Tag Archives: Internet

Airavat bliss and Airavat superia launched in Banglaore

The government on Wednesday launched two new buses Airavat Bliss and Airavat Superia on introductory routes Bangalore to Chennai and Tirupati. while the first series comes with Chemical toilets and built in pantry, the second one comes with these and additionally live TV and wifi internet services throughout the journey.

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This definitely has perked up the road travel aspect for those who discerned it earlier due to the toilet break reasons! Additionally ladies can feel a bit more easier on these routes now. While a break of additional 15 minutes can be avoided, these buses would now be equally costiler and as much as comparable to other similar services such as Olivea which already operate in Bangalore.

Definitely the KSRTC service would be a bit more practical while the Olivea is generally more comfortable due to superior seating even though its the same multi axle volvos. The real issue is the cleanliness of the toilets and overall sustained maintenance which would be an issue as the service is continued over a longer period of time. There is a general lack of concentration on this and its reflected by customer complaints already with Olivea. Lets hope KSRTC does not repeat the same mistakes.

The costing of Olivea is about 2500 to 3000 bucks a one way ticket. However KSRTC does not still provide pricing details for this clearly on their website.

Have you availed of their services already? Why not provide your opinion on the same in the comments section?

 

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7 reasons TO NOT buy or TO buy the iPhone 4S in India

So the big iPhone launch event is now over and the dust is settling down. I must say that Engadget has done a fine job of updating on the event progress while it was on. It takes a lot of effort for a tech website to be spot on with respect to the updates. Given its experience in handling past Apple launch event this was a cakewalk for Engadget this time as well. Finally Engadget also summarized the whole event in a short bulleted fashion for people who don’t have the time to read the full scoop.

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(image courtesy : Engadget.com)

Given this introduction let us then discuss the top 7 reasons why you should NOT buy the iPhone 4S. These reasons come out of my experience with using the iPhone 3GS for a year or more. So lets head straight on then …

