All of us are familiar with DTH TV services and many of us already have DTH connection. DTH TV stands for Direct To Home Television. However, not all of us are familiar with the concept of IPTV in India. Some of us may not have heard of IPTV. IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television.
DTH sends the TV signals directly to home through a satellite receiver and a decoder. Whereas, IPTV will send the TV signals to the subscribers through their broadband internet cables. All spheres of our life have been already permeated by the gadgets internet enabled gadgets. Our TV entertainment is one of the latest areas where internet is playing a major role today. Though not many of us have heard of IPTV, two major players have already introduced IPTV. MTNL and Airtel have already launched their IPTV services. Interestingly, they have not advertised their services well and that is one of the main reasons why majority of the mass is still ignorant about such a service offering.
In this situation, IPTV cannot be a major threat to DTH services, at least not until it becomes popular. People are yet to learn about the advantages of IPTV. Moreover, internet telephony is yet to permeate major parts of India. Though India is one of the countries with the largest number of internet users, given its population, there is more room for improvement in this area. Internet has not reached far enough yet; but that is not the case with TV. So the number of potential customers for DTH in India as of now is far ahead of the number of people that would switch to IPTV. It will take a number of years before IPTV becomes popular. However, the elite circles in cities may show great interest in the IPTV services especially with Airtel’s triple play packages. You can get combo packs that include IPTV, broadband connection as well as telephone connection. For many such combo packages will work out to be cheaper as they need to just pay single bill for all the three. All these three may come under Rs. 1000. When everyone is trying to cut back on their expenses a combo package such as digital TV with broadband and telephone connectivity will help us save a great deal of money.
Many people have wrong notion about IPTV, the wrong notion that they hold is that they think that one needs to have a computer to watch their IPTV programs. Though we can watch IPTV through the computer that is fitted with TV tuner card, we don’t need a computer and it can be viewed through our regular televisions. The STB will convert the signals suitable to be played by our regular TV.
As of now as mentioned earlier, IPTV is not a major threat to DTH however, there are number of advantages with IPTV over DTH services. As long as we get a reliable service provider, we can switch to IPTV to enjoy the benefits.