Tatasky HD Or Dish TV HD Or Reliance BIG TV HD Or Sun Direct HD Or Airtel HD?

[sanjay0864]

@ cho_las
Popularity in India, generally has nothing to do with quaklity of poroduct or service. It is usually the cheapest that succeed or those who lie and mislead. Your enthusiasm for Sun Direct HD is quite suspicious and beyond my comprehension.

 

[no1lives4ever]

I got the Dish Tru HD when it was the only one showing FIFA WC in HD. I would strongly advice against getting this. Here are a few negatives with the Dish HD Service that I can point out:

1. The STB does not have a proper HDMI implementation. Change the HDMI input on the TV from STB to something else, then change back and the display does not come up.

2. My STB has been acting up in less than 3 weeks since I have had it. It requires frequent restarts.

3. SD channels are resized to 16:9, i can change the aspect ratio from the tv, but it is a major PITA to do so.

4. STB does not remember the last channel after a soft power off!

5. The remote that came with the Zenega STB is quite bad when compared to the one I got with my Tata Sky.

6. The quality of the SD channels are worse than what I get on Tata Sky via a composite cable to my TV. When I use my AV receiver's upscaler, the component output from the TS box is as good as the upscaled HD channlels on Dish HD service.

The only real HD channels on the Dish HD service are ESPN HD (for FIFA), Star Sports HD (for Wimbledon), Discovery HD & Nat Geo HD.

The sports channels are only available during a match. Discovery and Nat Geo HD have good quality programming, but they repeat so often that you will catch a repeat if you watch any of those channels for a few hours.

I got my Dish HD STB to watch the world cup, and it is good only for watching that and wimbledon. Other than that the Discovery & Nat Geo HD channels are good, but I have stopped watching them after seeing mostly the same set of programs

I am not going to renew my Dish Subscription after the 2 month free period.

Personally, I will wait for Tata Sky HD DVR and till that comes thru, I would continue using my still active TS SD STB.

-- no1lives4ever

 

[sanjay0864]

I would strongly advice against getting this. Here are a few negatives with the Dish HD Service that I can point out:

You forgot to mention the real biggie, Dish TruHD has only 'MONO' audio on all channels including HD channels. Their entire system is not even equiped for stereo it seems, let alone DD 5.1 audio. In fact they have now quitely stopped claiming 5.1 sound because of complaints form people such as myself.

 

[adder]

BTW a dth cant hv 5.8 million subs(& the highest growth rate) by just being popular in one state thts TN.

Well in TN every tom,dick and harry have tvs,even in huts you will find tvs thanks to the governements free tvs.In villages or people who stay in the agricultural fields where cable tv isn't there they put DTH like sun.
Since in my moms native village many have installed SUN DTH.

 

[kapvin]

airtel??how come its a option at all?
only 1 HD slot for both FIFA & wiblendon feeds,can show only one if timings overlap,,price for this single HD channel is 99 rs whn allr giving them for free.
For North customers its choice between Dish & TS & for south is SUn allthe way.

quality boils down to the number of bits you can transmit per video stream per second (assuming encoder quality is equal)

Since this is a future looking investment, there is one additional thing that one should perhaps consider (and the info is not fully in the public domain) - the number of transponders the DTH provider has -- HD channels eat bandwidth and the provider with the max transponders would probably be in the best position to provide the max HD content. (AFAIK -- Tata sky has the max transponders - but you'd want to verify this) - (the above issue seems to be bandwidth related)

the other thing is somewhat counter intuitive - the guys transmitting in mpeg2 (TS, Dish) are in the (theoritically) best position to offer HD channels. why? again -bandwidth - bitrates go like this HD (AVC) > Mpeg2 > Mpeg4 - so offering the whole gamut of channels in mpeg2 would mean they have a larger bandwidth than the mpeg4 players. Of course to tap this they'd need to convert Sd channels to mpeg4 from mpeg2 and there's that little problem of millions of mpeg2 only STBs that TS and Dish have.. who said life is easy?


cheers

 

[ergoin]

AIRTEL HD..should be a big NO...many customers including me have bought the HD service and a week , ten days later it is yet to be activated.
BASICALLY AIRTEL IS DEFRAUDING THE PUBLIC by claiming HD channel content, where its doubtful they have it....

The web is full of people with similar HD inactive complaints from AIRTEL digital customers.

 

[sanjay0864]

the guys transmitting in mpeg2 (TS, Dish) are in the (theoritically) best position to offer HD channels. why? again -bandwidth - bitrates go like this HD (AVC) > Mpeg2 > Mpeg4 - so offering the whole gamut of channels in mpeg2 would mean they have a larger bandwidth than the mpeg4 players. Of course to tap this they'd need to convert Sd channels to mpeg4 from mpeg2 and there's that little problem of millions of mpeg2 only STBs that TS and Dish have.. who said life is easy?

I am a little confused here. Are you stating that MPEG2 is better tahn MPEG4 and or that MPEG2 uses less bandwith than MPEG4?