  2. Closed filesystem – While for a person who does not bother to look beyond his iPhone, he can live entirely only with the phone without having the need to transfer anything out of the iPhone. Unfortunately not everyone is like that so one would like to have the ability to transfer important documents, photos, and other files out of the iPhone. This need may arise since we would use the phone with the associated data service to download a lot of useful things from the net. Imagine not having the feasibility to transfer it out of the phone. You might ask me if this is totally impossible – well not exactly – you can do so if you transfer it to another iDevice only.
  3. Absence of ports – I do agree and everyone here would also tend to agree that Apple makes a wonderful set of products. But omitting things like a USB port or a mini HDMI port only means that Apple would want its ecosystem to be protected to such an extent that one has to buy an iMac or iPad to transfer data out or an Apple TV product to transfer video content to a TV. I have a boxee box, which does all that and more by connecting up to a simple WiFi network and it needless to say has a HDMI port, USB slots, SD card slots and wireless NAS accessibility via uPNP protocol. All at < 200$ (Rs.10000). In today’s world, I cannot fathom paying 650$ without any of these just for the sake of lifestyle.
  4. Camera – When Apple launched 3GS version of the iPhone they provided a meagre 3.2 megapixel camera without flash, even when other manufacturers were already on the 5MP bandwagon with dual led flashes. While daylight photos were not so bad, night shots were pathetic. I am not even still considering the time it takes to edit that photo outside of iPhone as the transfer process itself requires iTunes software on an iMac or a PC. Arguably while apple has done away with the need for a PC anymore, can you think of atleast one time where you would love editing your photos on the phone itself. Its a small screen and you will run out of patience pretty soon. You might be wondering that it still has a 1080P full HD recording ability and hence more superior than a few other phones. Well I do tend to agree, but it all boils down to the same question as earlier – how would you transfer the content out for proper processing before sharing. For novices the phone would do it all automatically by processing and uploading to a video sharing service such as youtube, but for professionals who would like to edit the video more in depth, would find it intimidating when the device does not allow certain things. Coming to apple’s claim that the camera takes pictures in 1.1 second with a 0.5 second timing after the first picture, there are many other phones which also take pictures in about two seconds or so and offer face recognition since a couple of years now and this is nothing ground breaking. If i can wait for 1 second, i can also wait for 3 seconds!
  5. Pricing and rollout countries – Pricing has always been a premium for the iPhone. It continues to be so for the iPhone 4S which will retail for $649 or a little over Rs.32.500 in India on a fully unlocked basis. If you notice carefully India is NOT one of the countries which will get the iPhone 4S on October 28th. This directly shows the step motherly attitude that Apple has towards India. It has not skimped in the same way for the iMac though so far from releasing it on time. There are a lot of factors for this attitude from Apple. In a country where 3G speeds are not as consistent as they should be and in a place where a few thousands of geeks consider that India is geeky just because they use all the tech that is available, it does not mean that there will be millions of sales of the iPhone. The real winners out of phone sales in India would be those who provide dual sim phones with music player and radio, with perhaps a memory card slot thrown in at a rock bottom price of less than 50$ (~ about Rs.2000). Given this situation, a company like Apple which is vying for market share has no business in India with its ultra high end smartphone. And they are in no mood to subsidize it either.
  6. Carrier based subsidies – Unlike in the USA, carrier based phone subsidies and exclusivity for phone launches along with subsidies is not prevalent in India. With mobile number portability in place already, there is hardly any hope for this kind of model to work in India. Without subsidies we are then only looking for a very small percentage of market penetration Apple can achieve with its smartphone.
  7. Other feature sets -
    2. Flash disk size is hardly a differentiating factor these days for phones. I would at the maximum cycle around 1000 songs in my entire phone owning history and if I have 10000 songs while its good, we are talking only of a very select subsection of smartphone owners who are bound to be such music addicts. So if I am not a music and movie addicts there is no way that I can put the iPhone’s 16GB space to have anything else practically given the limitations on what can be stored and what not.
    3. GSM/CDMA universality is again anything groundbreaking. The early advent of dual sim, triple sim, and quad sim phones with multiple combinations of GSM/CDMA are more than already enough to provide the flexibility and for Indian’s going abroad there is a rare necessity to use two SIM cards on the same phone even alternatively instead of in parallel.
    4. iOS5 with iCloud - While the iCloud (which I had written about here) is a brilliant effort by apple for descoping physical limitations of the device storage, the concept itself is nothing groundbreaking. Almost every other provider is now on the cloud. The difference might lie in the way the other providers (versus apple) that let you access the cloud. On windows, accessing apple cloud is the slowest so far compared to say even Hotmail. Amazon cloud is yet to be tested by me and how Google might fare is only a fair guess having used google for a lot of time now. The real problem with iCloud is the missing information or lack of knowledge of how to find the files stored in the cloud. While other providers just list what you have in the cloud, Apple has incorporated the cloud concept into every application. So if I want to open some content, the only way is to get into the application having the ability to open that content, and then find the stored cloud content which I have created. This approach is useless and in no way enables me to get what I need quickly. I do appreciate apple’s clutter free approach in keeping cloud content specific to the applications that can harness it, thereby classifying it properly, but what is the use if I cannot see what I have stored in entireity on the cloud (ala Kindle Fire) ? The notification bar in iOS 5 has no quick launch buttons for bluetooth, WiFi, etc even in iOS5 !!
  8. Font and screen sizes – due to the limited screen size, even tasks such as facebooking, or emailing on an iPhone is not possible for a long duration. After prolonged use of the iPhone 3GS i have already increased the font size in order to prevent permanent damage to my eyes. Kids playing games on a small screen are only inviting a disaster as far as their visual abilities are concerned. On the outset it does not look like a big issue to many, but as a user of iPhone over a year, I cannot underline the importance of doing certain things on a bigger screen device. Atleast 7 inches of screen size, and most preferably a 10″ screen. This is the most ideal for heavy multitasking even if its just gaming or browsing or reading. This is perhaps where the kindle screen is a better alternative with e-ink technology compared to a retina display which is dazzling rather than practical to the already strained eye.

