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Friday, March 14, 2008

Spize TV Partners Pyramid Saimira

Spize TV Partners Pyramid Saimira

LONDON, March 14/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --

- Launches DTH Services Across Europe, North Africa & Middle East

- ARY & B4U Join Soft Launch

Pyramid Saimira Entertainment Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pyramid
Saimira Theatre Ltd (NSE: PSTL; BSE: 532791), has entered into a strategic
partnership with UK-based Spize TV, a direct-to-home platform. Through the
partnership, Pyramid Saimira Entertainment Ltd will facilitate content
agglomeration and new channels services, on Spize TV. An associate company of
the Pyramid Saimira Group had earlier picked up an equity stake in Spize TV.

Spize TV is a pan-European direct-to-home (DTH) TV platform offering
Asian and niche content to viewers in Europe. Spize TV is available on the
EuroBird-9 (EB9) satellite, which allows viewers to benefit from the 500+
free-to-air channels on the HotBird satellite by a simple dual-LNB upgrade.
The technical details of SpizeTV platform are EB9 @ 9(degrees) East, 11,843
V, Txp 56, Symbol 27,500 And 3/4 FEC.

Speaking about the tie-up, Ajoy Khandheria, CEO, Spize TV, said, "Spize
TV is a very exciting prospect for us as this will enable us to offer niche
content on a pan-European basis. We are extremely happy to work with Eutelsat
to create EB9 as a new hot location for the region, and with Pyramid Saimira
to capitalize on their extensive content expertise."

P. S. Saminathan, MD, Pyramid Saimira Group said "The partnership with
Spize TV is a very crucial step in terms of our global entertainment
strategy. With this venture, we will gain access into more new territories,
which will help synergize and leverage our content significantly. This also
sets us well on our way towards expansion in Europe. Personally speaking,
this marks my re-entry into the cable & satellite space and signals the
beginning of an exciting journey in this space."

Spize TV will offer numerous channels in the North Bouquet and South
Bouquet categories. The North Bouquet will offer Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi,
Bangla, Gujarati and other language channels while the South bouquet will
offer Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Singhalese and Malay channels.
Spize TV will also offer Chinese and Spanish bouquets shortly. Spize TV
announces the launch of the platform with the complete suite of channels
from the ARY Network (ARY Digital, ARY OneWorld, QTV, and The Musik), as
well as two channels from the B4U Network (B4U Movies & B4U Music) in its
North Bouquet. More channels will be added in due course. While the South
Bouquet currently has DAN (Tamil) and TV Lanka (Sinhalese), more channels
are being added to the bouquet. The fore-mentioned channels have been
available since the soft launch of the channel, while the commercial launch
for the viewers will be held in April 2008.

The Hot Bird platform is available to over 130 million households in
North Africa and Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, and Western Europe
(23 million in North Africa & Middle East, 30 million in Central & Eastern
Europe, 77 million in Western Europe). Spize TV plans to target the 30
million strong European "niche and expat" viewers across these regions. Spize
TV will have both, Viaccess and Irdeto conditional access systems, which will
viewers to access both bouquets and also watch a mix of channels, including
live international cricket matches that are played in India and Pakistan.
Spize TV will arrange the installation of "dual-LNBs" on the existing
viewers' of HotBird dishes to allow them to continue watching their other
favourite channels on the HotBird satellite, as well as a large bouquet of
channels on SpizeTV on the EB9 satellite.

Salman Iqbal, President & CEO, ARY Digital Network, commenting on the
occasion stated, "We are happy and proud to be the first premier television
network on the Spize TV platform. We trust Spize TV will build on the
achievement and growth that ARY Digital bouquet has seen in Europe over the
last five years, and further extend its reach to the wider spectrum of
European customers, by adding a variety of new premium channels."

Sunil Rohra, CEO, B4U Group, says "Spize TV has ambitious plans and we
are happy to join their platform to expand our presence in Europe, and to
build and continue serving the Bollywood-loving subscribers that have been
developed over the last 5 years or so."

The deal was advised by Elara Capital of UK and Keynote Capitals of
India.

About Pyramid Saimira Group:

Pyramid Saimira Group operates in 5 countries. It is a
holistic Indian Multinational Entertainment Company. It is present in film
exhibition, film distribution, film production, TV content production,
advertisement, Gaming & Animation, media, Food & Beverages and Realty etc. It
has around nine group companies namely, Pyramid Saimira Theatre Ltd., Pyramid
Saimira Production International Limited, Pyramid Saimira Theatre Chain
Malaysia., Sdn Bhd, Pyramid Saimira Entertainment Limited, Singapore, Pyramid
Saimira Entertainment America, Inc., Saimira Realty Private Limited, Pyramid
Saimira Production Services Limited, Dimples Cine Advertising Private Limited
& Aurona Technologies Limited.

Its group holding Company, Pyramid Saimira Theatre Limited, is
publicly listed in National Stock Exchange (NSE: PSTL) and Bombay Stock
Exchange (BSE: 532791). In the exhibition sector, it has over 53 multiplexes
with approximately 800 screens across India, Malaysia, Singapore and North
America. By 2010, the Group plans to operate 175 multiplexes with 2,000
screens in India alone. By its own estimates, Pyramid Saimira ranks as the
world's third largest cinema operator, based on its number of seats and
admissions with nearly 436,000 seats as of January 2008.


More information is available at http://www.pstl.in


For further details:

Varsha / Srividhya,
Hanmer & Partners, Chennai,
Mobile no: +91-988-4082-774,
E-mail: varsha@hanmerpr.com / srividhya@hanmerpr.com.

Source: Pyramid Saimira Group

For further details: Varsha / Srividhya, Hanmer & Partners, Chennai, Mobile no: +91-988-4082-774, E-mail: varsha@hanmerpr.com / srividhya@hanmerpr.com.

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