India Broadband Forum

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If you think of Vidoecon, the first thing that will come to your mind is the TV sets which they manufacture and indeed they are one of the market leaders in India. But it came as a surprise to many to hear that the same Videocon is going to venture into the Direct To Home (DTH) segment. And they have cleared all the initial hurdles and is soon expected to launch.

They have named their DTH service as Videocon D2H, meaning Direct 2 Home. They have even registered their site but is still under construction and hope will be live sooner rather than later. They have started this DTH business under another name Bharat Business Channel Limited and this is nothing but another wing from Vidoecon. They have added in a tagline “Direct Hai Correct Hai” and we hope that they stick to this mantra throughout.

With all the existing service providers like Dish TV, Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Big TV and the more recent one Airtel Digital TV in place, do we really need another service? The answer could be a yes and a no.

What we don’t expect:
First we will look at why a ‘no’! This could be because we already have enough of the service providers for DTH who have been doing an okay to good job in terms of service and clarity, and list of channels, etc. If only if Videocon D2H would fall in that same category of just another service provider, the answer for the entry of Videocon D2H is a strict ‘No’. As we don’t need just another service provider with same set of channels and same set of pricing and similar service. If that were the case, we would just stick with other DTH service providers, as they are doing an okay job from all quarters.

What exactly is expected from Videocon D2H:
Now we will see why a ‘yes’. We would welcome Videocon D2H with both arms open only if they would or at least try to stand alone from that of the other existing DTH service providers. What we really want from them?

More free channels. This is because many service providers currently tend to charge the customers even for the free channels, which is rather annoying and amusing. And Videocon D2H should not follow the same route.

The other major issue we face with the existing DTH services in India is that when it rains the clarity becomes awful and even sometimes almost all the channels gets blacked out until the rain clears. Thus we would want Videocon D2H to at least to some extend try to rectify such major issues.

We would expect at least a good number of new and more variety of channels to be added on their service.

And last but not the least, they should also make their service cheapest among the other DTH services in India. This has been a request put forward by the DTH costumers for very long time without any response from them, and we hope that at least Videocon D2H comes out with the cheapest service. They should also be very transparent on their billing.

If only if they could manage to fulfill all our expectations to some extent, Videocon D2H is always welcome.

sneha123

HI,
as u said in ur article that that there are a few DTH service providers that charge for free channels also.
Can you give me a few examples.
Also can u tell me sumthin more videocon DTH.

just4kix

Free channels or Free-to-air (FTA) channels are not charged per-se. But apart from DD-Direct, none of the DTH providers beam FTA channels as a pure FTA package with no subscription.

All other providers, bundle free channels with all packages. Even the minimum package contains some paid channels for which you have to pay a subscription. If you fail to renew, all transmission is stopped (including FTA channels).

Is this clear or have I created more confusion?

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