So if the Apple iPhone launch was all about brickbats, are there no boquets then? Your guess is as good as mine. Apple is a company which stresses on innovation. And when the give a feature they will implement it in a way incomparable to other mobile manufacturers. The TOP 7 reasons why you MUST go for an iPhone would be:

  2. Siri voice recognition – Here is an app which recognizes what you need and contextually remembers and answers all your related questions. Going all the way upto taking the stress out of you to do mundane tasks such as sending messages, shuffling music, etc. But the big question here is whether it will understand Indian English accent? That is yet to be proven and only time will tell.
  3. iTunes match - it is not clear how well this service will function yet. This seems to be a nice feature, but not compelling enough for an iphone buyer in India even if he is a music addict.
  4. the A5 chip – Apple’s processors are always a judicious choice and if you have seen the way an iPad 2 behavious with respect to screen renderings for graphical applications or games, then its not hard to imagine how blazing fast the iPhone 4S would be in the same aspects.
  5. Airplay mirroring - agree that this is a seamless feature, but it also requires equipment on the other end to support this kind of handover of content like a TV taking over from iPhone or gaming on the TV from an iPhone. We are still talking about a good six months before someone makes this possible. For those devices that already have airplay enabled, they will profit from this feature immediately
  6. Battery life - For those who own current generation apple devices they will already know the state of their battery prowess. Start with 100% at morning coffee, and you are < 10% before an evening coffee, leave alone dinner. Apple seems to have understood this and have high claims on battery life. This simply means the new iPhone would very well extend into day two of battery being in good shape kicking out those silly Mophie and other juice products into the bin sooner than later.
  7. Lifestyle device category - I cannot stress on this aspect any further than I always have. Apple makes lifestyle products. One that suits all age groups. So if I can do something on my iPhone, my kid can find something else worth doing for his age, and my aged parents can marvel and photo album swipes for their age and understanding. This is where Apple really shines and one device can keep all ages happy.
  8. App store - Apple we know pioneered the concept of app store and today they have anywhere more than 1,50,000 apps. This pretty much means you have an app that will help you brush your teeth and an app that will potty train your kids and an app which will monitor vital health signs of a sick aged person at your house if necessary. Extending the app store to iMac, iPad and the iPhone apple has ensured that they are on top of the money minting pie for a long time to come. Anybody else who makes mobile devices now has to have a store even it means aping apple and even if it means they have only two apps – facebook and twitter. For me honestly about ten apps should suffice. But it is really the needs and wants of 5% of the worldwide mobile phone market who own this phone that really matters. And the apple app store is pretty much geared to cater to this growing need in style.

So here were my 7 top reasons you should and should not go for the iPhone, now the call is yours. Tell me if you will or wont go for the iPhone 4S by answering the poll below!

Asus O!Play Air (HDR3) review

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A friend of mine happened to recommend the ASUS O!Play Air media player to me and since the cost factor was tempting, I decided to buy it for myself. The need was to have the player play my media files over the wireless connection from an attached 2TB western digital hard drive and occassionally stream content from the internet – either videos or internet radio channels to be precise.

So did the Asus O!Play satisfy me? Read on! I ll make this review easier to comprehend by dividing it into crisp sections so you can read what interests you more about it.

Package & Cost


The O!Play Air is the third in the series of players Asus has released recently. The package itself is a compact one with the player, a HDMI cable, installation CDs for PC utilities and a rather chunky remote control. The power adaptor also had different country pin compatilibity. A manual accompanied the box and that’s pretty much it. One has to also at this point note that Asus is primariliy a hardware oriented company from Taiwan which has since spread its reach to other geographies. My expectation hence out of the software for this player was not great. The cost of the package was Malaysian ringgit 400, which works out to Rs.6000 INR. Not bad at all for what it provides. Competing media players which provide wireless capabilities are priced 1.5 times more than this box which makes this one an attractive proposition.

Setting up the box & connections

Setting up the box was rather straightforward, with just connecting up the inputs (RCA cable in my case), installing batteries for remote (which it came with by the way) and powering it on. Under system settings one can set the box to either work over LAN, wireless or even PPPoE. LAN was simple to configure to use DHCP IP addressing and the box could acquire an IP dynamically in a pretty straightforward manner. Wireless configuration was not exactly pleasant to set up though one only had to choose the access points nearby and hook onto one of them either on open system or a shared WEP key basis. If this were to have been done manually one has to use the rather uneasy remote to click on an alphabetic keyboard just with arrow and OK keys which made configuration cumbersome.

