Direct-To-Home television in India. Update DTH HD announced

[khanak]

Iv been seeing a lot of ads for MTNL's IPTV lately. Looks like now were going to get more and more choice

Dishtv,Tatasky,MTNL IPTV,Reliance Bluemagic.

No HD programming as yet? Or some more international channels atleast?

[rangaraj]

You will see more players moving towards MPEG-4 vs MPEG-2 thereby increasing the bouquet of channels. PVR's.. No plans for HD as it is highly capital intensive and nowhere in the world do players do this without some mandate. Indian govt or TRAI are not going to do this.. So with MPEG-4 you will get more crap (channels)..

[vishaltanksale]

Originally Posted by khanak

Iv been seeing a lot of ads for MTNL's IPTV lately. Looks like now were going to get more and more choice

IPTV although has huge potential; but it is very new and specially in MTNL's hand.
I tried MTNL IPTV for couple of months and satisfied with quality of the content.
But with MTNL; I struggled to view IPTV for even 1 complete day.
Its either MTNL line problem or IPTV maintenence. And add to this MTNL service.
Also usually in Monsoon MTNL lines struggle and this means doentime.
So in such cases everythings down; landline, boradband and IPTV.

I guess it need more time to get stable before we start using as single solution for home entertainment. May be Reliance entry will help better service and quality in IPTV region.

[Knight Rider]

I am planning to get hathway from my local cable guy,

2500 for the STB and 180 channels, 200 rs/month

The question that I wanted to ask is with regards to the sound quality, Will I get digital output? There is no Dish, Only the STB which gets the connection from my existing cable.

Please help me guys.

[rangaraj]

Originally Posted by Knight Rider

I am planning to get hathway from my local cable guy,

2500 for the STB and 180 channels, 200 rs/month

The question that I wanted to ask is with regards to the sound quality, Will I get digital output? There is no Dish, Only the STB which gets the connection from my existing cable.

Please help me guys.

Well, i have a hathway box and here is the experience:

1. Overall between the normal cable and the digital cable you will notice uniform quality across channels
2. Expect blocky video, picture freeze, audio clicks on a few channels. The bandwidth allocated to these channels are not enough.
3. Expect a few channels and occasionally the entire service to disappear.

Overall compared to TataSky you will not get 24x7 availability, quality. If you have decent support from your cable guy, and willing to accept the Quality of Service, then go for it..

[esteem_lover]

The quality of Dish TV has seemingly improved by leaps & bounds in the last 3 months & i must say i will never ever look the tata sky way in the near future

[filcord]

My experience with DishTV. Installation took a long time, technician never came when promised, and I had to hang around the house for full day till he turned up. Signal started deteriorating after two weeks and it took two days to get the man again. After eighteen months picture started freezing, tech-man came and pottered around, charged 200/- and said the STB was faulty. I had to take the STB to the dealer, who told me to take it to the distributor, who told me to take it to the service centre in Panjim. They sent it to Pune, and I had to call them daily, for the next two weeks, until they finally informed me it would cost about Rs 1600/- to fix it , some RAM to be replaced, etc. At this point I had no TV for three weeks.

I cut my losses and went in for TataSky. Here again I waited two days for the technician to reach my place, appointments made and broken as usual. However now I have TV, and have no complaints so far, but then it's been two weeks only!

[jkdas]

dishtv now gives 170 channels max and for tata sky 105/110 channels at 300/month

Installation took only 30min max for tata sky. WOuld have been great if they had more music channels and more regional

[ravibhat]

Now a days tata sky adding more channels, only worry factor is when its cloudy and about to rain STB says no signal for few minutes (somtiems upto 30 min based on cloud weather) in bangalore. If its coastal area then i feel things will be still worst. My relative in dehradoon also told me same problem.

Any idea if any of these DTH provide Udaya Tv, U2 sun network kannada channels? Tatasky provide tv9 kannada, etv kannada, dd9 kannada and no udaya kannada, no zee kannada channels :(

Regards,

Ravi.

[santosh.s]

This thread was a good read... a great deal of information!

I have a few doubts (especially for rangaraj) about the latest entry into Indian television- IOL/BSNL IPTV recently launched in Bangalore. When we say xDSL can realistically give only 2Mbps max in India, is it with ADSL technology (theoretical limit 8Mbps)? What about ADSL-2-plus where theoretical limit is 24Mbps?
BTW, presently my broadband modem status indicate 1.8+ Mbps all the time.