 

[kapvin]

I am a little confused here. Are you stating that MPEG2 is better tahn MPEG4 and or that MPEG2 uses less bandwith than MPEG4?

neither.

mpeg2 can be equal to mpeg4 or even AVC, but at much higher bit rates than comparable streams of other codecs.

so essentially to run an acceptable quality of programming AVC hd would require the max bandwidth(because of 4 x number of pixels to address, but with better compression); then mpeg2 (lower res, but more inefficient compression) and then mpeg4 (same res as mpeg2, but better compression)

if you read the quoted text carefully, you'll note that I talked of bitrates, nothing else, since the point I was making was about service provider bandwidth

hope that clarifies

 

[avink]

While booking my TS HD on phone yesterday the sales rep mentioned that they are going to launch 30 more HD channels soon. ..not sure how much I can trust him but he didn't say more channels or many channels but "30"

 

[sanjay0864]

neither.

hope that clarifies

Thanks for the clarification. It's just that the way you had phrased your sentences it was a little confusing, specially for someone who may not be very familiar with the technological terms.

 

[sanjay0864]

While booking my TS HD on phone yesterday the sales rep mentioned that they are going to launch 30 more HD channels soon. ..not sure how much I can trust him but he didn't say more channels or many channels but "30"

I would take that with a sizeable grain of salt. Salesman are the last persons one can trust to give you honest and correct information.

 

[dgtl887]

While booking my TS HD on phone yesterday the sales rep mentioned that they are going to launch 30 more HD channels soon. ..not sure how much I can trust him but he didn't say more channels or many channels but "30"

We'll be lucky if we get 10 full-time channels...in the next 12 months.

 

[navinmra]

Well the point is, regardless of who your HD service provider is, there's not a lot of HD content except for say ESPN or NGC or Discovery...
Untill your saas bahu and bakwaas programming is created in HD, you are not going to have a sizeable bouquet of HD content for the masses to distribute.
Untill then, I suppose its good to stay with your current SD service provider. I'm staying put with Hathway with the hope that some of the my favourite channels are less compressed than the others so it alleviates the pain of watching SD on an 80" screen!

 

[sanjay0864]

I am surprised that Hathaway has not started HD services, considering that their cost to od so is far less than the DTH operators.

 

[kapvin]

I am surprised that Hathaway has not started HD services, considering that their cost to od so is far less than the DTH operators.

+1 to that. at least they won't be bandwidth challenged!

 

[no1lives4ever]

You forgot to mention the real biggie, Dish TruHD has only 'MONO' audio on all channels including HD channels. Their entire system is not even equiped for stereo it seems, let alone DD 5.1 audio. In fact they have now quitely stopped claiming 5.1 sound because of complaints form people such as myself.

I can confirm that the Dish Tru HD does not give out 5.1 surround over HDMI. But I do not think it is Mono on the HD channels.

On the FIFA WC broadcasts, the sound is definitely stereo. Or at least to my ears it is stereo.

-- no1lives4ever

 

[sanjay0864]

But I do not think it is Mono on the HD channels.
On the FIFA WC broadcasts, the sound is definitely stereo. Or at least to my ears it is stereo.

There is a very simple way to confirm whether a signal is mono or stereo. If you have a pre/pro with Dolby Logic then simply feed the mono/stereo signal to the pre/pro. If the signal is mono then you will only have sound coming from the center channel, which will not be the case with a stereo signal.

 

[server3249]

the other thing is somewhat counter intuitive - the guys transmitting in mpeg2 (TS, Dish) are in the (theoritically) best position to offer HD channels. why? again -bandwidth - bitrates go like this HD (AVC) > Mpeg2 > Mpeg4 - so offering the whole gamut of channels in mpeg2 would mean they have a larger bandwidth than the mpeg4 players. Of course to tap this they'd need to convert Sd channels to mpeg4 from mpeg2 and there's that little problem of millions of mpeg2 only STBs that TS and Dish have.. who said life is easy?


cheers

Citation needed.. are you sure the SDTV channels are broadcasted in MPEG on tata sky? I seem to remember reading that they are MPEG4 as well, albeit at 4:3 and crap shoot bitrates. Considering H.264 has now been out for a long time, it wouldn't make sense for new operators like TS to adopt a standard that will cost them more.

Also someone should sue TS for claiming "DVD quality" with their crappy SD transmission- but wait.. we're in India and anyone can claim anything and get away with it here.

India seems to be adopting old technology and calling it new. 3G is planned when 4G is already rolled out in other countries. HD is planned when 3D TV is already out abroad. We get the left overs.

 

[kapvin]

Citation needed.. are you sure the SDTV channels are broadcasted in MPEG on tata sky? I seem to remember reading that they are MPEG4 as well, albeit at 4:3 and crap shoot bitrates. Considering H.264 has now been out for a long time, it wouldn't make sense for new operators like TS to adopt a standard that will cost them more.

Also someone should sue TS for claiming "DVD quality" with their crappy SD transmission- but wait.. we're in India and anyone can claim anything and get away with it here.

India seems to be adopting old technology and calling it new. 3G is planned when 4G is already rolled out in other countries. HD is planned when 3D TV is already out abroad. We get the left overs.

pukka that it is mpeg2. all the old boxes have mpeg2 capability only so they have to transmit in mpeg2 .. AFAIKthe new black STBss and tatasky+ stbs have mpeg4 capability in addition to mpeg2 capability

where did you read that ts is mpeg4?

 

[BLASTO]

Looks like Cho_las and his gazillion posts about SUN HD has been removed.
Rightly so! hyeah: