Product Review: DishTV Direct to Home Service

Being my first experience with the interactive television, it was quite exciting to start off.
Choose between multiple camera views to see Michael Clarke blasting. Or watch the highlights of the ongoing match whenever you want. Truly interactive.

Yes, DishTV's Direct to home service seems to be value for money.

1. Get to watch YOUR favorite channel.
2. Crystal clear - You would never know if the content is being served off your DVD player or from somewhere in the skies.
3. Pay only for what you want. If you want only the free-to-air channels, you dont need to pay any monthly charges.
   

The regional mix is really cool, where you can pickup a regional bundle of your choice (Tamil/Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi etc). Best part for me is, Tamil and Malayalam fall in the same category. My cable operator in Hyderabad gives me just 1 malayalam channel and 2 Tamil channels now and that too with extremely poor quality. For him Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada are all Madrasi. With DishTv I get some 20 Mallu and Tamil channels.

Some neat features:

• Select a Programme category - News, Sports, Cinema, Music, Movie-on-demand, Kids. Click on any category and your screen display splits into various parts showing the preview of channels which are airing programs of that category- in full web 2.0 style. Now click on the preview of the channel you need to watch and the preview now expands to cover the entire display area of your TV- Again in web 2.0 style.
• Select any channel and the channel preview is shown in the left part of the screen and the programme schedule for that channel on the right half. Browse over the schedule for the next few days.
• Create an alert for a particular programme while browsing through the schedule and you will be notified 1 minute to 1 hour before the start of that item.
• You casually browse through the channels and find a known movie being played but it takes a couple of phone calls to find out the name of the movie. Have you gone through this? This would no longer happen - thanks to an ' i' button on the remote which displays the information about the current programme. It's start time, end time, episode number, Cast, Genre. And if it’s a movie, a brief synopsis.
• I clicked on the sports category and it took me to world cup section which shows today’s match timings (When I clicked on it, it took me to that channel), the tournament stats, team stats, player stats and so on.)
• Highlights of the current match whenever I need.
• Multiple camera views
• Lot of radio channels (Including All India Radio-Chennai, AIR Malayalam..)
• Games
• Movie-on-demand: Imagine this. You go to a multiplex paying some 150 bucks for the ticket + 80 bucks for the so called 'combo' snack. And that too for a noon show on a Apr-May afternoon, if you haven't booked early enough.Now just Call up a toll free number/send an SMS to watch your favorite movie lying on the couch with loads of snacks and drinks and the cooler on.. It's bliss!(The multiplex+noon+ 230*2=460 Rs might seem better for some, but for non-romantic chronic stags like me couch+chips+cooler+movie would be all-tinme bliss!)

I heard Tata Sky DTH Service is also equally good. But haven’t tried it. Doordarshan also has DTH service (Apna DTH) since long. And there are no monthly charges for the DD DTH, but you only get the free channels. Probably DD should have marketed that long back in a much better way.

In the coming years lot of people would be moving from the tradational cable TV to the satellite TV. Especially since the Conditional Access System is being implemented in all big cities. Chennai was the first to implement CAS (without much noise), 4 years back. The pay for what you watch rule is picking up well.

Off late there’s lots of happening in the DTH space in India. Coming soon is Kalanithi Maran’s Sun Direct. (Sun TV’s)

To sum it up, DishTV DTH seems to be true value for money.