IOL/BSNL claim that they will be using ADSL 2+ for modems and MPEG4 (part 10 or AVC or H.264 in particular) for video compression. Their STB's (sourced from amino) are supposed to have s-video/component connections for video and stereo/digital coaxial (electrical) for stereo or dolby 5.1 audio. It's firmware is also upgradable through web. Refer to this and this.
Given all that, I think their audio video quality shall be pretty good as compared to (mostly) crappy local cable or low bandwidth channels on DTH/digital cable. Unfortunately, they don't have demos Can we expect the quality to be on par with premium channels on DTH?

Another interesting thing is that I have read quite a few articles wherein BSNL/MTNL/IOL unveiled their plans to start high-definition service in the next year... a pleasant surprise or a rumor? It will need at least 6-8Mbps of bandwidth, and if one has to struggle to reach 2Mbps then 6-8 seems to be impossible. Does anybody know what the real scene is? Can our BSNL lines really work beyond 2Mbps mark?

My personal anticipations/gut feelings about IPTV over phone lines are-

pros:
- Good audio/video quality even with existing broadband speeds due to MPEG4 AVC.
- Quality would be maintained across all channels/VOD, because there is only one channel getting streamed on your line at a time, no per channel bandwidth allocation required.
- Acquiring/expanding the content may be (technologically) easier and faster since it is based on IP/internet, as opposed to DTH where there is a limited number of satellites covering a given area and there is a limited bandwidth available for each provider.
-No need to worry about power cuts or bad weather.

cons:
- Sharing between broadband data and IPTV can be potentially irritating...I mean TV may deteriorate during heavy downloads or the other way round (??)
- Getting 2 or more TV connections (on a single line) may be difficult, they are not providing it as of now.
- Instead of power cut and weather problems, you may face phone line's down times! (though my experience of late is quite good, don't even remember when the phone/broadband was down last time)
- Ability to maintain the quality of service may be impacted when the number of subscribers shoot up(?)

BTW, I have already booked a connection for myself in order to try it out. It will cost me roughly the same (Rs. 250/- including STB rental + tax) as present cable. I can discontinue at any time and the only stake will be installation charge which is about 900/- rupees!

[akshay1234]

Originally Posted by jkdas

dishtv now gives 170 channels max and for tata sky 105/110 channels at 300/month

Installation took only 30min max for tata sky. WOuld have been great if they had more music channels and more regional

they are going to add lots more.. an inside person tells me that their aim is to add some 900 channels or something like that.. but thats gonna take a long time.

[rangaraj]

Originally Posted by santosh.s

This thread was a good read... a great deal of information!

I have a few doubts (especially for rangaraj) about the latest entry into Indian television- IOL/BSNL IPTV recently launched in Bangalore. When we say xDSL can realistically give only 2Mbps max in India, is it with ADSL technology (theoretical limit 8Mbps)? What about ADSL-2-plus where theoretical limit is 24Mbps?
BTW, presently my broadband modem status indicate 1.8+ Mbps all the time.!

In a recent IPTV conference (quite a few these days), the official statement made by MTNL/BSNL was that lines >2Mbps would be categorized as broadband (no where else in the world is 256k/512k considered broadband as it was the case here). Practical bandwidth achieved is a function of the distance between the DSLAM and your modem, the line quality, no taps etc. Configuration and provisioning of the bandwidth in the routers and connectivity to Internet affect the available bandwidth.

Originally Posted by santosh.s

IOL/BSNL claim that they will be using ADSL 2+ for modems and MPEG4 (part 10 or AVC or H.264 in particular) for video compression. Their STB's (sourced from amino) are supposed to have s-video/component connections for video and stereo/digital coaxial (electrical) for stereo or dolby 5.1 audio. It's firmware is also upgradable through web. Refer to this and this.
Given all that, I think their audio video quality shall be pretty good as compared to (mostly) crappy local cable or low bandwidth channels on DTH/digital cable. Unfortunately, they don't have demos Can we expect the quality to be on par with premium channels on DTH?

I have not seen the demos either so i cant comment. The boxes are not so much of the issue - the content is encoded at 1.5Mbps and there is not much left for other things. What the MTNL/BSNL guys are doing is franchising the service (to folks like Times Broadband) who in turn are running the service. Heard from the system integrator that all is not going well. An interesting aspect is that they are offering two xDSL lines for this service - one for video and the other for data/voice, so it is not really a triple play service on a single wire. How the bandwidth and traffic is conditioned with this kind of a setup is in BSNL/MTNL's court and that does not lend too much of confidence.

