Big TV Aims 3 Million, DTH Sector to RiseWith the DTH subscribers in India expected to more than double from the current 16 million to over 32 million in two years, Reliance Big TV has set its sights firm on capturing a bigger share of the growth.
Big TV's major marketing initiative with allocation of over Rs 100 crore to improve brand visibility, special incentive programmes for the retail channel partners and improved ARPU (average revenue per user) is aimed at crossing three million subscribers by March 2010 from the current two million.
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DTH Market to See Growth, Profits UncertainThe DTH market is expected to grow 57% by December this year as opposed to the same period last year, according to the latest projections made by Media Partners Asia (MPA), the international media research agency.
The five DTH operators, Big TV, Airtel Digital, Dish TV, Tata Sky and Sun Direct are expected to add six million new subscribers by the end of December, to take the overall subscriber base to over 17 million. But the report also pointed out that the DTH operators will face rising economic challenges.
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Big TV Pulls a Spoof on Airtel Digital TVEven before Bharti Airtel's Digital TV was launched in the market last year, Big TV went one up in this DTH rivalry. Airtel Digital TV was running a teaser ad campaign prior to its launch.
The 12-second commercial shows animated characters dancing around and suddenly a sofa appears and the characters end with the punchline, "See you at home." It doesn't say anything else or indicate that its Airtel Digital TV ad. But Big TV guessed it right, and spoofed the ad.
Reliance ADAG used the same set up and punchline "See you at home," the only difference being that the ad showed Big TV logo and its features of 32 cinemas and 200+ channels.
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The DTH Price Wars have BegunThe increasing amount of DTH providers in the country and with new ones coming in, each one of them is trying to woo a customer data base, what better way to win over a customer by providing a cheap service.
Low price services are the mantra with Dish TV, Big TV and Tata Sky, lets take a look at what value these DTH players are offering you for your money. But are these offers good enough to lure you from your local cable operators lets take a look and see.
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A Comparison of India's DTH ProvidersThe DTH war is heating up with the launch of Big TV and several new entrants. Let's take a look at how each one of them - Dish TV, Tata Sky and Big TV are placed. Here's a comparison chart...
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Videocon's DTH Bigger than BIG TV?Videocon, that plans on launching its DTH service by the end of October, will be the only Direct to Home provider that will manufacture their own set-top boxes and apart from that it will the next provider to offer MPEG-4 technology to its customers.
But what makes Videocon's service so great that it would compete with Big. They have taken six Ku-band transponders on SingTel's ST-1 satellite and are investing Rs 10 billion over two years.
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Reliance Complains over DTH Set-top BoxesIn its attempt to gain an edge over its competitors, Reliance Big TV has accused existing DTH operators - Tata Sky and Dish TV - of not complying with the latest set-top box technology and trying to block out from bringing the revised norms.
For instance - if you have Tata Sky and want to switch to Dish TV or vice versa, you would have to throw away your old set-top box and get a new one. This is because the STBs provided by these operators aren't interoperable.
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Dish TV to Provide MPEG 4 STBs, Not ServiceDish TV had announced that it will begin providing MPEG-4 set-top boxes soon after Reliance Big TV accused other DTH operators like Tata Sky and Dish TV of not complying with the latest set-top box technology and trying to block out from bringing the revised norms.
While Jawahar Goel, managing director, Dish TV, said, "MPEG 4 boxes are much more expensive and may put extra burden on the subscriber. Moreover, the MPEG 4 format is not in accordance with BIS (Bureau of Indian Standard) and the government’s regulations and, hence, is not interoperable with MPEG 2 boxes."
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Dish TV's Free STB Might Trigger Price WarDish TV has broken their silence, after Reliance Big TV 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."
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DTH Market Zooming Ahead in IndiaTRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) supported the Government’s decision to reduce the licence fee for DTH operators from 10 per cent to 6 per cent of gross revenues.
The current and future DTH operators such as Tata Sky, Reliance Big TV, Dish TV etc. welcomed the move, stating that this will help them lessen their losses due to a highly competitive market. Although the operators choose not to pass on any of these benefits to the consumers.
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What is DTH?DTH stands for Direct-To-Home, its a system that allows you to have a personal dish antenna how cable operators do, except its much smaller in size, the antenna can be seen on the top left corner of the blog.
This antenna can be fixed on your terrace and receives transmissions directly from a satellite, hence it is called as a direct to home service.
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Reliance Big TV has partnered with NetworkPlay.in, multi-genre brand ad networks, to monetise all their interactive and video channel offerings. Big TV offers 23 pay-per view movie channels and a range of interactive zones like IAstro, IStock, ICooking, and ICare.
