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You may have to pay a little more for the DVD and VCD. After a short spell of price cuts, home entertainment majors have deeded to change their pricing tack. Now, they will hike prices, despite the competition.

Less than a year ago, the entry of Moser Baer triggered a dramatic cut in DVD/VCD prices. While the low-price strategy of Moser Baer pulled the average price range in the market from Rs 250-400 to the Rs 100-150 mark, players have realized that this model is not viable. In the last six months, VCD/DVD prices for new Hindi titles have gone up. Even as players like T-Series, Shemaroo and others dropped prices significantly, there was surge in volumes.

Tighter margins and high acquisition rights for titles are now driving home entertainment players to revisit the old strategy of higher prices. Shemaroo dropped its rates last year by 30% in the hope that volumes would make up the gap. However to ensure same levels of returns, we were looking at volumes going up by 2.5 times. That has dearly not happened, and hence for all new Hindi titles Shemaroo has deeded to look at higher price points.

Today, VCDs of recent Hindi titles such as Welcome, OSO, Mithya, Gandhi, Cash and Bhool Bhulaiyaa are priced at a higher range of Rs 145 -160. Moser Baer, the traditional CD maker, had ventured into the home video market acquiring rights of Bollywood movies in hordes.

It started selling VCDs at Rs 28, when others offered it for Rs 100-200. It sold DVDs at as low as Rs 34. In fact, T-Series tweaked its pricing, bringing it down to Rs 45, making the difference between the two marginal. Its the passion that drives the sales, and is not the same way an FMCG product sells. Only through high-end pricing can one justify the price for acquiring the title. The Indian market in the entertainment space it is not as price sensitive as other sectors.

The home industry is clear that prices for hit movies will stabilize at the Rs 400 - 500 mark and at around Rs 200 for a DVD and VCD respectively. An average movie on the other hand will be priced at Rs 200 - 300 for a DVD and Rs 160 - 200 for a VCD.Since its debut price of Rs 28 and Rs 34 for a VCD and DVD respectively, even Moser Baer has slightly increased the price range. Its VCD prices are today priced between Rs 28 and 34 while DVDs are priced at Rs 49. Movies like Jab We Met, Halla Bol and Strangers are priced at Rs 34 and Rs 49 for VCDs and DVDs respectively.

Typically, home video rights are sold for a period of five years. After that it is again auctioned. So, the players need to break even and make a decent profit during that period. As per reports, video rights of movies like Welcome and OSO were sold at Rs 1.5 - 2 crore. Thus, the challenge is to do a million plus copies to ensure profitability.Say, a home video right is sold for Rs 1 crore. At a price of Rs45 a VCD, margins aren’t more than Rs 15 a copy sold. This is because of 30% retail margin (around Rs 15) and another Rs. 12-15 for making the CD as well its packaging. By this logic, the company needs to sell around 6, 70,000 copies just to break -even. And to make a decent profit, at least a million copies or more over a span of five years. And that is increasingly turning out to be a tough proposition. Also today the Indian market is tilted towards the VCD market, where the margins are wafer thin. Its 80:20 in terms of volumes in favour of VCD market.

When you invite two irreverent superstars to be the Masters Of Ceremonies, at the 53rd Fair One Filmfare Awards, you run the risk that they will distract from the main event, in this case the presentation of the awards.

When the duo is the notorious 52, Shah Rukh Khan and Sail Ali khan, there’s no uncertainty - you can be 100% sure they will steal the show. Of course the only competition for the duo were from the lovely ladies Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra, Gauri Khan, Deepika Padukone and Suzanne Roshan, among others dressed in their Chanel and Valentino gowns and Jimmy Choo shawls, holding their Gucci evening bags.

The event started staidly enough, with compere Vidya Balan efficiently seeing the awards through the technical categories. But as soon as the S2 duo made their entry into venue, Yash Raj Studios, the event took a turn for the hilarious, After that, every award winner and quite a few of the presenters had their few moments of glory cut short as the terrible twosome brought them down to earth with their now patented style of “rude” jokes.

Child star Darsheel Safary, winner of the best actor award in the critics’ choice category for Taare Zameeo Par, was carried off the stage on the duo’s shoulders and warned that he’d be dropped on the floor if he ever carne back as a grown-up star. Deepika Padukone, winner of the best female debutante as well as the Sony Head & Shoulders face of the Year awards was asked which shaving cream she uses! After he thanked everyone who worked with him in Saawariya, Ranbir Kapoor, winner of the best male debutante award, was hauled up for forgetting to thank the costume designer who dressed him in a towel. Even seniors like Yash Chopra, the winner of this year’s Power Award weren’t spared.

Some lucky awardees did escape the S2 lampoons, when Karan Johar took charge. Johar was part of the most emotionally charged segment of the event, when Rishi Kapoor received the lifetime achievement award. Like Kapoor himself said, to the audience who gave him a standing ovation, it was like a Kapoor show with son Ranbir speaking on his father, wife Neetu Singh sharing the honpurs with him on stage and daughter Riddhima coming down from Delhi to share the moment.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in international trade in services. But the gains so far are dwarfed by what the world could achieve. A recent World Bank Handbook of International Trade in Services estimates that if international trade in communications, finance, transport and business services is reformed, the benefits could be over five times more than those from the comparable liberalisation of trade in goods.

Yet, there is a risk that the critical services sector will not receive the attention it deserves in current WTO negotiations, where agriculture and manufacturing have occupied centre-stage. For a country in India’s position, this will be a tremendous opportunity lost.

