May 2008

About Big TV

Posted by Clyde Monday, May 26, 2008 at Monday, May 26, 2008

Big TV is the brainchild of the Reliance ADAG group, spearheaded by Anil Ambani. Big TV is set to take on the existing Direct to Home market in India.

The company claimed to already have forty thousand customers with its marketing through various internal sources like its employee offer, Reliance PCO Scheme and Reliance Energy Customer schemes.

The launch of the product is suppose to finally launch in July 2008 after many previous rumoured launch dates, some rumours that we caught on to. So you know by now this is not the official companies blog, but this is the aam janata's Reliance Big TV Blog!

We have been covering everything revolving around Big TV from the set top boxes, picture quality, problems and everything that this DTH service has to offer.

Big TV to Bundle LCD Televisions

Posted by Clyde Friday, May 23, 2008 at Friday, May 23, 2008

Reliance ADAG, is in talks with leading television manufacturers in the country for bulk LCD televisions to bundle along with its direct-to-home (DTH) service.

According to the Business Standard, a senior LG executive said, "Reliance Communications had asked us to submit our quotation for the 26-inch LCD television sets, which we have already done. The order range could be as large as 30,000 to 40,000 LCD sets initially."

The market value of these televisions are around Rs.34,000 but since the company will be ordering it in large numbers it is expected to be made available to the customer for around 25% less that its market value. Big TV has also asked Samsung India and Sanyo for quotations.

This will be beneficial for the consumers as they will have a new set of bundled offers along with the television which will be cheaper than the market price. Although Big TV will be the first company to have this offer Dish TV has offered similar schemes where if the consumers bought a particular LG television set, a Dish TV connection came free.

Even Tata Sky has a similar tie-up with Korean electronic major Samsung for its LCD and plasma television sets. Last year, Tata Sky had an offer where, depending on the size of the television sets sold, the consumers got discounts on the set-top box. For example if a 21-inch television was sold the consumer got a 21 per cent off on their Tata Sky connection.

To make it even more competitive in this segment that is heating up, Reliance is also talking to TV manufacturers in Korea and Taiwan to obtain Big TV LCD's in the market by next year, this should be priced even cheaper than LG and Samsung models.

Big TV Updated Channel List

Posted by Clyde Thursday, May 22, 2008 at Thursday, May 22, 2008

We had provided you with details of Big TV's Channel list as provided by Reliance ADAG that was updated on February 2008. But since then the DTH provider has been including quite a few new channels.

According to the latest lists available on the internet from sources such as the
Save on Dish Forum and Lyngsat the below channels are available with Big TV, bringing the total amount around 150 channels now.

Aaj Tak
Aaj Tak Tez
Aakaash Bangla
Aashta TV International
Amrita TV
Animal Planet
Animax
Asianet News
Astha TV
ATN Bangla
AXN
B4U Movies
B4U Music
Big TV Action 10
Big TV Action 9
Big TV Comedy 2
Big TV Comedy 5
Big TV Comedy 6
Big TV Comedy 7
Big TV F Drama 4
Big TV F Drama 5
Big TV F Drama 6
Big TV History 1
Cartoon Network
Channel One
Channel V
Channel V (in)
CNBC - TV 18
CNBC Awaaz
CNBC TV 18
CNN
CNN-IBN TV
Discovery Channel
Discovery Lifestyle
Discovery Travel & Living
Disney Channel
Doordarshan
Doordarshan Bangla
Doordarshan Gujarati
Doordarshan India
Doordarshan Lok Sabha
Doordarshan Malayalam
Doordarshan National
Doordarshan News
Doordarshan Punjabi
Doordarshan Rajya Sabha
Doordarshan Sahyadri
Doordarshan Sapthagiri
Doordarshan Sports
Doordarshan Urdu
E TV Bihar
E TV Rajastan
E TV Urdu
E TV Uttar Pradesh
ESPN
ETC
ETC Music
ETC Punjabi
ETV 2
ETV Gujurati
ETV Kannada
ETV Marathi
ETV Oriya
ETV Telugu
Fashion TV India
GEO TV
GOD TV
Gyan Darshan
HBO
Headlines Today
History Channel
IBN 7
India TV
Indiavision
Janmat
Jaya TV
Kairali
Live India
Maa TV
MH 1
Mi Marathi
MTV India
NatGeo Adventure
National Geographic Channel
NDTV INDIA
NDTV Profit
NDTV24x7
Nepal 1
NGC
Nickelodeon
North East TV
Pix
Pogo
S1
SAB TV
Sadhana TV
Sahara Filmi
Sahara Mumbai
Sahara National
Sahara One
Sahara Rajsthan
Sahara Samay National
Sahara Samay NCR
Sahara Samay Uttar Pradesh
Sangeet Bangla
Sanskar
Set Max
Shakti Channel
Sony
Sony Entertainment TV
Southern Spice Music
Star Ananda
Star Cricket
Star Gold
Star Majha
Star Movies
Star News
Star One
Star Plus
Star Sports
Star Utsav
Star Vijay
Star World
Tamilan TV
Tara Newz
Tensports
Time TV
Times Now
Toon Disney India
Total TV
TV 9 (in)
TV5 Monde Asie
VH1 India
Zee 24 Taas
Zee Aakash 24 Ghante
Zee Business
Zee Cafe
Zee Cinema
Zee Kannada
Zee Music
Zee News
Zee Smile
Zee Sports
Zee Studio
Zee Talkies
Zee Telugu
Zee Trendz
Zee TV
Zoom TV

