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Big TV Likely to be Launched on June 24th


The DTH market is abuzz with speculations that Reliance Big TV will be officially launched on June 24th. Currently, Big TV is being used by around 50,000 customers, who are Reliance employees and customers of associate companies. According to a news report, the teaser campaigns will be aired on televisions four days prior to the launch with actor Abhishek Bachchan used as a brand ambassador. Take a peek into the commercial of Big TV, tagged as the biggest project in India.

The company is believed to have finalised over 1.25 lakh retail outlets across 4500 towns in the country to give a push to its DTH venture. Catering at these retail outlets will be over 700 distributors and around 500 installation & service partners have been roped in to cater to 25-30 installations per partner, per day.

According to the 2008 Ficci-PwC report on Indian entertainment and media industry, DTH households are expected to grow from 4 million in 2007 to 25 million by 2012. That comes as no surprise with new players like Bharti and Sun TV to enter this space.

Tata Sky and Dish TV share about 4.5 million subscribers between themselves, and due to heated competition both the companies have been busy wooing consumers with offers at reduced prices and attractive packages.
Read more » Big TV Likely to be Launched on June 24th

Big TV Reaches for the Sky with Jet

Reliance Big TV to offer DTH service in Jet's in-flight entertainmentThe 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

Big TV in Talks with BBC Entertainment

BBCWhile the other DTH providers are squabbling, Big TV is making silent but steady moves in the background to gain not only channel strength but to provide a massive amount of varied content to its users.

The essence of a successful DTH launch for Big TV will be to boast a huge amount of channels that will draw a line, dividing itself from the other DTH players in the market. To boost this effort Big TV chose a higher level of compression that's the Mpeg-4, what this means is, in the same amount of Bandwidth Big TV will be able to provide more channels as compared to the existing DTH players in the market.

Tata Sky, recently filed a petition with the fair trade regulator, Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC), alleging Dish TV’s free set-top box offer as being an "anti-competitive" and "deceptive" act. The counsel appearing for Tata Sky alleged that Zee group-promoted Dish TV claimed in its advertisement campaign in print and electronic media that its STB were being given for free, which was not the case.
BBC Entertainment Forum
While Tata Sky and Dish TV, wage the battle in court Reliance ADAG who had recently implemented BBC World in the month of May has been negotiating with the British Broadcasting Corporation for the BBC Entertainment channels to add to their list of channels.

When the negotiation will be completed is not know, but according to the administrator of the Indian BBC Entertainment forum, they are keen on distributing their packages on the Reliance DTH Platform as well.

If this deal works out, this will push the numbers up of channels on Big TV to up to 160 channels.
Read more » Big TV in Talks with BBC Entertainment

About Big TV

Reliance Big TVBig 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.
Read more » About Big TV

Big TV to Bundle LCD Televisions

LG LCD TelevisionsReliance 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.
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Big TV Updated Channel List

Big TV ChannelsWe 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

Big TVReliance 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.
Read more » Big TV Entertainment and News