Dish Networks India

This question has been lifted several times on the forum, and amongst all of the DTH consumers minds as of late. With the huge launches of Reliance Big TV and Airtel Digital TV, as well as Sun DTH going national, people have started to wonder, whether there are just too many DTH players for the market to handle now? So I thought of writing up an analysis on the same. Lets get a feel of the market first.

There are roughly around 70-80 Lakh DTH subscribers in India as of now, bear in mind this is just my own estimate though. Now this market will most likely go up over 3 Crore subscribers by 2012. Which means that the DTH market is only going to grow from here on. There is no saturation in hindsight and amongst the foray of new features, new providers, new untapped markets being opened up as well as new standards being set in the industry. DTH is here to stay.

The thing with the Indian market is, that there is just too much of a market in here. Lots of room for more players as well, I can even go so far as to say that even if 10 more players get themselves in at this point, they would have enough market to carry on nicely. Even now, Dish TV, Tata Sky, Big TV, Airtel Digital TV, Sun DTH etc. are operating quite well.

But what does this mean for you, the consumer? Nothing but benefits! Cut throat competition amongst DTH companies means nothing but good for the average consumer. With TRAI pushing for making STBs interoperable amongst providers, in the coming years it would be as easy switching between providers as it would be switching a sim card from your phone, which would result in a lot more conscious efforts by all DTH companies in providing the best product, the best services and the best deals on their packages, So if more companies step in, it means even more competition, even more ideas, more innovations and more for you!

Therefore, the healthy growth of the DTH market is totally positive, the companies are getting in because of the huge untapped markets, a lot of room for expansion and profits! For the consumers, it’s win-win all along.

Mr. Channel

Yes thats true! It has been made known by TRAI that Telecom operators around the country can offer streaming television services to their consumers through Mobile Networks.

First lets start off by checking out what is Mobile TV, simply put, it is a live Video streaming telecast optimized for speedy display on mobiles through the mobile networks, now… this would be accessible through GPRS most likely, or EDGE, which is likelier since EDGE is faster.

Dish TV, as we have known, has expressed a lot of interest in taking a step forward and offering the service of Television on Mobile, but what TRAI has said is that companies like Dish TV will have to take separate licenses for this whilst current telecom companies like Airtel, Hutch, BSNL etc. can offer the service to their consumers.

We at SaveOnDish believe the quality will be way too inferior but would always be good to get a quick look on whats happening on TV. Expect this to pop up on your cell phone any time within the next six months!

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

—

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!

—-

Thank you Gopal for such a wonderful guide!

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

—

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

Many people ask me as of late that what are the good things about Tata Sky? So I decided to compile a guide to the features of Tata Sky that actually stand out from the rest of the Dish Networks in India. This list of Tata Sky’s special features and… of course features which Tata Sky does offer normally.

• 120 Channels (November 2006): Tata Sky boosts 120 channels under its kitty but its still missing a lot of channels which DishTV offers, although it is very much clear that DishTV offers those channels already because it is the senior player in this game as compared to Tata Sky. Although Tata Sky has been EXTREMELY quick to pick up considering the fact that Tata Sky was launched quite later and DishTV was very slow to add new channels.

• No Channel Alteration: This is one thing I like about Tata Sky, the fact that Tata Sky seldom changes the CHANNEL NUMBERS of the channels they offer, DishTV does it for all the time except for Zee Channels (Primarily because DishTV’s parent company, the Essel Group, CEO Subhash Chandra, owns Zee Network as well) and I am seriously fed up of the way I have to search for the channel I want on DishTV after an update, but this is not a cause of concern with Tata Sky absolutely. Tata Sky gets full marks over here.

• SEVEN DAY Program Schedules: Another big plus point with Tata Sky is the fact that you can go browse the Schedules of the programs on different channels (all of them actually) even SEVEN days in advance or less. DishTV as far as I know never offered anything like this, I mean to say a period like SEVEN days here, DishTV can go up to maximum of 24 hours forward and back, but this feature with Tata Sky is just incredible.

• EPG standalone usage: This may sound like a technical term, although it isn’t. EPG means Episode Guide or Everyday Program Guide I believe, anyways, so there is this feature on Tata Sky that allows you to check out what is on a particular channel without changing the channel you are watching, now no more missouts! What a great thing this is which the Tata Sky team sorted out, I am lead to believe that this is one of the most user friendly things ever! Not to mention, DishTV doesn’t offer this at all.

