DTH India

Airtel has finally been launched its long awaited DTH Service.  It has been named as Airtel Digital TV.  Although it has not been launched fully but have started initially in Kolkata and will start rolling it out in phases in various cities in the coming weeks.  This is after the slight delay in launching it officially, as it was supposed to be launched in September.

The Airtel DTH has sent out the message right with their launch ad featuring A.R. Rahman, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Madhavan, Vidhya Balan and cricketers Zaheer Khan and Gautam Gambhir.  Although the ad was not so impressive but the star cast was, but one prominent face missing was their brand ambassador Shahrukh Khan who incidentally was also the brand ambassador for Dish TV.

Again this Airtel DTH is going to face a tough competition with the other players who have already dug their root deep in the DTH arena like Dish TV and TATA Sky with the new entrant Big TV too has started to set its foot on DTH market.  Although DTH market is relatively new to India and scope for the same is very high, it could just be the time to hit the market and Airtel has done it right.  One more entrant will soon join them and that is Videocon DTH.

Airtel DTH don’t boast of any extra features or specials when you compared it with the other DTH services, except for the universal remote which can be used for both your TV as well as your set top box.  But Airtel DTH claims to have add-in features like planning or booking your holiday, do the shopping, book movie tickets, etc.  All these features will be an add-on feature where you might need to pay extra to get each of these services.  Although it would take months or probably years for these services to become active in Airtel DTH.

There is also an additional yet unique feature called Electronic Programme Guide or EPG where you can see or control all the features through on your screen using your remote.

Airtel DTH also comes along with Worldspace Radio with all the stations that come along with it.  It comes with movies on demand option but it seems most of the movie were of old to relatively old movies and not even falls in the category of relatively new movies to choose from.

Just like its predecessors Airtel Digital TV too has started off with giving one year free subscription by paying the initial amount for the installation and other charges.  But with this option you get very limited channels for free and for additional channels you will need to pay for them to get in your package.  There is also another option of paying for the installation and get all the channels for free for six months.

The regular packages it offers ranges from Rs. 99 to Rs. 424 per month. Wherein with Rs. 424 package you get all the channels.  There is a special south silver pack where you get 79 channels for free for one year if you pay Rs. 2000 initially.

Although there is no surprise package with Airtel’s Digital TV, hence it is worth a wait to see how they cope up with the competition and to see whether they will come out of it unscathed or not.