The DTH Price Wars have Begun

The 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.

A few months ago and the average monthly outgoing was around Rs 280 to 300 that included the cost of the required hardware and a monthly subscription fee. But today the average a customer shells out is lesser by 30 - 40% where you can pay anywhere between Rs 182 - 249, which equals to less than the Rs. 300 you are paying to your cable operator

Tata sky started a Rs.99 entry level subscription that got the largest DTH player in the market Dish TV to offer 125 channels for Rs. 100 in a month, but the cause for these operators to lower their prices is due to the launch of Reliance ADAG's DTH serivce, BIG TV at a price of Rs 100 with 44 free to air channels.

But now Tata Sky is taking it a notch further with its aim to enter a larger section of the Hindi spolen markets with its Rs.99 per month super hit pack. As their chief marketing officer puts it, "Tata Sky stands for a premium DTH service. Perhaps, because of this impression, a number of potential subscribers were finding us a little expensive. Now the Rs 99 super hit pack will help us get these very subscribers."

So if you want to go DTH, Dish TV's DTH connection will cost Rs 2,190 one time an average of Rs 182 per month and receive 12 months of subscription of 125 channels that include entertainment channels, movie channels, sports channels and others. A Tata Sky connection, a consumer needs to pay Rs 2,999 an average of Rs 249 and for 12 months, for 53 channels including pay channels like Star Plus, Sony TV and active services.

Big TV is also offering entry-level subscriptions at Rs 2,490 that includes various channel packages, to get a clearer understanding between these competitors take a look at a comparison of Tata Sky, Dish TV and Big TV.

Read more » The DTH Price Wars have Begun

A Comparison of India's DTH Providers

The DTH war is heating up with the launch of Big TV. Let's take a look at how each one of them - Dish TV, Tata Sky and Big TV are placed.


Dish TV

Dish TV Offers:

• 168 TV channels


• 7 movie channels


• 21 audio channels

Dish TV Cost

• Between Rs 2490 and Rs 3990 for installation


• Rs 100 for up to 85 channels


• Rs 300 for up to 140 channels

Dish TV Features:
Free gaming portal, astrology service, sports channel with custom features, multi-lingual voiceovers and statistics.


Tata Sky

Tata Sky Offers:
At least 150 channels

Tata Sky Cost

• Rs 2499 for dish and installation charges


• Rs 175 for 65 channels


• Rs 310 for 123 channels

Tata Sky Features:
Interactive quiz, story-telling, daily live broadcasts from select shrines, matrimonial programmes and cooking portal.


Big TV

Big TV Offers:

• 202 channels


• 32 movie channels


• 10 audio channels

Big TV Cost

• Rs 2490 for dish and installation charges


• Basic pack of Rs 100 for 44 channels


• Rs 175 for 101 channels


• Top-up packs from Rs 25 to Rs 40

Big TV Features:
Monthly subscription-based movie channels, niche channels at low add-on charges, USB port in set-top box.

Read more » A Comparison of India's DTH Providers

Dish TV to Provide MPEG 4 STBs, Not Service

Dish TV has announced that it will begin providing MPEG 4 Set Top Boxes soon after Reliance Big TV 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.

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,”

Now the funny part of the story is that Dish TV does not plan on upgrading its transmission to MPEG 4 so although a customer may buy an MPEG 4 set top box the audio and video quality will stay at MPEG 2.

Dish TV claims that it does not make business sense for them to upgrade their transmission, keeping in mind they have invested in their own broadcast satellite recently. Dish TV says it is quite confident of meeting the competition from Big TV in the market as MPEG 4 and MPEG 2 offers virtually the same video and audio quality.

The company also claims that the only difference is in the cost of set-top boxes (STBs), which is much higher for MPEG 4. But as we know Big Entertainment has procured a huge quantity of set top boxes so the prices are comparable with the MPEG 2 STBs.

But since Big TV has still not spoken about a launch date the competitors are making hay while the sun shines, Dish TV is giving away free STB’s with their connection to expand their customer base and probably get rid of their MPEG 2 STB stock. Dish TV also recently lost its CEO Arun Kumar Kapoor, who has now been hired by Big TV.

Read more » Dish TV to Provide MPEG 4 STBs, Not Service

Big TV Appoints Dish TV CEO as COO

A week after the news of Dish TV's CEO Arun Kumar Kapoor quitting, its official that he will be the chief operating office of Big TV.

Kapoor joined Dish TV in November 2006 and before Dish TV he worked for Hutchison Essar South Limited as the CEO for the Punjab Circle. He has also worked for the UB Group, Gillette, Pepsi, Spice Cell, Airtel and IBM Daksh.

It seems that during Kapoor’s tenure, Dish TV consolidated its position of the country’s largest DTH platform, with 59% market share. As the chief operating officer of Big TV Kapoor will be responsible for overall business strategy and operations of Big Entertainment's DTH business.

The Reliance ADAG group hopes to become the number one Dish TV player in the market under Kapoor's leadership. Lets wait and watch if Arun can take Big TV to Big heights.

Read more » Big TV Appoints Dish TV CEO as COO

Reliance Complains over DTH Set-top Boxes

In 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.

Reliance has complained to the I&B ministry that the current DTH operators are using an obsolete format, therefore jeopardising comusmers' interest. Tata Sky and Dish TV use MPEG-2 technology as compared to Big TV, which will use MPEG-4 format. This will offer better video quality and save over 30% transmission bandwidth allowing more channels to be telecast.

Reliance has also asked the government to revise the BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) norms and implement TRAI's guidelines, which says that the existing subscribers need not change their STBs.

Read more » Reliance Complains over DTH Set-top Boxes

Big TV Reaches for the Sky with Jet

The DTH segment is really heating up. Following the footsteps of Dish TV, who became the first operator to install their DTH services in Kingfisher Airlines, Reliance Big TV is now in talks with Jet Airways to offer live feed of channels to its passengers.

According to industry sources, Reliance ADAG would be partnering with an Israel-based technology company for the same. That will replace Jet's current in-flight entertainment system JetScreen, which offers video on demand on its domestic and international flights.

The company has already placed an order of about 5 million set-top boxes and is expected to be launched officially end of June. Reliance is also in talks with BBC Entertainment to add more channels to its existing list of 150 channels. Industry sources believe that the Big TV is expecting to grab a market share of about 5 million consumers in the next 18-19 months.

How easy would that be for Reliance Big TV, as its competitor Dish TV recently announced the launch of its DTH services on-board luxury train 'Palace on Wheels', a Goan cruise liner and on Ashok Leyland buses. Before that it will have conduct a test run on some on some bogies of Northern Railway. This will definitely give Dish TV a much wider reach.

As per Ernst & Young, 28% of the 100-million pay-television households will migrate to DTH. Currently, DTH subscriber base is pegged at 3.5-million subscribers and is expected to increase to 19 million by 2010.

Read more » Big TV Reaches for the Sky with Jet

Dish TV's Free STB Might Trigger Price War

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

With this new plan a subscriber pays Rs.3,990 for 12 months with 151 channels and 67 movies on demand free which costs the same as the amount paid.


• The Freedom Plus Plan

With this new plan a subscriber pays Rs.3,990 for 18 months with 98 channels and 67 movies on demand free which costs the same as the amount paid.

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.

Read more » Dish TV's Free STB Might Trigger Price War