Dish Networks India

I have just got this information from one of my sources inside Dish TV India that the channels B4U Music  and B4U Movies are to be added very soon in the Dish TV platform, so people can now rejoice over this news!

Both of these channels are one of my personal favorites, with B4U Music giving us the top songs and B4U Movies displaying movies round the clock.

The reason these channels were removed was because they were not being aired with the quality DishTV wanted to provide its customers, and some technicalities were there which forced DishTV to remove B4U’s channels, there were also some encoding issues. Ways have been worked out for this and the problem is in its final stages.

Expect both the channels to be on your STB from the end of March.

We receive a lot of complaints from the subscribers of Dish TV India on a monthly basis. My personal experience of Dish TV India has been very good, but… somehow a lot of people seem to be getting problems when they are with Dish TV. I have searched and researched their problems repeatedly and have got on to the conclusion that Dish TV giving a lot of authority to their dealers is the main cause of most of the problems.

Lets take Dish TV in a side by side comparison with Tata Sky. Firstly, Tata Sky does not provide its dealers with a lot of authority, they can sell STB’s, certain devices, get connections started, have people recharge their accounts, but thats mostly it. The Tata Sky dealers are not told to do anything else. Tata Sky manages most of its back end stuff itself. Even things like Installation, technical assistance etc. are looked on by Tata Sky themselves.

However, its a different story with Dish TV, as far as I have known, all they have is a customer care center which gives support via phone. Otherwise, for nearly everything else, you have to consult your dealer. Now, these dealers, take unfair advantage of this liberty they get, and therefore, what they do is… they charge a lot of money for many things which normally would have to be charged less.

A lot of people find themselves into a problematic situation when their Dish TV India dealer asks them for money for little things. Dish TV does not have an official rate list too for dealers, which makes it even easier for many dealers to rob their clients.

However I’m not accusing all Dish TV India dealers of being like this, but many of the dealers are involved into such practices and are giving Dish TV India a bad name. Therefore, we need to understand, that the company is not entirely at fault here. But the dealers are.

What Dish TV India should do now is… they should install a little complaint section on the same telephone support they have where a person could go and complain about their dealer. Also, Dish TV India should get an official rate list for different kinds of works carried out by the dealer, rates of which should be able to be confirmed via phone.

Hoping for the best!
Mr. Channel

A user Gopal Krishnan posted this on the forums, I thought it would be good to post it on the main website:

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Many of you will be having this dilemma.

The barrage of advertisements wont do any good either.
You can go by your neighbour’s decision and feel safe or may be you can take your own decision.

I hope my experience will help.

Wanted to take DTH, because cable quality was pathetic and they kept wanting more money. Initially wanted to take dish TV since they have packages. But i found a lot of complaints in this forum regarding customer service. And Tata is a respected brand. Hence the dilemma.

1].But dishtv has been here for two years or so and naturally they might be having more user complaints. So i was not realy scared by that alone.

2].Visit a demo of both. That is very important.

3].The remote: I felt the the remote of tata is too bulky. This is one stuff that you are going to use continously. You dont want have a brick in your hand. Dish TV remote is very handy. [why cant they have a remote locator switch on the TV or set top box like for cordless phones? I keep misplacing the the remotes [now 5 of them!]

4] Interface: changing from one channel to another [which you will be doing every five minutes or so!] is rather clumsy in tata sky. one Big blue banner appears in which you can select and you have to push another button to let it dissappear. very annoying! [the dish blue banner dissappears on its own quickly although i still wish it was more subtle or if there was an option to hide it altogether] Also there is a disturbing bright blue screen which appears for a moment between channels, as they are changed, which is disturbing. [DishTV screen is black between channels like in many tvs and is better. Why cant they have channels that change instantly like in old tvs?] Also i like the way you can arrange favourite channels. [may be there in sky TV, i dont know]

5]picture quality is the same in both. nothing to select there.

6] you have to pay for the wire from your terrace to TV for dishTV[ Rs 10 for every meter and you have to pay around 150] relocation fee for tata is 1000. less for dish.

