These addresses are being marketed by dotTV as ideal addresses for sites which use streaming video, audio and real time technologies. According to the dotTV site: ".tv is the natural home for sites offering rich media, streaming video, broadband and convergent content." With global majors scrambling to register their .tv domain names, Indian media companies too have latched on to the trend. Ms Sarah Alcorn, corporate communications, dotTV adds: "There has been a lot of interest from India." Names such as zee.tv, num.tv and now.tv are already registered. Even television manufacturers have also taken a cue with names such as LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Videocon, Sony, Onida, Philips already registered.

DD and BPL are probably the only ones still up for the grabs. This widespread interest has ensured that dotTV has already registered 100,000 .tv domain names within six months of its inception-faster than any other domain name registration, according to the site. The current most popular domain name-.com-took six years to register the same number of names. Of course, that was in the early days of the Internet. Though refusing to divulge the exact number of site registrations, Ms Alcorn says: "We sell tens of thousands of names a month." Most names are registered on a first come-first served basis. Explains Ms Alcorn: "A majority of the names sell for $50 per year.

However, generic names are deemed to be more valuable since they are generic and appeal to more people. For example: law, business, beauty etc. These, therefore start at $1,000 and can go for as much as $1.25 million per year."

Non-generic domain names, are available on a first come-first served basis as well, however their price reflects the value those domain names have in the market place as determined by dotTV. Aren't the charges too steep? According to Ms Alcorn: "dotTV does not believe that the prices being charged are high in relation to the potential business benefit to the registrants of the domain name. Although .tv domain names may have initially been priced higher than originally sold .com names, many of the .tv domain names are being offered at prices far less than prices for .com names in the secondary market."

The original allottee, the country of Tuvalu, gets at least $4 million a year for the next ten years from its agreement with dotTV. It also has a minority stake in dotTV and has a seat on the dotTV board. dotTV itself is run by Internet and traditional media executives and has on its advisory board former Universal Studios, CEO Frank Biondi; Danny Shader, vice-president Amazon.com and Jim Chabin, president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

The initial funding and support for dotTV came from idealab!, the leading creator of Internet businesses. dotTV allows registration in several languages eg. English, Spanish, German, Korean etc and also has partnerships with several international registrars around the world.