India’s services exports have increased nearly fifteen fold from just $5 billion in 1990 to $74 billion in 2006. Export of business services - in which India has a particular advantage - have grown at a remarkable 25% per annum, faster than those of any other country in the world, except Ireland. Today, services constitute more than a third of India’s aggregate exports, an exceptionally high share matched only by a handful of advanced countries.

While India has gained significantly from the exports of services, it has also benefited by opening up to foreign services providers at home. The liberalisation of telecommunications, banking, insurance and transport markets has led to greater foreign investment in India. This has improved the availability and quality of services in the country. Another significant benefit has been the increased productivity of Indian manufacturing. A study of over 10,000 manufacturing firms showed that industries with a higher dependence on finance and telecommunications have seen total factor productivity rise significantly after services reform.

Despite the benefits, the international integration of services markets remains incomplete, both in India and abroad. In foreign markets, India faces a twofold challenge. First, as the outsourcing of services grows, social and political concerns in importing countries can unleash a wave of protectionist pressures. Second, most countries have immigration regimes that allow little space even for the temporary presence of Foreign Service providers. The gains to be had for all from more open policies are enormous. If industrial countries were to allow the temporary immigration of foreign services providers equal to just 3 % of their labour force, the global gains would be over $150 billion - more than three times total development assistance flows.

But developed countries are not the only ones reluctant to open up. India too maintains barriers to international integration in services. These barriers deprive households, farms and firms of more and better services. For instance, inefficient storage, transport and distribution services leave Indian horticultural producers with only a sixth of the price consumers pay on average. India’s restrictions on foreign presence in professional services could shut India out of the growing international division of labour in these services, depriving it of significant export possibilities. And the over-regulation of higher education is detrimental to the development of skills among India’s people thereby threatening to undermine the very basis of the country’s dramatic success in the services sector. Fortunately, there is a growing consensus that it is in the country’s best interest to phase out many of these restrictions.

Today, India has much to gain, probably more than any other country in the world, by bringing services onto centre-stage in Doha. The negotiations offer India a golden opportunity to secure access to foreign markets and to lend greater certainty to domestic reforms. Best of all the country can negotiate using the promise of reforms that it plans to undertake anyway.

Visionary leadership by India at this critical juncture can also transform the Doha services negotiations themselves. Today, services lag well behind agriculture and manufacturing. India can raise the profile of services and help achieve a more ambitious outcome by directly proposing a final package that is balanced, commercially relevant and supports development.

A “grand bargain” would require both industrial nations and the large developing countries to accept three elements. First, a promise not to impose new restrictions on trade in service – dispelling the spectre of protectionism that hangs over outsourcing of business services. Second, a commitment to eliminate barriers to foreign direct investment. Where there is no good reason to hold back, this can be done immediately.

Where regulators or domestic firms need time to prepare for international competition, a gradual approach can be followed. International assistance can be made available for this purpose. Third, an agreement to allow temporary migration of individual service providers to fulfill services contracts. Source countries can cooperate in this by screening their workers’ repatriating them on the completion of their contracts, and helping to combat illegal migration.

India can promise future liberalisation with greater confidence if it simultaneously implements domestic reforms that distribute the benefits of openness more widely. First of all so that only sound banks, universities and professionals enter the Indian market, prudential regulation needs to be strong. But regulatory requirements must not be excessive. For example, in financial services, overly demanding know-your-customer requirements could become an impediment to widening access to services. Second, to ensure that the benefits of liberalisation accrue to consumers rather than to domestic or foreign monopolies and oligopolies, an effective competition policy must be in place.

Finally, and most importantly, liberalisation can be an effective means of achieving social goals if it is accompanied by the right polices. For example, in telecommunications, private and public companies are being induced to extend services to poor and remote communities through competitively allocated universal access funds. If similar policies were devised for other services sectors, then the poor too would reap the benefits of competition and not be left at the mercy of public or private monopolies.

Boldness in international negotiations and domestic reform can, therefore, help India achieve two important development goals - the continued growth of services exports and improved access to services for its own people.

The 1993 blockbuster “Aankhen” was the first time the famous duo of director David Dhawan and actor Govinda came together in a movie. Producer Pahlaj Nihalani roped in stars like Chunky Pandey, Raj Babbar, Shilpa Shirodkar, Raageshwari and Kader Khan while the reins for music direction were in the hands of the ever popular Bappi Lahiri.

The movie has three actors playing double roles (Govinda, Kader Khan and Raj Babbar). Govinda and Chunky are two good for nothing slackers who play practical jokes on everyone, their most common victim being their father Kader Khan. Having tried all possible means to impress upon them the values and morals he firmly believes in, Kader Khan finds no alternative but to throw them out of his house when they are caught lying about their results in the college exams. Their lives take random course when Chunky is alleged to be involved in a conspiracy to kill the Chief Minister of the state and replace him with a look alike. As Govinda goes missing, suspicions arise about him being alive or dead. Govinda’s look alike cousin enters the script now leading to a series of mistakes, confusions, misunderstanding and errors which finally gets solved as all the missing characters resurface. The criminals are taken under custody or killed with the happily ever after ending soon following.

The movie was uncharacteristically unique when it came out and won the hearts of Indian viewers straight away who have always delighted in plots involving double roles or Siamese twins. The movie was inspired from a Kannada movie but still did good business in all parts of India. None of the actors might have delivered a once in a lifetime role on the movie but the movie was surely a Box-office topper.