7] Sun TV channels are available only in dish as of now.

8] packages are available only in dish as of now. I took maxi [everything for 300 a month] Six months free in dish and three in tata.

I selected Dish TV they installed within 24 hours and i had no problems till now. [1 month now]. Havent had the oppurtunity to call in their customer service. so i cant tell you anything about that. Hope it remians that way!

i went for dish because of the remote and the way you change and select channels which were more user friendly.

Please do see both at a demo or better at a house where it is installed and try changing channels and go through the menu etc and decide for yourself which is user friendly. Costs are almost the same and hope they come down. They will, once Reliance comes in!

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Thank you Gopal for such a wonderful guide!

Mr. Channel

SaveOnDish.com launches Discussion forums at www.saveondish.com/forum/ for all its visitors, you can now go to the forums and talk about Tata Sky, Dish TV, Reliance BlueMagic, Bharti Airtel and all other DTH networks in India.

You can use the forum for:

• Registering your complaints against DTH Networks
• Voicing out your consumer opinion
• Giving your highly valued opinion on the DTH service you use
• Helping others in need
• Reading tips, tricks, get arounds etc. like catching FTA channels on your STB, downloading games on your device and more.
• Reading guides posted by members
• Get Customer support

We have initiated talks with the customer support of Tata Sky and DishTV and their customer support officials will be regularly coming to the forums to answer your questions and queries if you post them in the forum, they will also offer you online customer support!

Following are the links to the categories inside the forum:

• Tata Sky Forum
• Dish TV Forum
• Reliance Blue Magic Forum
• Bharti Airtel Forum

All you need to do to post is to register here

So if you have any complaint against your Dish Provider, have a suggestion for them, need customer support from Dish TV or Tata Sky or just want to give your consumer opinion on your DTH provider, just go the forum and do it!

Arun Kumar Kapoor, CEO of DishTV India has been quoted as saying by The Financial Express that decrease of subscription charges of DishTV packages is totally out of question.

Mr. Kapoor justifies the stand saying that the prices which are currently being offered by DishTV are the lowest in the whole of world when we take other DTH providers in the foreign countries in comparison.

The prices will most likely shoot up in the coming times as the DishTV subscribers grow in number, we may put a price tag on our active services which are currently offered free of cost, pushing up the subscription rate. Mr. Kapoor said.

So this basically means bad news for us DishTV subscribers eh guys? But with Bharti Airtel and Reliance coming right into the direct competition with DishTV, if the prices are not slashed, DishTV is going down the drain.

Lets hope that the other DTH providers don’t join the bandwagon and increase their prices. I am sure that at least the new players will start off cheaply.

Be optimistic!
Mr. Channel

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A few days back. When I was browsing through some channels on DishTV, it started showing “Please Check Smart Card” and all of a sudden I couldn’t view any channels.

I was quite shaken (obviously) and went on the DishTV website to check out my account balance, which was Rs. 850/-, this meant that I need not pay till the next month.

Now, what happened was that I called up the DishTV Customer care and they insisted I go to the dealer and have the smartcard checked out, I was like… Fine probably something to do with an error.

As soon as I reached the Dealer, who is a good friend of mine, I noticed at least four or five people with their smartcards, which explained the situation, many people were having the same problem.

The dealer took our cards and put them into his STB, they started working fine, so he gave the cards back to us. I came back and put the card in my STB and it worked just fine. So I continued browsing through the channels like I always do.

End one hour and I received a call on my cellphone, DishTV customer care was on the other end, a girl asked me “Sir, did you like our customer service?”. I said yes and counter questioned her asking “Was this exercise to prove that your customer service is top notch?”, the phone was hung up!

So people, sometimes this could happen that your SmartCard could stop working, if you have not paid your bills, then its that issue, but if you have paid/have balance, then don’t worry about it because it might just be another DishTV customer care exercise, just insert the card in another STB and take it out and it will work just fine.

Mr. Channel

Something apart from the usual mumble jumble, here we go, now that I do have the Dish upgrade, I am going to introduce you people to the games that are available on my DishTV set.