Read more » Big TV Updated Channel List

Big TV Entertainment and News

Posted by Clyde Monday, May 19, 2008 at Monday, May 19, 2008

Reliance Entertainment from the ADAG group has split itself into two branches namely the Reliance Big TV Entertainment and Reliance Big TV News to foray into the broadcast business.

The reason for this is due to the governments restrictions on foreign direct investment in the news media sector. The group is proposing two general news and two business news channels in Hindi and English and wants to remain open to the idea of roping in an international player in the entertainment TV segment.

The Reliance ADAG plans on launching twenty TV channels altogether in the country to expand its reach in the fast-growing broadcast entertainment business, although what the other 16 channels will consist of are not yet known.

In a recent update Big TV claims to have already acquired a customer database of 40,000 customers. The company also announced the road map for launching competitively priced Direct-To-Home (DTH) services across 4,000 towns in the next few weeks.

Big TV DTH also claims to have completed trial runs across 2,400 towns and the service, under the same brand name.

Dish TV's Free STB Might Trigger Price War

Posted by Clyde Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Dish TV has broken their silence, after reliance launched its underground marketing ploys to multiply its customer base Dish TV decided to stop waiting for the official launch of Big TV to begin their aggressive marketing techniques.

Anjali Malhotra Nanda, vice president, marketing, Dish TV, said, “We have designed a high decibel campaign, starring brand ambassador Shahrukh Khan, to support the company’s new marketing initiative. Under the offer, a 12-month maxi package, for example, will now cost Dish’s consumers Rs 3,990 which is inclusive of subscription and 67 movies.”

Although we currently believe that Big TV's advertisment campaign will be much bigger than Dish TV's boring stunt with Shahrukh Khan, it just speaks about the lack of innovation on Dish TV's marketing theme, get a celebrity to market a product.

Dish TV announced it will offer set-top boxes free of cost to its subscribers. The set-top box plan will be bundled with movies-on-demand worth Rs.2,490 to Rs.3,990 depending on the package that a subscriber opts for.

Jawahar Goel, managing director, Dish TV, said, “By waiving the set-top box cost, the company has been able to remove the entry barrier to DTH. The company hopes to double its monthly addition of subscribers to 180,000.” Its current subscriber base is 3.1 million.

Until now a Dish TV subscriber paid a one-time cost of Rs 2,500 for the set-top box and its installation along with a monthly subscription fee between Rs 100 and Rs 300 depending on the channels opted for, there was an additional cost of Rs 55 to Rs 75 per film for the movies on demand.

There are two plans now available,

The Maxi Plan

The Freedom Plus Plan

With Dish TV breaking the cost barrier to go DTH bill Big TV be able to ignore this offer by Dish TV? We do not know as yet but this move by Dish TV is most likely to start off a price war among the existing players and force Reliance ADAG to reconsider its pricing strategies.