User interface and Navigation

I already mentioned that ASUS is primarily a hardware oriented company. Its no surprise then that one can expect only a sparse user interface on their products unless they are high end ones. In this context the primary menu is just a circular carousel menu cycling between online media, music, photos, files, and setup. Go into any of these and you are greeted with a simple list based navigation menu. Navigation itself is fast enough, but the remote control plays spoilsport in giving you the best experience. The IR receiver is not exactly accurate to handle remote control inputs.

Quality of audio/video

This is where the Asus is strong. It does what it states on the box. Plays all formats without a fuss. By default the thumbnail option is set to playing video even while control is on the list. This can be disabled however. Asus has been stupid enough to have this option as it keeps playing the same video endlessly with full volume even within the PIP window. Asus also handles media which is on USB stick, or via an eSATA connection. It also sports SD/CF and MMC slots. At the rear it has an ethernet port, HDMI output for digital TVs, RCA outputs for analog TVs and a power adaptor socket. Simple in design and very functional is the way one can put the characteristics of this box.

P 500

 

Internet content

This is an area which is oft disregarded by small time players, or implemented very badly with respect to funtionality. Asus has not skimped on this and provides a lot of internet TV and radio channels, besides flickr and other internet portal support. Youtube however is not supported which is a shame. You can add your favorite channels any time you want from this list for easy accessbility and a good internet connection will mean you can access your likes fast enough.

Software updates and support

Asus releases software updates which can conveniently be copied to a USB key, and loaded onto the box with minimal fuss. The online forums are not exactly exciting so expect delays in implementing your suggestions. Support forums are also minimalistic but they do have useful suggestions to get you out of problems you face with the box.

Remote control and other quirks

These are better bulleted as under

  • Remote control sucks big time as the IR sensitivity is too low
  • There is no alphabetic keypad when compared to boxes like Boxee Box, which makes entering alphabetic information an irritating affair
  • Box does not remember wireless network credentials if switched off, which is pretty shameful for a product like this making users enter this information again and again. This happens if one of either the box or the router is switched off.
  • Logging onto network hard disks is cumbersome as it asks for network login credentials each time which sucks.
  • Though box does not hang, some menu items appear disabled without rhyme or reason and Asus has not bothered to spend time on fixing these issues.
  • The carousel menu isn’t the most exciting on this product. Asus could have outsourced UI to a different company if they did not have the skills.
  • The user interface assets or artifacts like screens, fonts could have been designed in a much better way consider the TVs they show up on
  • When a user presses a key to go to a different menu, Asus does not give preference to that key press, instead it keeps doing what it was already doing. This is a delay for the user who will not appreciate this much

Verdict

So long as Asus provides some quality fixes for the user interface behaviour, this box is good. If not its best to stay away from buying this box, considering the quirks mentioned above, even if it comes cheap!

 

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Bsnl 3g activation process – perfect example of confusion and waste of time

Does Microsoft finally agree Google’s search is better than theirs? You see for yourself

Today I had the chance to install the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 beta, which claims to be better than (of course!) version 7. While I was installing it, I could not help noticing this dialog box

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Under the express settings, I noticed that they are suggesting you to set the search provider to Google. Now MS being the company they are, wont do this inadvertently. So have they now officially agreed to the growing reality that there is no one to beat Google with their searching techniques? Your guess is as good as mine! :)

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Tata Sky versus DishTV – whats in it for you? (pictorial in depth review of the service providers)

I had been observing the DishTV service ever since my father in law installed it at his house a year back. However I did not have a chance to check on Tata-Sky service until now – that is until I myself was a victim of the satellite broadcasting hooliganism if I may use that word freely here. I am putting together my experiences on both of these services, before Airtel (Bharti) and Reliance IPTV launch their services in Bengaluru.

I kind of like writing informally, but I ll try to be as formal as possible with the comparions of course with pictures to aid you understand better.