Originally Posted by santosh.s

Another interesting thing is that I have read quite a few articles wherein BSNL/MTNL/IOL unveiled their plans to start high-definition service in the next year... a pleasant surprise or a rumor? It will need at least 6-8Mbps of bandwidth, and if one has to struggle to reach 2Mbps then 6-8 seems to be impossible. Does anybody know what the real scene is? Can our BSNL lines really work beyond 2Mbps mark?

Let them learn and deploy standard def TV before attempting HD. For a decent triple play service the recommended bandwidth is around 8Mbps. Here we are talking of two 2Mbps (needs to be seen if this can be achieved in places other than close to the central office in Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore)

Originally Posted by santosh.s

My personal anticipations/gut feelings about IPTV over phone lines are-

pros:
- Good audio/video quality even with existing broadband speeds due to MPEG4 AVC.

Yes, this will achieve the same quality at a lower bit rate. The difference in quality between Tata sky and others is the higher bit rate of encoding

- -No need to worry about power cuts or bad weather.

Dont be too sure about that! What's your uptime of TataSky vs your broadband connection (you seem to have a better experience than others)?

- Sharing between broadband data and IPTV can be potentially irritating...I mean TV may deteriorate during heavy downloads or the other way round (??)

They say they are going to offer two lines for this reason

- Getting 2 or more TV connections (on a single line) may be difficult, they are not providing it as of now.

Impossible for them to offer - you will keep dropping broadband connections into your home ;-)

BTW, I have already booked a connection for myself in order to try it out. It will cost me roughly the same (Rs. 250/- including STB rental + tax) as present cable. I can discontinue at any time and the only stake will be installation charge which is about 900/- rupees!

Would be interested in knowing your feedback on the service

[msdivy]

I read in yesterday's newspaper that TATA-SKY & SUN have sorted their issues and we can hopefully see SUN channels on TATA-SKY soon. Great for South-Indians viewers

[rangaraj]

Nearly all the players (especially the new entrants) will be going on the MPEG-4 platform and therefore will have more number of channels/transponder for the same quality. Diwali onwards should be interesting to see how the market pans out..It is going to be really crowded out there..

[santosh.s]

Originally Posted by rangaraj

The boxes are not so much of the issue - the content is encoded at 1.5Mbps and there is not much left for other things.

Today I got a call from BSNL regarding the installation. The guy seemed to have good idea about technical aspects and knew what he was talking (unlike most others). So, I asked about details. He told me that IPTV will have its bandwidth in the range of 5-6Mbps, but the current service will occupy only 3Mbps. He also said that this bandwidth will not be available for broadband (data) access though, implying that TV and data will not interfere with each other. Similar report was mentioned in the other forum link that I had given in the last post. By "3" he might have meant upto 2.5Mbps, because that is the max MPEG4 limit of the STB and also on IOL website they mention that it will be streamed at 1.8-2.5Mbps. BTW, I would expect 2.5Mbps MPEG4 AVC to be pretty much "DVD quality".

An interesting aspect is that they are offering two xDSL lines for this service - one for video and the other for data/voice, so it is not really a triple play service on a single wire.

Do you mean to say they will provide another physical copper wire for every customer? It sounds too much, because that means you will need 2 modems as well! right? But as I understand, the STB itself will be connected to the existing modem through an ethernet cable. Whatever may be the case, they seem to have kept broadband/phone activity separate from TV, which is very much desirable.

Let them learn and deploy standard def TV before attempting HD.

I haven't yet got an explicit answer to one of my question, is it the fact that we can't go beyond 2Mbps on an average line even with ADSL 2+ (24Mbps theoretical)? I am getting curious

Dont be too sure about that! What's your uptime of TataSky vs your broadband connection (you seem to have a better experience than others)?

I have no first hand experience of TataSky. Regarding BSNL broadband, in recent several months, I have hardly seen any downtime (not that I am browsing or on phone for 24 hours!). In general, there is mixed feedback from my friends/colleagues... many are happy and many are not. It's not like Airtel, for which most of the users have positive comments to make.

Would be interested in knowing your feedback on the service

Sure! Though I am actually a bit skeptical, still can't wait for the install to happen!!