| Wednesday, January 17, 2007 |
| DishTV review Part 1: Buying DishTV in New Delhi |
So DishTV it was going to be.
Post New Year 2007, no channels. Mt ancient AKAI box looks pathetic usually; with nothing worth watching on it, it is a real sad specimen. I wanted stuff to happen in a different sequence. First get rid of the ancient TV box, even if for Rs 500/-, and then get a new TV. A new TV better make its presence felt and reflect my middle-age financial status and show-offiness - so it had to be a LCD or Plasma or an RPTV, and with a minimum screen size of 32". And then go for CAS or DTH. Alas this was not to be - TRAI jacked me on Jan 1, and I had to do something - LCD TV etc could cost from 50,000 above, and my mind is not going to made up easily on which TV to buy. I chose the easier option - choosing between cable set top box, TataSky or DishTV.
With that in mind, I started reading up stuff - reviews of DishTv and TataSky. I went through Mouthshut, Google Blogsearch and Google, and read up whatever stuff they dished out on Business Standard and Rediff on DTH services in India.
What did I make out of all that? TataSky seems to be on a major ad blitz - and everyone seems to be very impressed by that. But in the end, they have fewer channels than DishTV. Strike One for DishTV.
Picture quality - not that this is going to make any difference on my AKAI - but a larger percent of the reviews said that DishTV picture quality was slightly inferior to TataSky. Hmm. So that is something that will matter to me later, if not now. Given the fact that TataSky has been around for only 2 weeks (in the metros, after CAS), I don't know how the reviewers managed to compare the picture quality of both the services. Quality could be better on either TataSky or DishTV on any given day due to any number of factors from technology to more clouds or whatever. Not to mention the television used. Anyway, thats strike one for TataSky.
Service quality. Reviewers keep talking about slightly better service quality on TataSky - but I am truly sceptical. You deal with a call center, and the less said about the effectiveness of a call center executive the better. It is like trying to rank loos based on which smells better. No points to anyone there.
Installation and time. TataSky has a bad reputation here - there are horror stories in the papers daily about how they are stretched, and examples where it has taken ten days after purchase. DishTV, on account of a lower-key-marketing strategy, has probably seen less demand - and are faster. At least that is my conclusion for now. We shall track their progress in the next few parts of this review. Big strike and evil on the face of DishTV.
CNN- IBN. I need this TV channel, not because I am a fan of Rajdeep or the atrocious Sagarika Ghose or anything, but because when I get irritated by NDTV anchors, I need to see a different kind of weirdness and over-the-topness somewhere. TimesNow is just hilarious for me, I can hardly treat it as a news channel. Headlines Today, the less said the better. There seems to be major muleheadedness going on in TataSky or CNN-IBN regarding the channel appearing on TataSky, and whatever the hell it is, I want that channel now so I can go back to hating Rajdeep. DishTV scores here.
User interface. Reviewers seem to like the TataSky interface better. I am not much bothered about it, after dealing with music system interfaces with buttons and dials. But anyway what the hell - TataSky scores there.
Future - the reviewers seem to be biased in favour of TataSky here. With some justification - they can seem Murdoch's shadow and like it. I see Subash Chandra behind DishTV and do not like that. Anyway, it is too vague. I don't care about the future - if it becomes clearly evident that one service is better than the other, I would happily throw out whichever I own. No winners here.
So I chose DishTV. Quick installation (we shall see about that!) and CNN-IBN on it made the decision for me.
So wifey and I went to the dealer in Green Park main market, near to our home. The boy with the brochures outside told us that he could give us a demo only later, and he is closing down, could we kindly go inside, and only after giving him our names so he could take the credit for convincing and bringing in a new customer. I like assholes with balls, so I gave him the details.
We went in. The guys seem to have TataSky and DishTV boxes. The main in charge assued us that the installation would happen in 24 hours, he has only 2 installations tomorrow, blah blah. And later he added that after installation, it takes another 24 hours for activation. Whatever. So my 24 hour period is now 48. Let's see how it goes tomorrow. The guy at the shop did not know how to make a proper bill for the set-top box, and so we just paid him the Rs 1300, got the set top box, and walked out. The installation guys should come with the Dish and cables and whatever else tomorrow - so shall keep this running commentary going. If you are interested in reading up my travails or success story as I go on, you can bookmark this page. I will be adding the link for the next part here tomorrow. Cheers!Labels: DTH |
| posted by a correspondent @ 6:57 AM |
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