[dailydriver]

Originally Posted by fordday

Jumping on to TS.

I have a feeling that the actual migration that TRAI wanted to enforce was exactly this: from cable to DTH. Cut out the competitors one by one and then cut the remaining ones to size so that other altruistic service provider/s can swoop in and save harassed customers from the clutches of the exploiters.

After all, TRAI -Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has been there, done that! Haven't they?

On a saner note, I too was thinking of shifting to DTH if the cable operator started playing tricks. Thankfully, he has agreed to my demand of giving only the channels chosen by me even in the FTA pack. That has provided me the option of limiting my total selection to less than 100 channels.

[AltoLXI]

I was waiting for something of this sort to happen. I have asked the cable operator to indefinitely remove the connection. The cord has been cut - no more watching TV in house. Son has exams starting next month - so it adds to the excuse not to watch TV. I have stopped watching TV from past six months.

[PPS]

I have a Hathway connection through my local cable operator. Like since the past so many years, we've already paid this month's fee of Rs 200 in advance. There is blackout of most channels since 13th of this month, today when i enquired with my cable operator, i was told to immediately pay the amount as per the new TRAI norms & connection will be immediately restored by tomorrow. On me telling them what about the Rs 200 already paid,channels not being aired & whether the amount would be adjusted, they had no answer & disconnected the call! This is cheating. Repeated emails to TRAI don't seem to work and their phone is always busy.

Now I'm thinking of migrating to Airtel or Tata Sky , i do not know how they are. Do any BHPian's staying in the western suburbs of Mumbai have any recommendations? Only thing i know about Tata Sky is that it stops working when it rains.

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by PPS

I have a Hathway connection through my local cable operator. Like since the past so many years, we've already paid this month's fee of Rs 200 in advance. There is blackout of most channels since 13th of this month, today when i enquired with my cable operator, i was told to immediately pay the amount as per the new TRAI norms & connection will be immediately restored by tomorrow. On me telling them what about the Rs 200 already paid,channels not being aired & whether the amount would be adjusted, they had no answer & disconnected the call! This is cheating. Repeated emails to TRAI don't seem to work and their phone is always busy.

Now I'm thinking of migrating to Airtel or Tata Sky , i do not know how they are. Do any BHPian's staying in the western suburbs of Mumbai have any recommendations? Only thing i know about Tata Sky is that it stops working when it rains.

I too have a Hathway connection, and my "selection" turned out to be more expensive than the original monthly of Rs 300 for all channels. DTH has always been more expensive than Cable TV - a legacy from the old local analog days; now they've made sure everyone pays up!

Wasn't Videocon D2H supposed to be the best, at least before the takeover by DishTV (the worst)? I am shopping for a DTH provider too, and would be interested in knowing which one you pick and why.

[_chikku]

I'm dropping Hathway and buying Tatasky. There is a very easy method to select or manage packs. Go to channel selector in TRAI website and select all the required pay channels from the a.la.carte list. After the selection note the total price and press optimize button at the top right corner of the screen. This will show what are the channel bouquets you need to buy to view the pay channels. This optimisation will knock atleast INR 50 from your original price. Ofcourse you can select FTA channels from the same list. Then select the same package in DTH provider .

[WindRide]

Iam using hathway in bangalore. some free channels (like We TV, mathrubhumi news, etc) do not appear on their website for selection. Anyone knows how to activate such channels?

[Dry Ice]

After struggling with D2H for almost 1.5 months, I was finally able to select the channels I wanted on their website. I tried this time with the TV set on, and I guess it went through. I can now see all the channels I requested for.

Also they have tweaked their channel selector wherein only 25 DD channels are pre-selected now, compared to 100 earlier.

With the latest selection, my bill stands at 280 approx against 550 earlier. I have selected only about 30 odd channels + 25 DD ones.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by mvadg

Wasn't Videocon D2H supposed to be the best, at least before the takeover by DishTV (the worst)? I am shopping for a DTH provider too, and would be interested in knowing which one you pick and why.

Don't even think D2H It has the worst website of all.

Even I as I am typing this, see my other browser tab

[.sushilkumar]

So after resisting for 3 months, joined the circus. I am currently on dish TV.

Happily picked up 4-5 Bouquets of my choice and cost came to 370 odd rs compared to earlier monthly 520 rs expense. I was happy so far but the real jolt came when i was to see the final price of 610 rs for a month. Dig deeper and i found something Called NCF which is double for HD channels & 18 & GST. (Rs 20 for every block of 25 SD channels with 1 HD channel = 2 SD channels)

So It's difficult situation. If i pick up the whole Bouquet, i end up paying unnecessary NCF and if i pick single channel, i end up paying more than Bouquets itself. What's the experience of other on forum.

