Deal is said to be Star's biggest North American pact to date and complements Dish's existing South Asian and Chinese nets.

From March 19, Dish will host general entertainment channels Star India Plus and Star India One alongside Star Chinese Channel from Taiwan and Star Chinese Movies 2, dedicated to old Hong Kong films. Later in the month it will add music net Channel [V] Taiwan.

"(The deal) allows us to significantly expand the reach of our services to the Asian Diaspora in the U.S.," Star's senior VP for distribution and sales, David Wisnia said.

The same trio of Chinese-language channels will also launch on March 15 on U.S.-based, Asian-themed IPTV platform GekTV Entertainment.

GekTV offers paid subscribers Asia's most popular TV channels and a wide selection of on-demand movies and TV series. It is backed by San Francisco- and Hong Kong-based video distributor Tai Seng Entertainment, which has recently developed its own technology division, Tai Seng Media, offering encoding and set-top decoders.

GekTV will reach into Canada from April.

Elsewhere, Asian channel launches are also multiplying. In Hong Kong, PCCW's Now TV Wednesday announced exclusive carriage of China Business Network, a mainland China financial news net from April 9. Wholly-owned by Shanghai Media Group, CBN provides 12 hours of live programming each day.

In Singapore, dominant cabler StarHub has added Mandarin news net TVBS-News, a leading channel in Taiwan, on the basic tier. StarHub now carries 22 Mandarin-language channels and one in Cantonese.