Customer service

I made a call to DishTV and I received the required answers almost immediately. They had both IVR options as well as direct customer rep talking to me, which made me feel good. At that time I did not intend to go for their connection, but nevertheless, someone from either Bangalore or Delhi always called me regularly to see if I was still interested in opting for their service. Finally I got it installed for my father in law under the freedom offer where for a given set of channels, other than box cost, he need not have paid anything anytime. With respect to retaining customers, Dish TV is making all efforts and I would give them 8/10 for their dedication in this respect.

Coming to Tata Sky, I totally made two calls for installation. While the first call was answered in about 3-5 minutes time, the second one had me waiting for almost 15 minutes before someone on the other end decided to pick up the call. Having said that, naturally as a customer I got really annoyed and made clear my feelings to them as well. My box arrived on May 30, and an installation was scheduled for June 3. Then I get a call on June 1 and the voice on the other side tells me (not asks me) – “We are reaching your house in 30 minutes, and you have to be there for installation of the box!” :???: I mean what the hell ? I am not at home, and you just say you are coming by? Is this how you schedule installations? – I didn’t want to buy that argument and asked them to come on June 3 itself. Now this is when I casually made the second call on June 3 to find out if they are coming by. I have no answers until 15 minutes. To add to this misery a recorded voice on the other end goes on saying how I can SMS some code to them to order an ACTVE package, for my box that is not at all installed! The conversation went thus:

CustomerServiceRep(CSR): May I help you sir?

Me: Sure you can help me, how about changing that stupid SMS message details to some song or something more soothing so that I can wait in peace while you decide a right time to answer my call according to your astrological calculations.

CSR: Its a nice feedback sir, we will definitely consider it for your sake!

Me: And perhaps you can also have someone call me back if the estimated time for answering calls is going to be more than 2 minutes

CSR: Yes sir, good feedback again.

Me: Nowhere have I had a wait of more than two minutes for a rep to talk to me. Is this how you define customer service?

CSR: Sir, you are lucky, that I could get to you in fifteen minutes atleast. Earlier it used to take half an hour for such calls you see!

Me: I work with Tata and Sky, so are you trying to tell another insider like yourself the real story? Then why will people like DishTV not overtake us in competition?

CSR: Sir we dont consider Dish to be a competition at all. We are afraid only of Reliance, not even Airtel sir.

Finally the CSR hangs up thanking me for my feedback and promising installation on June 3 itself. At about installation time, 6pm, I get another call saying since its rainy and since the guy’s vehicle is not ok, he cant do the installation. I shout at him and ask him to finish it the next day and the next day they promptly complete the installation. I give Tata Sky 5/10 for their customer service. In one word, its pathetic and they have a lot of catching up to do.

Installation nitty gritties

The installation personnel wear proper uniform, and come with the complete set of necessary tools required to complete installation. Both providers bring the dish antenna, along with LNB and the wires required. They also carry power drills and enough clamps to secure wiring properly. While the DishTV antenna is oval and large in size, the Tata sky antenna is smaller and more circular in shape. The LNB however is similar.

Tata Sky antenna and LNB

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DishTV antenna and LNB

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While the DishTV antenna is able to be clamped only on top of walls, the TataSky antenna can virtually be clamped anywhere due to flexible moving clamps. Irrespective of terrain this antenna thus can be fit in most places which is a breeze. Also the entire wiring for DishTv is NEVER clamped anywhere, and it looks very clumsy, whereas the TataSky wiring is fully clamped securely to the wall making it more neater in terms of installation.

Tata Sky wiring (first) and DishTV wiring (second)

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For installation, I would give DishTV 6/10 where as Tata scores higher at 8/10.

Set Top Box and Remote Control

I also did a comparison of both set top boxes (DTV and TS – TataSky). While the DTV box is called Zenega and is from a taiwanese company called Handan BroadInfocom Co., Ltd, the TS set top box is from Thomson Electronics, a french company which is the world leader in set top boxes at the moment. The Zenega box has RF in/out, a serial port (intended for interactive communication later on?) and also aux in and tv out along with CVBS out to output to TV. The Thomson box on the other hand misses out on Aux IN and serial port and only has basic RF in/out with CVBS. These are at the rear of the box. On the front side though I liked the TS box better since it has a concealed smart card slot which makes it more durable and out of reach of people who dont know whats in it. Also the LEDs for on/off and alerts are neatly arranged along with front side switches for other operations. The Zenega box on the other hand, has no smart card (atleast as far as what I could make it out to be) and has the front side buttons on the side stacked up vertically. Personally since I dont use these buttons much, its of less relevance to me where they are placed honestly! On box design, DishTV and Tata both score in their own ways, but total about 6.5 to 7 /10 if not more!

