s of 9th October 2008, the much awaited Airtel Digital TV has been finally launched by Bharti Airtel. We at SaveOnDish have got some of the first previews of Airtel Digital TV and we are confident to say that Airtel Digital TV is totally set to blow every other DTH company out of the water with its cutting edge technology and some excellent service quality + customer care.
Here are a few pointers about Airtel Digital TV:
- Picture Quality: Airtel Digital TV has DVD quality picture (We are not sure about HD yet though, but the picture quality is flawless, looks amazing on TVs no matter what size) There was no pixelation and the picture was perfect.
- Sound Quality: It has amazing sound, almost DVD quality there as well. No hiccups in audio, nice streaming.
- Remote: Universal Remote is provided with Airtel Digital TV, meaning that your TV and the STB will work with the same remote. So say goodbye to two remotes! Also, even though it is a universal remote, it is actually really light unlike Tata Sky and Big TV remotes.
- Set Top Box: The overall appearance of the Airtel STB is very sleek and stylish, it does not appear like a huge bulky box. Its really nice and compact (Pictures coming today evening)
- Dish: Airtel Digital TV has a bigger Dish than the existing companies, which makes sure that you don’t lose connectivity even in heavy rainfall. Although we at SaveOnDish have yet to see a live demo of this, but the size of the Dish looks really nice (Pictures coming soon!)
- Channels: Airtel Digital TV has almost all the popular channels with no exclusions except maybe UTV Bindass and a few channels here and there, but they are soon going to be at 175 channels in a few months which would mean, all channels under one connection! (Complete list of channels coming today)
- Pricing: Airtel Digital TV has flexible pricing options, and a lot of packs to make sure you get what you want.
- Active Services: Airtel Digital TV has 8 active services which are very useful as well. It includes iMatinee through which you can book cinema tickets, iCity for knowing more about your city and its places, iNews for getting in touch with the latest news, iShop for shopping, iAstro for knowing your astrological predictions, iTravel for knowing more about travelling, iLearn and iNet.
- It takes little time to go through channels unlike Big TV, and it has a lot of options for easy browsing.
- Excellent software, looks really eye catching and does not look complicated
- It has a working USB slot, meaning you can use it all you want (Imagine the possibilities)
- It has a games section and new games are added every six months so that people could get to play new games
- The STB has a bigger memory than the existing STBs of other companies, which means that it can hold up more games, programs etc.
About the cons area, I didn’t see any real cons in Airtel Digital TV, and no we are not being paid to say this, the entire experience was really good, right from the customer care to the actual demonstration of the product. Although I did think that the pricing was a bit too high, but we are sure they’ll introduce a Diwali offer which will have cheaper installation + plans.
While you’re at it, we at SaveOnDish are going to add the following information about Airtel Digital TV within a day or so:
- COMPLETE List of Channels with Channel Numbers
- Complete list of packages with List of Channels + Pricing + Installation charges information
- A lot of pictures of the Airtel Digital TV remote, STB, Dish etc.
- Information on getting Airtel Digital TV
So keep checking back at SaveOnDish! and we’ll have you updated.
Mr. Channel
The list of channels contains almost all major channels. Only Zone Reality and UTV Bindass are the channels which I can think of are not in the list. Otherwise all major channels are there.
