March 18, '09; NEW DELHI; Visitors to the 17th annual edition of South Asia's largest tech show, Convergence India, might be forgiven if they break out into a soulful rendering of ' home sweet home'. The single biggest theme touted by exhibitors from 25 plus countries, seems to be home entertainment and networking.

Homecast -- the name of one of the participants, who manufactures digital satellite, terrestrial and cable broadcasting equipment-- almost said it all: digital video broadcasts to the home; digital set top boxes, then chips that go into the set top boxes .... the entire ecosystem was on show. Homecast (www.homecast.net) from Korea has an India representative: Novacom based in Hyderabad for its range of set top boxes and portable video recorders.

UK-based NDS ( www.nds.com) already has an India edge,a Bangalore-based R&D Centre, for its interactive TV and conditional access technology (Airtel Digital, Tata Sky, DEN and Hathway are customers).

From Oslo, Norway, Conax ( www.conax.com ) brought conditional access, digital and IPTV solutions -- with a mobile edge for those who wanted it.

Israel and US-based CopperGate (www.copper-gate.com ), was talking to almost all the Indian IPTV players -- its chips fuels some of the top international set top boxes -- and when powerline home networking is ratified as a standard later this year, the company hopesto be an early player (more about this in a separate tech report).

BSNL had one of the largest stalls in the show -- and other than 3G, IPTV was the big thing on show.

Elsewhere, China had one of the largest international contingents seen in an Indian tech show this year: Shenzhen, Suzhou and Shanghai had clusters of a dozen companies each, offering a wide variety of broadcast and entertainment hardware and back end systems.

We are still there and will follow up with Day #2 and #3 reports. Watch this space.