BIG TV Screenshots and Videos

Posted by Clyde Sunday, May 11, 2008 at Sunday, May 11, 2008

If you recollect we had recently provided pictures of BigTV's Set Top Box and User Interface. This time we take a couple of steps forward and show you some more interface screenshots,a video of the interface as well as a link to download a MPEG-2 quality video for you to judge the picture quality.

In the image you can see that Big TV is also used as a medium to advertise Reliance ADAG's other segments like this communication advertisment shown in the image. You can watch the video below, and run through the screen shots as well.

Big TV's Channel List

Big TV Guide

Big TV Set Top Box Manual Scanning

Big TV Parental Control

Big TV Pay Per View Movies

Big TV Movie Preview

Big TV Display Settings

Finally we have the high quality video file for you to download and take a look at, note that the download is 28MB, but it will give you a very clear idea of the Big TV's picture quality. You can download the file here.

Thanks to the users of India Broadband Forum for images and video.

A Peek into Reliance Big TV Commercial

Posted by Bhavika Thursday, May 8, 2008 at Thursday, May 08, 2008

Here is the first look into the commercial of the much-awaited Reliance Big TV. Apparently it is the biggest TV commercial project India has ever seen. The shoot went on for a week and has around 1100 people in it. When aired, around 600 million are expected to watch it.

Take a look at it.

It has been shot around India, so Big TV will be a product for the masses.

We tried to get an interview of the person responsible for the shoot, but haven't received any response as yet.

Reliance Entertainment Rebranding with Moniker Big

Posted by Bhavika Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Gearing up for the launch of Big TV which is likely to be this month, Reliance Entertainment is undergoing a major re branding with the aim of having a single brand 'Big' across all its entertainment verticals, like Big TV, Big FM channel, Big Pictures, the production company, to name a few.

The media and entertainment arm of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) will now be called Reliance Big Entertainment. The company is also phasing out the 'Adlabs' brand and replacing it with Big Cinema in the next two months. For instance, Metro Adlabs will now be called Metro Big Cinema.

In fact, Reliance is also rechristening the recently acquired theatres in the US as 'Big Cinemas'. It plans to start screening Indian films - Hindi and regional - this month in 200 cinemas. They also acquired a controlling stake in Malaysian cinema. The whole process of re branding will include the change in brand communication like signage to branding on tickets to the paraphernalia used in the multiplexes.

With this aggressive approach, the brand Big is certainly going to get popular the world over. It is creating buzz before the launch of its DTH service!

Reliance Big TV Multiplying Customer Base

Posted by Clyde Monday, May 5, 2008 at Monday, May 05, 2008

Reliance ADAG has been doing aggressive marketing across various segments for Big Tv. Recently we spoke about how Big TV placed advertisements in Reliance Energy bills. In their latest attempt they have offered Reliance PCO operators the "Big TV Tohfa Offer"

The Big TV Tohfa Offer woos their PCO operators with a special recharge voucher of Rs.2,500 which he will need to purchase. He will get Rs.1,500 added to his PCO connection and will get a Big TV installation free of cost. With this he will also get a 3 months subscription to Big TV as well as Rs.2,000 worth of pay per view movies valid for two months.

Big TV is suppose to have been launched in August, has now entered the month of May. Sources claim that Big TV will definitely launch this month and plan on setting a subscriber base of 5,000,000 customers. Reliance plans on cashing in on its subscriber base with the offers made to Reliance Energy's customer base of around 3,500,000 and 2,000,000 million PCOs controlled by Reliance Communications.

As compared to the TATA and Dish TV's DTH offerings the Reliance plans are significantly lower, but both the companies are waiting for Big TV's official launch before working on their pricing strategy. Vikram Kaushik, MD and CEO, Tata Sky, said, "We will have to evaluate not just the price, but also their offering in terms of marketing mix." While a Dish TV spoke person stated they could only comment after the launch.

Dish TV and Tata Sky together have over 4,800,000 customers that is lesser than Reliance's Big TV launch target.

Big TV Dealer Location

Posted by Bhavika Thursday, May 1, 2008 at Thursday, May 01, 2008

Partner with Reliance for DTH Services

All vendors, distributors and dealers can go ahead and partner with Reliance for the distribution purposes of their Big Tv direct to home services by filling the DTH Channel Partner Application Form.

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