• Table Football: This game is basically table football as the name suggests, pretty good of a game if you want to pass time, it has a nifty tournament feature as well, although I have never won it, three different levels of toughness namely easy, normal and hard. There are eight different characters to choose from in this game, which doesn’t really matter, they are all the same, they just have different country flags on their shirts.

• Boy Racing: This is a little racing game that relies on the technique and upgrades on your car. There are fifteen races in the career mode on this game. The difficulty of each race increases as you pass forward because your opponent (Chav) upgrades his car and his control on it, this opponent is an NPC, but still seems pretty real at times. For each race you win, you get some in game money which you could use to purchase upgrades for your car, upgrades are available in three areas, Wheels, Accelaration and Top Speed I believe. Its impossible to fully upgrade everything seeing that there are not as many races in the career mode. But still its good to see your car improve as you upgrade it.

• Fruit Splat: You play a dude here who has an enemity with fruits, no kidding! You have to throw rocks at fruits of the same kind in a line and then you will technically SPLAT them up. After a specific number of splats, you progress to the next level. This is maybe all there is to this game.

• Jamble: This is on the same concept as Fruit splat, only that you have to switch between two things so that one of them gets a combination of three of its kind in a row. Then it gets deleted, after a specific amount of deletions, you get advancement to the next level. This game is a bit more thrilling though, because of the time bar at the bottom. Although there is no REAL thrill, just a bit of it sometimes when time starts running out.

• Jinja Ninja: This is a mario-like game, I never completed it, so yeah it is challenging, you play a little kid who is supposedly a Ninja and then you hit people with your lasso and kill them, you can also use the lasso to stick into places and swing to other ones and take items. Basically you have to find a key and then you can unlock the door with it to progress to the next level, if you have surplus keys then you don’t need to find the key for a lock (Meaning that all doors and their keys are the same) the only difference comes when you come to a door which requires a gold key. Finding one is a bit difficult, the game is easy at the start but as the levels progress, this game starts getting more challenging, so yes I can say that this is the best game DishTV is currently offering me.

If you have any questions about any of these games, do not hesitate to post a comment here, I will be more than happy to answer any of your queries.

The games are not good enough but oh well! Lets be optimistic! most probably we will get better games later on.

Mr. Channel

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One Response to “ DishTV games ”

Comments:

1. raja says:
   December 13th, 2006 at 5:41 am dear sir

   the dish tv in which i frequently play is Jinja Ninja in that i happen to see only i can go to level of 5th i can take the gold key after taking the gold key the go to the level of 7th & 8th there is no way to enter the gate even i have 3 life also please suggest me how to complete the total game (or if you have the full version cd please send it to this address

   no 126/8 s-hig-c vphase (opp to neha prakesh hospital) k.h.b.colony yelhanka bangalore

   i had seen to finish the total level but its possiable to complete the total level

   thanks & rgds raja

   my id is jsk_raja@yahoo.co.uk

Alright so as I mentioned earlier, DishTV software has been updated on my Zenega Set Top box, now I have realized how much I have lost with this upgrade of the DishTV software.

• No Tuning: Now you cannot tune your channels and see the signal strength of the satellite transmission. You cannot just go to the Menu and delete all channels, reset them and check the signal strength to get new channels etc.

• Customized SAT no more: You can’t feed your DishTV set top box with any new satellite information now. The only satellite you have access to is what the DishTV people have given you, which is NSS6

• No more Free To Air!: Now because there is no tuning and setting options available on DishTV, we can NOT tune to any new satellite and catch its channels that are free to air, no more international access anymore!

• Channel browsing!: Earlier it was so easy to browse through the channels in DishTV, you could just press ok and the whole channel list would come and then you could easily select the chanel you wanted and go on it, but now for going to a channel you don’t know the number of, you must go through each channel, and sometimes to add to it you can also miss the channel somewhere in between and go through the whole cycle again multiple times to find the right channel.

• Can’t edit TP: You cannot edit the TP settings anymore, the TP are provided by DishTV whenever they upgrade the box and you got to live with it.

