Come July 1, metros will have great viewing experience

A technology treat awaits young and the restless as India embraces digitisation.

The nationwide digitisation drive would be completed by the end 2013, while the four metro roll out is due on July 1, 2012.

RC Venkateish, CEO, Dish TV, Asia’s largest Direct to Home (DTH) operator explained what would make the viewing experience so superior: “Under digitisation legislation, channels have to be mandatorily transmitted using various digital compression techniques capable of transmitting high quality video (MPEG2 and MPEG4) and audio without utilising extra bandwidth. As both the signals are received at the same time, there are no issues with the synchronisation of sound with video."

The DTH experience in the country already scores high on the enhanced viewer experience. “Because of the better quality in a digital home, viewers are spending more time on TV and time spent on preferred content had increased.  Discovery network is beneficiary to this trend,” disclosed Rahul Johri, senior vice-president and general manager, south Asia, Discovery Networks. 

Digitization would also lead soon to improvement in television production and the quality of transmission is bound to improve in leaps and bounds, he added.

Underscoring the DTH advantage, Dish's Venkateish said, “The challenge for digital cable is that it first has to go from analogue to digital leave aside HD.  They are still in the first generation transition. They have a lot to catch up.”

DTH players have indeed invested in building the technology infrastructure. “Dishtv operates out of two satellites of its own and it is also receiving signals from the third satellite, so from that perspective we have an inbuilt redundancy protection as well as additional benefits from such an approach,” said Dish TV CEO.

But what about the recent debate on HD service? “This whole nonsense about asli and nakli HD is just propaganda by some operators who do not have HD capacity to offer their subscribers,” asserted Dish’s Venkateish. When it is high definition, there is National Television Standard Committee (NTSC) standard that says it has to be a minimum of about 720 pixels per line, which is a compression required to be classified as HD,” he said. 

Discovery’s Johri said, “High-Definition is the future of TV viewing. Currently, all broadcasters are increasing the number of HD channels on offers.” 

Asked to dwell on the 3D viewing potential, Venkateish explained, “Providing 3D experience is not the issue, we can offer it as we speak. The problem, however, is in the number of 3D enabled television sets in the country, which at this stage is a very limited number.”

“The 3D technology is currently in its nascent stage in India.  Hence, the 3D content is also not available as much,” agreed Johri at Discovery

Is digitisation, therefore, leading to a paradigm shift in home entertainment? “With DTH technology, users can now expect to have a lot of options like on demand movies, ad free channels and a lot more choice in what channels they can watch. Also, they have the ability to record and watch channels later,” opined Berges Malu, a tech enthusiast.

A DTH subscriber said, “The experience watching mega events in sports on HD format has just been amazing.”