Thread: HD DTH Services in India

The next buzz word in the television industry is HD or High Definition TV. When DTH or Direct To Home services came into India, the whole country gave a very positive welcome as it brought as high quality television viewing experience. We were able to do away with poor quality TV reception and grainy reception of the signals. Now taking this to the next level is the HD DTH services (DTH HD Services). All the top DTH service providers are moving to HD DTH services.

DTH leaders in India like Sun DTH, Big TV (Reliance Big TV CHANNEL LIST), Airtel DTH, Tata sky have launched HD or High Definition services to provide highest quality TV viewing experience. However, you should be prepared to shell out more money to enjoy this HD experience. Even if you are willing to spend more money to enjoy high definition TV, at present not all the channels available in India are HD channels (HD Channels on DTH). Only very few channels can be viewed in HD. This makes many people hesitate to invest money in HD set top boxes. If you already have a DTH connection, you will have to upgrade your set top box to HD enabled set top box. You must also have a HD TV because not all televisions are capable of producing HD quality pictures. Today you can get HD LCD TVs in India to complement the HD DTH services in India.

It is hoped that soon the number of HD channels will increase in India within a short time. The cost of the HD channels is also likely to come down with the increasing competition in this industry. We have already seen this in the case of DTH. When DTH entered the Indian market, the cost of this service was prohibitive and only the rich and elite could afford it. But today that is not the case anymore as the price of DTH subscriptions has come down dramatically. The same is expected to happen with HD DTH services (Big tv DTH Vs Airtel DTH). So if you are planning to buy a new DTH connection, it is worth going for HD DTH so that you will not have to soon upgrade your set top box spending more money.

Sun Direct DTH is the first company to launch HDTV services in India. With this new service they are now targeting the upper class audience and upper middle class audience. They targeted middle class and lower class audience with their DTH services (best DTH service in India) so they priced it very low to capture the market. Now their target group is different, they are not likely to keep their prices too competitive. As of now you will have to shell out up to Rs. 100 per HD channel (1080p HD channels) which is too high even for the upper class audience that are used to paying just Rs. 200 for all the channels they watch.

I am not ready to pay an extra Rs. 100 (or even Rs. 50) per month just to watch sweat droplets on the face of saas or bahu.

Infotainment and Sports channels maybe worth it but I hardly get time to watch them. So I will wait till cost moves south.

Originally Posted by just4kix

I am not ready to pay an extra Rs. 100 (or even Rs. 50) per month just to watch sweat droplets on the face of saas or bahu.

Infotainment and Sports channels maybe worth it but I hardly get time to watch them. So I will wait till cost moves south.

I agree, there should be more channels but I don't know how much more scope do DTH players have to lower the price.

At the risk of crying myself hoarse and duplicate posting, I will repeat ...

All providers claiming to provide Hindi HD are broadcasting all hindi channels - be it serials or movies - as upscaled content. That is not true high definition.

Note that hardware upscalers are available that can convert the SD signal (640x480 in 4:3 format) to High Definition (1920 x 1080 in 16:9 format). Broadcasters are using such devices to upconvert and claim to show high def content.

It is very easy to spot such anamolies:

- Just because the picture frame contains so and so pixels does not make it SD, ED or HD
- upscaled content will always show artifcats while true HD will be crisp and crystal clear
- just equate this to digital zoom of a still picture - upscaling will not be as bad but you can still make out
- compare the true HD picture (ESPN, Discovery, NatGeo, etc.) with the upscaled content and you will immedaitely spot the difference
- if you have blu-ray at home then even better - blu-ray is epitome of Full HD quality

This is as of the date of this post.

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