Tata Sky box:

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DishTV box:

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Coming to the remote controls – this area is of extreme interest to me for a few reasons. I firmly believe that a remote must be user friendly, intuitive and most of all extremely simple and accurate to use. So I would naturally expect large keys to fit my fingers and a nice holding position for the remote itself. While the DishTV remote is too puny and rather obscure with most options too small to read for people with glasses, the Tata remote on the other hand is nice to hold, chunky, fleshy and intuitive. There are blue colored keys for important things and the others are black making it easy to use. However, Tata has chosen to name the buttons in a funny way such as having Organizer, Home, buttons as opposed to EPG or Menu buttons found on normal remotes. One thing I think a company must never do is to try and introduce new formats for something accepted and being used in the industry. One such gadget is the remote. Tata, please dont mess around with the names on the remote, they really irritate users at times. I am a set top box veteran and it pains to see such remote control labels which none can understand!

Tata Sky remote:

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DishTV remote:

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For design, I would give the Tata remote 8/10 and the DishTV remote only 6/10.

EPG (Electronic programme guide), menu and other screens and their usage

Having fairly large amount of expertise in this area, I found the Tata menu system a much better overall menu system to work with rather than the skimpy DishTV menu system. The EPG for instance on the Tata boxes is quite comprehensive and is in matrix format showing me multiple channels and multiple time lines. The EPG on the DishTV box however, shows me only one channel’s information at a time. Also the navigation button design is really horrible with respect to looks on this system. Tata on the other hand uses a highlight system which is more pleasant to use. This clearly shows DishTV has not been investing time and money to make that user experience well worth it yet. Tata with NDS’ software have ensured that nothing is left unturned to satisfy the user to the fullest level possible.

You can see some of the screens yourself and decide. While DishTV have a small PiP in place in the menu, Tata have chosen to cautiously ignore using it as we internally know that such features are prone to problems for the developers causing boxes to crash every now and then. The layout of the menu is much more organized in Tata Sky with useful information that we can always refer back to. There are help screens, with a dedicated help button on the remote and also account status screens, alerts, favourites and the list goes on and on. Look for yourself to see which is best! I would give 9/10 to Tata on their User experience and 6/10 to DishTV in this aspect.

Tata Sky screens:

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DishTV screens:

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Extras (Games, Quizzes, Stories and everything else under the sun)

So getting TV programs is no big deal. The set top box companies have to think that extra bit to make TV more interactive for children and adults alike. So what do they do? DishTV has an array of quiz programs and games which people can play. They are not exactly the most intuitive ones, but nevertheless you can kill some time with them. Tata on the other hand has ACTVE brand of games, story telling, news channels, religious darshans all bundled into the boquet of channels. While I personally did not like any of these much as they were pretty kiddish, I feel that they would still be of some use to children.

One has to remember that loading of these games or quizzes takes horrible amount of time, sometimes more than 2 minutes which is extremely annoying to any user even if he is a child. I personally feel set top box software development guys must stop including such time consuming applications on their boxes and stick to technology in terms of connectivity or video/audio format support etc. You cant please all at the cost of making the box slow. And thats not the only thing – non technical people like my mother and wife were easily able to hang the software on the Tata box without even pressing too many buttons. The software buckled just on entering and trying to play a game. Shame on you guys. Why did you throw caution during testing to the wind? Is it because we are Indians and would tolerate anything and everything? Wrong! Take notice before time runs out. Give us quality software at the least! If I were the testing coordinator releasing this box to customers, I would have failed the tests even before the box reached the store shelves.

Tata Sky ACTVE menu option screen (ACTVE stories)

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Thankfully the DishTV software is more stable and does not crash often. I would give 6/10 to Tata for their ACTVE nonsense and about 7/10 for DishTV for their extras.

Packages, costs, boquets and brickbats

While DishTV is almost making their box cost zero (meaning offering the box to readers like you FREE of cost), Tata prefers to keep the cost at about 2,400 including installation charges of Rs.1000. Even servicing my Maruti Swift Car does not cost Rs.1000 and I wonder what is the great deal and brouhaha about charging users Rs.1000 under the guise of installation charge. Instead why not make DIY (Do it yourself) kits for users? So they may also learn and save money at the same time?

However one point to note is that the DishTV free box scheme still means you pay atleast 2,499 which is compensated by 3 months free subscription (which otherwise amounts to 300 * 3 = 900) + free movies worth 2,490. Now if I am neither a movie buff nor the movies available to view are not the latest it still means I am paying 1,599 towards the box alone which essentially means the box is not free.

For me a free box is something where I start paying monthly subscription alone with no installation charges, box charges or free movies or any other freebies. Consumers open your eyes and understand this simple fact. The profit margins are eroding for set top box companies, but still they come up with ingenious means of recovering the box costs! So remember – THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE LUNCH ANYWHERE IN INDIA!

Tata on the other hand has more reasonable schemes such as discounts for you if you refer friends and family members, like giving you monthly offs on the charges. Also upon bulk purchase for 12 months you get 2 more months free. The showcase movies package which promises movies worth Rs.4500 free is a raw deal just because the movies in showcase are not the ones you would love to watch always!

Tata Sky old pricing:

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Tata-Sky new pricing:

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Dish TV pricing for south and non south categories:

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Additional boxes in one home for each extra TV and their costs

The Bane of today’s technology is that one box can work only with one TV even in 2008 ! Welcome to India! This country has still a long way to go by the time affordable multi tuner based server-client architectured set top boxes make it into homes (home gateway solutions). So lets review each providers scheme of things then for additional connections.

Tata Sky’s policies are simple here. Each additional box would cost Rs.1,499 with an installation charge of Rs.500 as opposed to Rs.1000, and the same package would cost Rs.125 more on each of the boxes at home. So this means the box cost remains the same irrespective of how many boxes you buy. So if I own 2-3 TVs realistically speaking, then I end up paying Rs.4,500 for the boxes alone which is a horrendous cost on me for a gadget that will depreciate in future sooner than later.

DishTV has a pricing of Rs.2,499 for each room with 3 months subscription discount. As stated earlier even if we subtract this amount of Rs.900 the remaining comes to Rs.1,599 for each extra box. Add a recommended installation fee of Rs.200 and what do you have? Rs.1,800 for each extra box. As compared to Tata, this is about Rs.200 lesser. But at what cost? You dont get the free movies for Rs.2,499 that you spend, and your subscription amount for second and subsequent connections remains as much as your first one: this means if I am paying Rs.300 for say Dish Maxi, for one connection, I end up paying Rs.900 for three connections.

Dish TV extra room equipment pricing:

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Obviously its a no brainer that Tata sky is cheaper here. Dont get misled by free movies. You can always watch a paid movie at a theater such as PVR for a better experience! For this section I give Tata Sky an 8/10 and Dish TV 6/10.

Anomalies in transmission

While I have not seen much of DishTV lawsuits, arguments and counter arguments, Tata Sky seems to have gotten into some trouble with the sports channels, inviting their wrath by making customers pay for what has to have been free. After a bit of media bashing Tata seems to have calmed down and gotten back onto track to offer these sports channels once more.

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Meanwhile DishTV has taken the opportunity to woo more customers when Tata was busy flouting broadcasting rules!

ssb

After all this only means broadcaster is king. No one likes to lose his money. And no one likes double crossing as well! Shame on you Tata Sky for this kind of gimmick. This was absolutely unnecessary. You can always earn this money in other ways – how about manufacturing more versions of indica until 2020 ? and testing it on the guinea pigs ?

Payment mechanisms

Both the providers offer SMS based and internet based payment mechanisms which make life easy for customers. Even more easier is the remote control based payment and subscription which is the defacto standard in the industry today. In this respect both score 9/10.

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So then friends, here ends the (hi)story of both the service providers. Now you are better informed to make good decisions! Safeguard your interests, think long term investment and look at what you need more proactively. If you like this article, share it with your friends so that they too benefit from it.

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