India Broadband Forum

Admin

If you just look around in Indian cities you will find mini dishes popping out from the terraces of suburbs and out of the window sunshades and all obscure places that you will least expect. What are these mini dishes that we see? These are the DTH or Direct to Home TV receivers. Lately there is a huge proliferation of these DTH connections in India and the DTH connections is gradually eating the market share of the most hailed cable network of Indian cities. It is not only in the cities DTH is gaining popularity, even in the remotest villages we can see Sun DTH and BIG TV DTH connections.

One of the reasons for this sudden explosion of these DTH connections is due the reduced cost of DTH TV. It is costing almost the same are less than the monthly subscriptions. For instance Sun Direct DTH is charging only Rs. 75 for the basic channel package which will satisfy most of the customers where as cable operators charge Rs. 150 to Rs. 200 for their grainy channels. DTH TV comes with CD level picture quality and DVD level sound quality. People who have home theatres at home were able to enjoy the 5:1 digital sound quality only when they bought good quality DVDs. Now they can enjoy the high quality 5:1 digital surround sound with their regular TV shows.

Why did the cost of DTH suddenly reduce drastically? It is because of the increasing competition in the Indian DTH market. Originally when DTH was introduced there wasn’t any big competition in the market two major player that ruled the DTH market in India were Dish TV and Tata Sky. However, today that is not the case more and more new players are coming into the Indian DTH market. It was Sun Direct which revolutionized the pricing schemes of the DTH. They announced rock bottom prices that were difficult to be met by the other major players. However, they too were forced to reduce their cost considerably. After Sun Direct, BIG TV (Reliance Big TV CHANNEL LIST) from the Reliance group was launched. They too matched the tariffs of Sun Direct. Airtel DTH followed BIG TV. People had great hopes with Airtel DTH and it was expected that Airtel which revolutionized the mobile and the broadband industry would come in with highly competitive pricing. However their tariffs don’t seem to impress the users and they are yet to reach the market. As of now Airtel DTH has not created any major impact in the industry. It is Sun Direct that is cruising fast through its competition.

The cut throat competition that has brought down the cost of DTH services in India has become the axe for Cable network which was the only known form of TV entertainment that offered so many channels to most consumers in India. With the current trends, Cable TV operators are to go and they will have to become DTH dealers to survive.

just4kix

While it is true that DTH prices have drastically reduced, it will be naive to think that they are matching the cable TV operators.

If one considers the startup packages from Sun or Tata or DishTV or others for that matter, you will observe that these package consist of FTA channels, one or two paid channels and some paid news channels. This is hardly a package. Agreed that such a package maybe Rs. 75 or Rs. 99 pm but the cable operator offers much more at Rs. 150 or Rs 250.

The problem with the cable operator is that they charge arbitrarily. In areas of high density and penetration and where people are unwilling to pay high, they charge less. In affluent neighbourhoods, they charge much higher. In the absense of CAS in all parts of the nation, apart from metros, people cannot select what they want.

But it is not just the cost factor that is causing people to switch to DTH.

• In the cities, people are demand better quality/clarity. DTH was able to provide that by having digital transmission. This meant that all channels will be available at more or less the same quality/clarity. Cable operators like Hathway, too have started digital transmission with an STB.
• Cable operators often did not disclose their true subscriber base. This often resulted in content providers such as Star, Sony, ESPN, etc. blocking their feed. This resulted into lot of inconveniences to the end users.
• Cable operators used to increase their prices often and still not provide the quality of service. Together, with the news that cable operators were not disclosing their income properly, made the people unhappy that they were charged in full but money was being siphoned off, resulting in poor/blocked service.
• DTH brings uniformity of prices and transparency to some extent.
• In the remote and small villages, cable operations were almost absent.
• One of the biggest factor was power outages. In many parts of India, there are blackouts lasting 3+ hours. These blackouts were scheduled at parts of the city, e.g., Region A - power outage from 6 AM to 9 AM, Region B - power outage from 9 AM to 12 PM, and so on. Often what used to happen is that you had no power from 9 AM to 12 PM and cable operator's region had no power from 12 PM to 3 PM. This resulted in effectively no TV from 9 AM to 3 PM.
• Finally, DTH gave the people freedom to choose and (relatively) free of worries. Tata Sky and Dish tv provide relatively trouble free service.

Finally, a small correction on DTH Audio. DTH is providing stereo sound but not 5.1 channel (AC3 or Dolby).

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prasannaganesh

Its the only reason i switched to the dth.

Any way competition makes things get corrected.
so this healthy competition will yield value for money and improved quality of service.

The cable operators are not losing money, but they have earned a lot before we switch to dth, now their earnings are getting lower.

The local cable guys dont pay taxes properly as per the number of customers.so they made fat profit through our subscriptions.

but the dth operators have to pay properly, and now the government getting the tax. i hope the government will come forward soon and reduce the taxation structure for the DTH,to boost the regulated industry which pay taxes higher than cable guys.

Its reverse Admin,
DTH TV comes with dvd level picture quality and cd level sound quality.
isn't it.

just4kix

DTH Video quality = Better than VCD/Mpeg1 but not equal to DVD/Mpeg2 - even if they are transmitting in MPEG2 or MPEG4.
DTH Audio Quality = Digital Stereo.

prasannaganesh

what ever the format , but we really get a good clarity through dth.
most of all for the big screen owners.

smnesmwhr

I don't understand - transmitting in MPEG2 or MPEG4 with a quality less than MPEG2 is what you are saying...?

just4kix

Some DTH Operators such as DishTV and TataSky are transmitting in MPEG2 format, whereas BigTV and Airtel Digital are transmitting in MPEG4.

What I am saying is that MPEG2 or MPEG4, the video quality still does not match DVD/MPEG2. An MPEG2 stream is created by sampling raw video with a bit rate to produce an encoded stream. Better (higher) the bit rate, the better is quality and vice versa. DVD use high and variable bit rate for the MPEG2 and hence its quality is better. Indian DTH also use MPEG2 or MPEG4 but they use the bare optimum bit rate for sampling and hence the quality is lower.

Contrary to most popular belief and fuelled further by MPEG4 operators, it is told to the consumers that MPEG4 is better than MPEG2. Almost everybody falls for these claims. This is abslutely not true. There is no difference between MPEG2 and MPEG4. But MPEG4 uses much better compression and this results in less bandwidth requirement from the satellite transponders. This allows them to offer more channels in less. To the end users like us, it will make absolutely no difference in terms of viewing quality.

smnesmwhr

If only I had repo power...you'd have received a thumbs up...

just4kix

Thank you. You made my day.

There was someone on another thread who kept insisting on MPEG4 being better than MPEG2. He said that he is a student of Audio/Video engineering and eats/breathes/drinks video technology. I have conducted several experiments myself. I borrowed my friends True HD (1080p) DV-Cam and shot a 5 minute video.

Using softwares such as TMPG Xpress, Virtual Dub, Mainconcept, etc. I created MPEG2 stream @ 4000~8000 kbits/s VBR. I also created MPEG4/H.264 @ the same bit rate. The MPEG2 file (640x480) was 192 KB whereas the MPEG4 (640x480) was about 36 KB. There was no difference in quality. So as you see apart from size, nothing better happened.

p/s. If you have repo'ed me in the recent past then you can't repo me again. The trick is to repo some other people before you can repo me or someone else again.

smnesmwhr

I think I cannot repo anyone - I do not have that power, do I? Where is the usage of repo explained?