Team-BHP - Direct-To-Home television in India. Update DTH UHD (4K) now available

Hi!
in india the companies routinely indulge in cheating public as the laws are lax here. i hope everyone remembers when the tv guys used to complain about cable wallah stating that they are hiding the actual subscription numbers and hence they are losing money and they went on increasing the pay channel rates. now with DTH there is no issue of under subscription. then why the TV guys are charging you more than cable they charge the cable guy? actually they should be charging you the same amount they are charging the neighbourhood cable wallah? why charge a premium for DTH subscribers. in DTH a household can not have two connections where is it is possible with cable without cable guy even knowing it. so virtually the subscription no's are accurate. why premium
one more question when a channel is paid channel why advertisements? in western countries paid channels are not allowed to have ads or the no of ads are restricted. in contrast in India paid channels are the ones with max ads.
further the same ZEE and STAR which give their entire package to cable guy are splitting it for DTH consumers. so u end up paying more to watch the same set of channels.
this i feel is cheating

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkg (Post 352976)

i think what you mean is CAS and not DTH, which is also CAS. In CAS, which includes cable as well as DTH, the pay channels are scrambled at the MSO (Multi System Operator). If one wants to receive pay channels, one has to buy the decoder (commonly called as Set Top Box or STB) & subscribe to that particular channel. In DTH, the MSO scrambles all the channels & uplinks to the satellite & you are provided with a STB & a dish which receives the signals from the satellite & these signals are decoded by the STB. either way it is an addressable system & only the channels you pay for can be decoded by your STB. The rates for these channels are almost the same on both these operators. DTH is slightly more expensive purely because of the sophistication involved. 2nd connection is possible even in DTH at a concessional rate, but cannot be done illegally as is the case with cable also.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkg (Post 352976)

one more question when a channel is paid channel why advertisements? in western countries paid channels are not allowed to have ads or the no of ads are restricted. in contrast in India paid channels are the ones with max ads.
this i feel is cheating

i absolutely agree with that.agree:. what is the point in charging the customer again when they are fleecing us by bringing in all those commercials. When star movies was introduced as a pay channel, there were no ads, after a while, they started splitting the movie with one break for commercials & now, there are more commercials than content. very very frustrating indeed. the same people do not do this in other countries, say singapore. :Frustrati

[quote=esteem_lover;353021]i think what you mean is CAS and not DTH, which is also CAS. In CAS, which includes cable as well as DTH, the pay channels are scrambled at the MSO (Multi System Operator). If one wants to receive pay channels, one has to buy the decoder (commonly called as Set Top Box or STB) & subscribe to that particular channel. In DTH, the MSO scrambles all the channels & uplinks to the satellite & you are provided with a STB & a dish which receives the signals from the satellite & these signals are decoded by the STB. either way it is an addressable system & only the channels you pay for can be decoded by your STB. The rates for these channels are almost the same on both these operators. DTH is slightly more expensive purely because of the sophistication involved. 2nd connection is possible even in DTH at a concessional rate, but cannot be done illegally as is the case with cable also.

what i mean is monthly subscription fee . at present u pay around 200 per month for getting almost all the star, zee, sony bouquet. for the same u have pay around 350 in DTH or CAS. this what i feel is cheating especially if one considers that there is no chance under subscription here which is the main grouse of tv companies against local cable guy. iam not at all talking about basic cost ( STB cost etc) iam only talking about monthly fees. they should have been less than local cable guy or at least equal, but not more

we just got another connection of tata sky. the people who came to install it didnt want to do any wiring. they said you have to get the casing and capping done on your own. infact they didnt even want to use the 'good quality wire' they had brought. they said theyll use the existing wire. is this what they do to everyone??

because earlier when we got our first connection of tata sky last august the installers came wearing the tata sky uniform.. did all the wiring properly. and cleaned up after they were done.

@rkg... the 100/200 per month that the cablewalla was charging was a ballpark figure before CAS & he was suppressing the number of connections he had. After the introduction of CAS, he will charge you a basic price for the free channels & then charge you according to the package you choose.[/quote]

dear esteem lover
that is exactly my point. do you think the local cable guy is under reporting the no of subscribers by double? ( bec to get the same no of channels on DTH u have to pay double). if the TV companies are really interested in eliminating local cable guy who is under reporting subscribers they should price it similar to cable guy. then all or at least majority will shift to DTH and they get more revenue.
further MSO charge the local cable guy some thing around RS 120 pm. cable guy charges end users Rs200/ this i know form MSO. we approached MSO to get bulk connections for our residential campus ( 50 homes) then they asked us Rs 180/ when local cable guy is asking 150/ they told us they giving the feed to cable guy at rs 90/. if see all this DTH asking 350 for same channels is exorbitant( esp if one considers under reporting is not all possible) they are asking 4 times what they getting from local cable guy
further as per TRAI order they should not bunch the channels.even if they bunch the total discount for bunch should not exceed 10%. are they giving you the freedom of choosing individual channels? Big NO. they are offering four or five groups to choose.not channels wise. to get all the popular channels u have to subscribe all junk and new channels which these DTH operators are brining in.
actually DTH offers the TV companies the opportunity to get rid of corrupt of dishonest local cable guy. but they are not interested. they have made DTH a premium service and fleecing unsuspecting customers. infact zee did not offer to provide dish tv in cities at first saying it is only for remote areas,
one of the reasons being most of the TV companies are also the MSO's/ they want both. zee owns cit cable. star- hathway along with raheja's. incable by hinduja's, sumangali MSO in TN by sun TV.
in fact after CAS most of the pay channels became free in TN

lets say your local cable chap is having 1000 connections. he will misdeclare it as 100 to the MSO & pay 9000/- per month (assuming that he pays 90/- per point). Let us also assume that the MSO has 100 such operators in the city. The MSO will misdeclare this to the channel as 25 operators only & 100 points per operator. So thats 2500 points in all & pay for 2500 connections only. The reason that this is being done is to aviod all sorts of taxes & also aviod paying a huge sum to the channel, both of which will make them to charge you at least 300 per month which most of us will not agree to.