Top DTH Services in India: A Comparison of Price and Features

Gone are the days when the average Indian home relied on the cable operators to receive satellite TV channels. The era of Digital Television has almost completely taken over the cable operators and thrown them out of job almost completely. Most of the biggest telecom service providers of the country have jumped into the DTH market and reaped great rewards from the same. As of 2010, over 500 TV Satellite television channels are broadcast in India. This includes channels from the state-owned Doordarshan, News Corporation owned STAR TV, Sony owned Sony Entertainment Television, Sun Network and Zee TV. There are huge number of service providers in the country that are providing the DTH or the Direct to home service this line-up includes Airtel Digital TV, BIG TV owned by Reliance, DD Direct Plus, Dish TV, Sun Direct DTH, Tata Sky and Videocon. Dish TV was the first one to come up in Indian Market, others came only years later. Amongst the huge line up Airtel Digital TV, Reliance BIG and the Dish TV are the biggest players in the market occupying the biggest piece of the market share.

With so many offers and services being provided by these companies in order to stay ahead in competition an average Indian subscriber is left bambuzzeled as to which one amongst these is the best and really worth a buy for the average Indian family. So we thought of comparing the features and the services provided by the top players in the market so that you can decide for yourself as to which service to opt for and which one to not. We shall start with the brief discussion of the features and value for money of all the three networks followed up by the comparison table of the same.

1. Airtel Digital TV

It is no secret that the Bharti Airtel service is one of the biggest telecom companies in the Indian subcontinent. The company has also entered into the widely growing DTH market of India and has also almost conquered it fully. Airtel Digital TV is based on MPEG4 standard with DVB S2 technology and its HD ready which means that you can get a excellent quality of channels and have a great experience when compared to traditional tv channel service providers like Hathway. As far as the STB of the Airtel service is considered the piece of technology is a beast most of the set top boxes do not work when the weather is bad that is it is raining or densely cloudy but the Airtel service is almost free from all such problems and works almost fine in almost any sort of situation outside. The service provider has also included a lot of value added services to the DTH which include watching onscreen account details, booking cinema tickets, browsing travel holiday packages, tele-shopping, getting city based information guides and also the stock updates using widgets. First of its kind in the digital TV is its universal remote control, which can be used simultaneously for your TV and for your set-top box offering enhanced viewer convenience. It can be programmed to learn some of your TV’s critical functions like volume control, muting, etc. and you can switch on/off the TV as well as the set top box with the same remote.

2. Dish TV

Dish TV provides direct feed from the satellite which certainly has its own benefits, crystal clear picture and stereophonic sound add to the viewing experience. One can select from various packages including regional channels and can also watch movies on demand by paying a nominal amount ranging from 10 INR TO 25 INR. Since the Dish TV is not a telecom service provider and is run by the television channel called the Zee network it does not provide all the value added services that come along with the Airtel and Reliance networks. However on demand movies and the higher number of digital channels and online learning and games are provided in abundance. Free gaming portal, astrology service, sports channel with custom features, multi-lingual voiceovers and statistics are some of its worth noticing features. the fact that this is the oldest and the biggest of the DTH service has always worked up in its favor

3. Reliance BIG TV

Reliance is one of the most competitive brands I the whole of India and has spread its reach over all of the areas in the Indian industry. The Reliance BIG TV is also becoming slowly popular in the metros of India, the reason behind that being the reasonable cost and the excellent features. The first and foremost point, which everyone would have no second opinion is the quality of the picture we receive in BIG, it is awesome via the component out port (which was not provided by any DTH operator until then) and almost equal to DVD quality without any pixilation problem. Reliance BIG TV’s sound quality is good and if you want to get the experience of Dolby, You should connect the left, right channels of STB to a Home theater system. Well, there is always an issue on every DTH whether it is affected during rains and Reliance BIG TV was nothing different- you may lose your signals for up to 5 minutes. But based on user reviews, Reliance BIG TV’s performance during raining is fairly good.

Besides these the Tata Sky and the Tata Sky Plus have also made moves up in the DTH service providers ratings with its unique features and some excellent plans. Here is a comparison table that shows the comparison of the major players in the DTH service providing.