Dish TV in India Including DD Direct

What is DD DIRECT+ ?

Doordarshan, the national broadcaster in India, at present has a network of more than 1400 transmitters spread throughout the country and its signals are available to about 90 %( DD1) and 43% (DD-News) population of country. The prime duty of any national public service broadcaster is to make the programmes of national importance available to all its people and nationals. It was estimated that the coverage of remaining 10 % population with terrestrial (single channel) broadcast would cost enormously. Besides that, setting up of terrestrial transmitters in the uncovered areas would have taken a number of years (10 to 15 years). Also, operation of terrestrial transmission would have required a huge manpower (a few thousand persons).

With the fast developments taking place in Satellite Broadcasting, it is but natural that Doordarshan has also come up with an alternative to get the required reach with an alternate technology option "Ku-band broadcasting" which is envisaged for the coverage of remaining population. This is a much cheaper and economical option as compared to the coverage through Terrestrial transmitters.

Ku-band transmission will provide coverage in all uncovered areas including remote, border, tribal, hilly and inaccessible areas in one go within a short time. With this coverage, the national broadcaster proposes to meet its obligation of covering the whole nation and its people not only with national channels, but also make available popular Doordarshan and some other free-to-air channels on its platform. In order to meet its obligations, it has also been decided that 10,000 receive systems (Dish and Set Top Box) would be provided free of cost at public institutions like Anganwadis, Schools, Public Health Centres, Panchayats, Youth Clubs, Cooperative Societies etc. in the uncovered areas.

It may be pertinent to mention here that incidentally Doordarshan would be starting DTH service with Ku band broadcasting as not only uncovered areas are covered with its commencement, but also the whole country gets multi-channel service in one stroke. The signal will be available at each home directly without the use of any cable etc. and one will be able to receive the programmes with the help of a small receive segment.

This platform has been named as DD DIRECT+.

The DD DIRECT+ envisages telecast of 30 free-to-air channels (containing both Doordarshan and private channels) initially and is likely to include more channels later on. Satellite Earth Station for uplink of signals has been setup at Delhi. Test transmission has already commenced and the commissioning of the service would take place shortly. NSS 6 is the high power Ku-band satellite hosting the DD DTH services. The free distribution of the receive systems is also being expeditiously done.

Dish TV In India

Dish TV is India's first direct to home entertainment service that has digitalized Indian entertainment to bring to your home the best in television viewing through the latest in digital technology. It not only broadcasts high quality programs straight from the satellite to your home, but also gives you absolute and complete control of what you watch and what you pay for. It is almost like having your own satellite up in the sky.

With DISH TV you can unleash the true potential of your high-end television set and complete your TV viewing experience with true DVD quality . If you are a connoisseur of good sound then make sure you experience true stereophonic sound effects, which only DISHTV can bring to your home.

DishTV added Sony package to their services around mid of 2006 and also increase their subscription price too. That really improved DishTV customer numbers and services too. On 14 July 2006, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal gave a favorable judgment for Dish TV by ordering STAR TV to allow Dish to broadcast all the channels in its boutique at 50% cost within 15 days of the decision. After that Dish TV start test signals for the star bouquet and ended them of midnight of 18 Aug and start them to broadcast as pay channels in Dish TV services.

After launch of TATA Sky the services in India Dish TV also begin to expand its value added services like Active channels, E.P.G. (Electronic Program Guide) and for this Dish TV in these days is going through S.T.B. software upgrade which will change their menu options and start and support new services. The upgrade is currently provided to customer as free of cost and shall finish till the end of the sep. 2006. Dish TV currently have more than 165 T.V. channels and 35 audio channels after adding Sony and star bouquet.

Relying on signals transmitted from a satellite to a receiving dish and from there to a set-top signal-decoding box, rather than through cables, digital TV can transmit anywhere, delivering more channels and better picture quality.

"Digital TV is going to change the dynamics of the Indian TV marketplace," says Vivek Couto of Media Partners Asia, a consultancy in Hong Kong, who sees a looming commercial battle between digital and cable companies.

Mr. Couto expects India to have 12 million paying subscribers to digital TV by 2015 -- a huge jump from just 400,000 currently -- generating 45 billion rupees, or about $1 billion, in annual revenue. Cable connections are expected to exceed 70 million by then, he says.

There is pent-up demand for such service. India is the world's third-largest television market with 108 million TV-equipped households, a number that is growing by about nine million a year. But that still leaves half of all Indian households without a television set. Moreover, many existing TVs are old 14-inch (35-centimeter) black-and-white models that can't receive some satellite channels via cable, even if cable operators were willing to hook up remote areas for new subscribers. ...continued

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