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by .sushilkumar

So after resisting for 3 months, joined the circus. I am currently on dish TV.

Happily picked up 4-5 Bouquets of my choice and cost came to 370 odd rs compared to earlier monthly 520 rs expense. I was happy so far but the real jolt came when i was to see the final price of 610 rs for a month. Dig deeper and i found something Called NCF which is double for HD channels & 18 & GST. (Rs 20 for every block of 25 SD channels with 1 HD channel = 2 SD channels)

So It's difficult situation. If i pick up the whole Bouquet, i end up paying unnecessary NCF and if i pick single channel, i end up paying more than Bouquets itself. What's the experience of other on forum.

The experience is same for everyone - unless one is among the few who plan to watch only 5-10 channels.

In fact I had asked a pertinent question earlier - which was conveniently ignored by the forum members:

Originally Posted by alpha1

Is there also a regulation limiting the discounting on the channel bouquet pack?

All the mess that we are seeing is because of the bouquet discounting.
The pricing (or rather discounting) of bouquet is formulated such that most of the public finds it better to purchase the bouquet instead of single channels - benefiting not just the channel but also the carrier (operator) because he gets the network capacity fees.

[deathwalkr]

Am at wit's end with the local cable provider Asianet. Updated 7 bouquets through their website, says successful but do the channels come? Nooo!

Their customer care is a joke. Most of the time it just says network busy and gets disconnected. If i do get through like i did today afternoon, it took 10 minutes for me to speak with an agent. And another twenty minutes for her to finally say sorry sir i don't know what is wrong and that she will arrange a call back!

Just a big pain which i did not ask for :(

[saket77]

I created my own pack of 95 channels on 02nd of Feb after a painstaking effort on Videocon D2H site. Submitted the same and received an acknowledgment number as a dialog box. My bad that I did not save it. Or the least they could have done is to mail a confirmation or the ack. no. to the registered ID or even send a message to the regd phone number. They did none. And the pack I selected was never activated. Finally my long term subscription ended sometime in February and I didn't recharge.

Got a few calls from Videocon to recharge my account. I asked them about the status of my selected pack. Some of the representatives gave the regular mumble-jumble that the server is down so they cannot check, etc. Last time they called up and I asked the same. The guy said that there is no such request made by me I have not selected any pack and hence they have switched me to the nearest available pack. He wants me to again select a pack after recharging. The selection procedure is too much pain to go through again.

I am managing with my home wi-fi till I can. Waiting eagerly for the jio-fiber in my locality so that I can wrap away the D2H dish and wire. Poor handling & execution by Videocon.

[BigBrad]

Videocon D2H user here. After logging in, from the A-la-carte list, I selected the ones which were must watch and then checked if I could choose any broadcaster bouquets which would be cheaper. In some cases where I had selected more than half of the channels in the bouquet, it made sense to go with bouquet instead of A-la-carte. So I selected few A-la-carte channels and couple of broadcaster bouquets. I wanted to select a particular bouquet from NDTV, but none of the NDTV bouquets were available in D2H website, I had to select it in A-la-carte mode, but I didn't bother.

The main issue for me was the total amount shown was incorrect. I noticed it only coz I had the TRAI channel selector page open in another tab. But I still proceeded with the selection and got a message which said they'll get back to me shortly. Meanwhile, I also called their customer service, which was a pretty bad experience. Firstly, it took me a lot of redials to get the call connected. Secondly, once I explained everything to the executive, she asked me to hold for a few mins and later, she started talking like as if she isn't able to hear my voice and quickly disconnected the call. Didn't bother calling again and I instead sent and email to the nodal officer citing the incorrect calculation issue. Nothing happened, but a day later I could see the updated package reflected in My Account page in their website. Checked the TV and I could see some channels in my selection still missing. Did a "Refresh Account" from the website and everything started working as expected. Still, I'm not sure what is the amount that they will charge me per month. Will wait for a few more days and probably contact them.

[fordday]

There cannot be a service provider any worse than D2H.
I have tried contacting them probably 100 times. Out of that 10 times the call went through and then after press this, press that, nothing happens.

Their email responses are all standard replies.

I have been suffering from last one month. I have two STBs. Only one of the STB is working. The other one throws only the FTA channels and none of my selections.

Never ever go near them.

[emkay.india]

I've been using Sun Direct for many years and have been paying Rs.777 for 6 months. This is only used for Tamil channels. After 1st Feb, they changed their basic economy pack (to which I had subscribed) to something similar with all the Tamil channels we watch and the fee had been increased to Rs.1056 for 6 months now. That's an increase of ~Rs.50 per month which I'm absolutely fine with.