• Sound Quality degratory: The earlier DVD quality sound is not even CD quality now and there are lot of mismatches and lags which cause the sound to go behind the movie or ahead of it sometimes.

• Video Quality: Sometimes in the new DishTV updated channels, horizontal slanting lines start appearing which degrades the quality of the video signal provided by DishTV. This is not the problem of the NSS6 satellite, but this is the problem of the software that it is unable to translate the signal properly into the telecast.

Therefore the recent DishTV update has removed a lot of things from the software which was earlier available on our set top boxes. So now well lets be satisfied with what we have, at least this software has quite enough to offer so that we don’t get too hurt because of what DishTV has removed from our lives! I’ll mention the new features in my upcoming posts, the things that will give you happiness of mind that oh well Dish TV gave us something good at least!

OHH and I forgot to mention the BIGGEST thing we lost in this update! God how can I forget it, well ladies and gentlemen, we have also lost the BELOVED Block Game, yeah and I know all of you are very sad right now at the RIP notice of the Block Game, oh well good times and bad times! (That was on the good side of mine, but actually , to inform the newcomers to this website, NOBODY liked that stupid block game)

Be Optimistic!
Mr. Channel

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3 Responses to “ The problems with DishTV update ”

Comments:

1. lokesh dhureja says:
   December 20th, 2006 at 3:38 am If I rotate the disk towards some other direction and use the restore to factory setting feature on set top box, Will it bring back the software to its original version and then I can rotate towards any other sattelite to receive other Free to Air channels. I think it is possible. Any comments
2. chandrashekar says:
   December 27th, 2006 at 11:39 am yes i agree with you dish is not upgraded well ……useless engineers…. comparing the performance,userfriendly,features faactors with what it was earlier it is overall a software degrade …..dish people i hope u read this!!!.
3. rahul says:
   March 15th, 2007 at 7:21 pm tell me wether it is good to go for DD DTH?

   which are the channels that are being broadcasted over?

   Can one tune to any satellite?

   Does it had got any features of like internal tv tuner card (play pause store )etc?

Finally after a long long wait of around three months, my Dish Set Top Box has been upgraded, I can now see Five games, I have access to active services, channel timing and lots of other stuff has become available now. Although I do miss some features in the old DishTV software, which I will inform you about in my later posts!

Heya,

Found out a strange thing with the DishTV movie on demand feature, when you make an order for a film to be viewed on your STB, you are entitled to pay for the expenses, however you order the movie from your mobile through SMS, therefore, DO NOT give out your Smart Card number to anybody else.

The code to order a movie is like this - “MOD ” and send to 7575. Now, for example if you put someone else’s SC number in there, they will see the movie when they never asked for it and they will also pay for it, and this is a costly affair as well, Rs. 40/- per movie, so you must watch out, and by the way, I’ll test this on Tata Sky and let you people know whether this vulnerability is there as well or not.

Be optimistic nevertheless! Maybe they’ll repair it after the email I am sending them right now.

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4 Responses to “ DishTV Movie on Demand warning! ”

Comments:

1. rajat says:
   November 26th, 2006 at 11:28 pm I like to know that through dish tv, can adult channels be watched. Please give advise how to see adult channels
2. Mr. Channel says:
   November 28th, 2006 at 12:06 am You could have watched any FTA adult channels through DishTV earlier in the days, but with the new software upgrade DishTV has got, I don’t think its possible anymore.

   Mr. Channel

3. sanjay says:
   January 26th, 2007 at 11:34 am This is a write addwise But it is not posible that u secare your sms id or vc nember.It passed in maney hends of salse,installer etc
   Sanjay Parashar Jewar U.P. India
4. Chintamani Patwardhan says:
   April 10th, 2007 at 9:33 am I stay away for some time frequently from my present residence where Tata sky connection has been installed. Can I get only a dish at the other place where I had to stay and carry my Digicomp set top box and remote and connect it to the dish installed? Is Tata sky can provide this facility.
   Chintamani