• Multiple Screen Feature: I don’t get the fact that why isn’t DishTV offering this thing? and why haven’t DishTV ever offered this as well? This is such a basic thing, and to tell you readers, I must say that why should we spend a few extra thousand rupees just to have a multiple screen feature on our Television set? (I bet you people remember those advertisements where the TV companies show in their advertisements that they have this new and cool multiple screen feature so their television is now going to cost you a few thousand rupees extra JUST FOR THIS ONE FEATURE. All it has to do is with software, hardware is the same. Now when we have DishTV, which is all in all software based and remotely upgradable as well! So why can’t DishTV offer this facility? But Tata Sky has an answer for this and therefore they are offering us a Multiple Screen Feature service, you can watch up to four channels simultaneously and choose whatever audio you want to! All this at no extra cost as well.

• Active Wizkids Interactive channel: DishTV may be offering a lot of Interactive channels and so is Tata Sky, but the channel Tata Sky stands out at here is the Active Wizkids Interactive learning channel for kids, where kids can go play some games which will also help them in learning something new through the method of games! Things couldn’t get better for kids when its Tata Sky! It was actually good to see that the Tata Sky people do have some creativity to stand out, even if it was just one little channel and that too for little people, but Tata Sky has SUCCESSFULLY stood out from the crowd over here.

• Superior Hardware and Customer Support: Now this is one thing that people are rooting at Tata sky for, the great quality for Hardware which they are selling to their customers as well as their awesome customer support, the good thing about their hardware is that it doesn’t fade out when there are weather problems, it doesn’t have sun outages, it doesn’t have any kind of a blurred picture when the the winds blow, neither does the signal fade out at Tata Sky when there are rains, it seldom happens and if it does, it has something to do with you and not the Dish which Tata Sky has provided. Also if some issue comes up and you need support, Tata Sky Customer support is always more than willing to come help you out as soon as possible. Something I have always seemed to have missed at dishTV, no real customer support, they come to your house days after your request. But Tata Sky has a 24 hours thing which doesn’t let them go late no matter what. Signal quality has also always been great at Tata Sky, with signal strength reaching to the extremes of 90-95%, nothing ever achieved in DishTV as far as I know.

So yeah Tata Sky has many good points to cheer about, and they are also better than DishTV in a lot of ways, I have only tried to specify some points here, but there are many more as well. Although one shouldn’t be unjust which is why I will be putting in the features glossary of DD DTH as well as DishTV pretty soon as well complete with reasons as to why you should choose them over the other alternatives around in the market.
Be optimistic though! There might come a day when all of these services become the same and then we do get to see some sort of a real competition between all these people, errm I mean these companies, the STB and DTH providers. We might be up for Hardware replacements, software overhaulings and don’t know what else! So yeah once again got to say! Be optimistic people! Thanks for reading

Mr. Channel

—-

15 Responses to “ Tata Sky Features ”

Comments:

1. Rahul says:
   December 11th, 2006 at 5:39 am Our adapter conked out in 3 days after the system got installed. The TataSky Field Service and Customer Support is so disconnected that it took them 2 days to even get their engg to check out what the problem is. Its been 5 days since we have had TV…and I thought TataSky would be better than Dish !!!
2. bipin says:
   December 11th, 2006 at 7:40 am tata is much costly , they should anounce a small package which suitable for top to bottom public
3. anupam says:
   January 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 am Multiple screen feature in Tata Sky!! Who told you that – it’s there only for some fixed channels.
   Seven day program schedule!! My tata sky connection (Bangalore) does not show me more than one day of schedule. And unlike Hathway, if I were to opt for a full screen program guide, there’s no window showing the current channel.
   Outages!! Actually, rare. It;s just that right now I was getting a “No Signal” error and decided to search for it in google – and landed up on this site.
   Picture quality is excellent – and some channels even have digital sound – though these channels have “Tata Sky” logo watermarked in them for some reason. I really look forward to better outputs in the setup box than composite/analog audio though, and support for digital video recorder – which I hear dish tv has…
4. Junjunb Khan says:
   January 2nd, 2007 at 3:56 am on 2nd jan 2007 today, suddenly the signals to tatasky stopped, all their call center numbers are busy, and no information on the status is available on their website.

   we as costomers can audjest with any techenical problem but atleast they should keep us informed.

