India Broadband Forum

maxy45

The 10 reasons
Hello, I rummage around the forums, websites and blogs online to search for good dth service provider in India. As I have planned to go for one.

After doing research on some famous dth companies I decided to go for Big TV. Because of following reasons

1. Big tv is the first to launch with MPEG-4 technology in India
2. Big tv is brand under Reliance.
3. It became as popular as dish and TS within less time
4. Big tv has started breaking prize barriers in dth market
5. It is the one who offers more channels
6. Adding new channels with same costs
7. More channel packages with affordable rates
8. Soon coming with its Digital video recorder in market
9. Attractive interactive and wide range of programs
10. Finally value of money


Its my own review about big tv. As I found it good amongst other dth in market.

just4kix

If you have made your own analysis of the situation, we all would like to hear your thoughts on how you arrived at your conclusions. This is my take:

1. People are laying too much emphasis on MPEG-4 technology. MPEG-4 does not deliver better clarity/quality that MPEG-2 but MPEG-4 will consume much less bandwidth because of higher compression. This is beneficial to the channel provider and makes no difference to the end-user. All DTH operators will move to MPEG-4 someday. At that time the customers of MPEG-2 technology (read DishTV and TataSky) will have to change their STB. I am 100% confident that either such STBs will be offered by means of free upgrades (with long term contracts) or at reduced cost. At most DishTV and TataSky customers will have to spend no more than Rs. 500 to Rs. 750. In my opinion this cost is negligible. But yes, BigTV and Airtel Digital have an advantage here. Even so, one should remember that consumers are not going to see better picture simply because of switch from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. Better picture will be seen only in case of High Definition broadcast.
2. Reliance as a brand is failure in all aspects. Tell me one Reliance product that is value for money, reliable, predictable, affordable and guranteed quality.
3. I question this logic.
4. You mean price barriers, I hope (I am not sure what prize barriers is). I (and we all) would love to hear you analysis behind this statement. Please have a look at this post (DishTV vs TataSky vs BigTV) and then let me know if I am grossly wrong. Yes. Reliance is offering good starter packages. But have you considered the long term contracts once the startup offer is finished. Even DishTV is offering a good startup at Rs. 3990/- with free Dish/STB, one year maxi package (180+ channels) and 60+ Movies.
5. Wrong. See my link above.
6. Wrong. See my link above.
7. Wrong. See my link above.
8. TataSky is already in the market with this product. Such a product is going to cost Rs. 8000+. How many people are going to buy this product? And what is the value for money for such a product?
9. All DTH providers are having these services. I have been having DishTV for at least 2 years and 'Sports Active' was operational for over 1.5 years. I never found it useful and rarely use it. This is a marketing gimmick. An initial fancy and then useless later. That's all.
10. Wrong. See my link above.

I am not saying BigTV is bad. I have watched it in a local restaurant on a 40" LCD TV and it looked quite good. If you are convinced about your decision, then certainly go for it. But I have heard too many bad things about Reliance and customer care and I will not go near a Reliance product that easily.

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aktmnr

I also agree with just4kix. This mpeg4/interactive service are all marketing gimmick they are of no use to common man.
Also I am using DishTv for the past 2 years and found no difference in quality with BigTv( owned by my friend) also number of channels are more in case of Dish Tv maxi pack with just Rs 300 (Now including colors/9x and NDTV imagine) which is far more less then tata sky and bigtv (With full package) also adding 20-30 movie channels(the way it was done in BigTV and are useless for a common person because of cost) doesn't means that they are showing more channels.

just4kix

One more point that I forgot to add: In case of Standard Definition broadcast, it is not MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 that will make a picture look better. It is signal strength and quality of source.

Many people say that MPEG-4 will allow broadcasters to add 400+ channels. Please consider this before:

a) Where are these 400+ channels going to come from? More carppy news channels? Or pay-per-view?
b) If at all we get 400+ channels, what is going to be the subscription cost?
c) An average person watches TV for 2/3 hours on weekdays and maybe 4/5 hours on weekends. How much time will be available to watch these so called 400+ channels?
d) It is a fashion to present the channels in form of a basket or bouquet. So if you wanted a good film channel or an entertainment channel, you will have to opt and pay for 10 other useless channels that you will not want.