the world's leading providers of solutions for the delivery of digital and interactive television. The company's software has been integrated in over 81 million digital set-top boxes and digital televisions around the world. The software enables enhanced program guides, video-on-demand, personal video recording, enhanced television, interactive shopping, interactive and addressable advertising, games and gaming and a variety of consumer care and communication applications. For more information, please visit www.opentv.com.

About Essel Group

Essel Group has a vast range of national and global business interests that include media programming, broadcasting and distribution, packaging, entertainment, online gaming, and telecom.

Essel Group has always been a pioneer-Zee TV was the first Indian satellite channel, Siticable the first MSO, Esselworld the first theme park, Playwin the first online lottery, Essel Propack the world's number one in packaging-all revolutionary concepts in their respective fields.

Continuing with the same path-breaking tradition, the group has recently launched DishTV, India's first DTH service, which in a short span of time has established itself as the leading content provider with in India, bringing to the viewers a new era of premium quality TV viewing. DishTV is going to provide its live service on Kingfisher premium airline, the second airline in the world to deploy such capability.

Cautionary Language Regarding Forward-Looking Information

The foregoing information contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may differ materially from these expectations due to changes in political, economic, business, competitive, market and regulatory factors. In particular, factors that could cause our actual results to differ include risks related to: market acceptance of interactive television services and applications such as ours; delays in the development or introduction of new applications and versions of our service; technical difficulties with networks or operating systems; our ability to manage our resources effectively; changes in technologies that affect the television industry; and the protection of our proprietary information. These and other risks are more fully described in our periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and can be obtained online at the Commission's web site at http://www.sec.gov/. Readers should consider the information contained in this release together with other publicly available information about our company for a more informed overview of our company. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: lisa.rogers@mslpr.com

Source: OpenTV Corp.

CONTACT: Barbara Cassidy of OpenTV, +1-415-962-5000, or
bcassidy@opentv.com; or Rajiv Khattar of Essel Group, +919 8111 56795, or
rkhattar@dishtvindia.esselgroup.com; or Shirley Wong Walker of Manning Selvage
& Lee, +86 21 6133 8591, or shirleywongwalker@sh.mslpr.com, for OpenTV

Web site: http://www.opentv.com/

-------
Profile: intent