   Tatasky sadly has got very slow, uninformed, and unmotivated team of people working for it.

5. jadoo says:
   January 6th, 2007 at 12:23 am TATA SKY – Big Mistake.
   1. They do not have a toll free number and one only if u use MTNL/BSNL – do not take tata sky if u do not want govt monopoly.
   2. Got the box on the 31st Dec and now 6th still no sign of the dish etc.
   3. TATA has very poor after sales record [historically] i don’t understand what went wrong in my head i bot tata sky.
   4. If they do not show up today i will return the set top box to the dealer – good thing i used my credit card.

   DO NOT BUY TATA SKY – IF U WANT PEACE OF MIND

   cheers

6. abhishek says:
   January 11th, 2007 at 1:21 am TATA SKY is the best… it rules…
7. Dimu says:
   January 14th, 2007 at 10:56 am Although I saw on many sites that Neo Sports is available on Tata Sky,as at today (14/01/2007) it’s not appear on my channel list.

   Does anyone getting it?

8. sanjay says:
   January 16th, 2007 at 2:16 am hi,

   tata sky is sick … it is like dumping your money in shit.

   booked on 7th and they ayet to install on 16th .

   confirmed me 9th installation . will come back with more problems if any once the unit is installed.

   wachout guys.

9. James says:
   February 4th, 2007 at 10:34 pm one thing strikes me about TataSky and that is they are not giving sufficient amount of information about their product.There aren’t any booklets available at the dealers(they by themself don’t know about the product) and even their website sucks!!.Another thing i got a coupen in Reader digest of last month for a copy of booklet informing about their product guide, the free copy will delivered to only thoes who has the coupen else u gotta purchase fuck!!.i mean who gonna purchase that garbage for nothing.
10. prakash chandra panda says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 12:37 pm I think Tatasky is best cable TV Networks in India. There is Nothing after TataSky. But one draw back is that it has no internet facility. I think Tatasky should deeply consider about this matter.
    from
    Prakash Panda
11. sunil says:
    February 21st, 2007 at 4:37 am I dont understand how companies like this survive. Are the people in India so lazy to raise their voice for their own self. We just take anything that comes out to the market. And that’s the reason why companies sails shits at the cost of gold.

    Tata Sky sucks. The website is the biggest bull-shit. No relevant information is available. People are more intrested in the quality of service than dump of some pig.

12. Jaishankar says:
    February 28th, 2007 at 3:03 am Hi,

    It was sad to say that tata sky don’t have a helpline number of tamilnadu. Although they have a tataindicom phone. If anyone wants to make a call to customer care they should use only bsnl/mtnl what happend to TATAINDICOM especially people in tamilnadu have to make a STD to other state number. TATAINDICOM don’t have a chennai helpline number.

    One important thing i would like to discuss is we all from South India especially from Tamilnadu. We would like to watch tamil music and filims but we don’t have that option. we are watching only jaya and vijaya. what happend to sun tv even if it is cases why not raj and other tamil channels.

    What happend to packages in Tamilnadu. We got only super saver pack. Is it possible for middle class people to invest 300 rupees on montyly basis. We request the tata group to comeup with some economical plan.

    I hope they do so.

    tanks
    Jaishankar

13. viral says:
    March 29th, 2007 at 12:17 pm tata sky is not shoing the charges after instollaion, if after 2 days their is the problem in hadware or dish thy will chared for reparing .you want to change the space they charged up to 1000.rs. can any one bilev it. then after in the form they given a point that if the party does not renual they will take the hardwear.it is very bad.
14. Ravi says:
    April 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm Dishtv is a sick, they don’t reply ur message. very poor service.
    ravi
15. vasanth says:
    May 15th, 2007 at 2:33 pm SUN NETWORK is not avaiable in tatsky tdsat has already fixed 11 may as for final hearing .but still the case is pending in court tdsat are careless they should order sun to give signals to tatasky at al a carte bases at 50% of that of cable rates

    for further update in this case visit

    http://www.tdsat.nic.in/orders.htm