My Experiences with Dish Tv. Review on Dish TV

I have been using Dishtv for the past 2 years and I think its time for me to share my experience as a review with Disthv.

The experiences shared are the ones I had faced and I think I need not give granular details like Channels / packages available which any user can checkout from the respecitve websites.

(Subscriber Offer updated, posting the updates first and my old experiences later).

Updates

I had been a Dishtv subscriber for 2 years and now  recently from Aug 31 2011, dishtv has removed Star sports, espn, Star  cricket from all the packages. Even if you are a titanium subscriber who  has paid 4000 rupees you will not get these channels. you have to pay  extra 40 rupees to get them.

Day light robbery!. They are encouraging viewers to watch Doordarshan. WTF!.

I'm currently  having my options open and I have started feeling a bad sense on being  Dishtv customer, they have removed all good offers for customers Pluz  they do not have a HD DVR.

If anyother DTH provider has a better offer im thinking of switching to it.

(older review which might not be applicable now, but feel free to read.)

Why DTH?

I live in Chennai and before DTH was introduced there was CAS and the MSO(multi system operator) Settop box was around 5k. I had bought one as the Cable operator couldnt show "paid" channels which are mostly sports and movie based ones. It was too costly as I had to pay 100rs to the cable guy plus pay 200 plus rupees to the CAS system.

To make it worse, the Cable guy with whom we had the connection sometimes used to cut the Cable network on Weekends, the only days where I could be at home to watch programmes.

So CAS was of no use since the wires were usually cut for days. It was so depressing for many chennai guys like me who had to suffer at the hands of Sumangali cable and local cable operators.

One Good thing about the cable guy was he had his own channel and sometimes used to telecast Indias Cricket matches Live on that channel by masking the Sports company's logo with his fancy logo . Quite funny to see him rebooting his winxp machine and loading the software where he does the masking of his Cable TV logo of the ESPN/ STaR cricket logo.

Funny and amusing to watch.

Why Dishtv?

When DTH started booming I did some research at the cost / monthly expenditure on many of the DTH operators and finally decided based on my requirement that Disthv was the best option.

Dishtv had a wonderful offer where you almost get the Settopbox free. I had to pay only 1500 for the 1800 worth of Offer. I got 100 days of the platinum pack which almost included all the channels plus 800 rupees worth of Movie on Demand. So technically the box comes free in this pack. This offer doesnt exist now though.

Installation?

The installation was done by Partel services in chennai. The installation looked fine for the trial period and then few channels stopped due to signal issues. Guys from Partel were not responding to my queries and the Customer care of dishtv was pathetic at that time. I was losing patience and then somebody reminded about Nodal officer, the guys from Partel came back and set the antennae and it was working temporarily. After a month the same channels would showup for few hours and then signal will drop, Later Partel services went bust and somebody from maxx networks came and did the repair work after I again escalated the issue to nodal officer.

Now the signal is fine most of the times, but when it slightly rains or when the air blows the same few channels will the be first ones to stop displaying.

What pack?

After the 100 days of free viewing I downgraded the pack to the South Gold pack which included popular Sports channels including Star cricket, English movie channels, Adventure channels and almost all of the tamil channels one regularly watches. This pack doesnt exist now. This pack costs me around 225 rupees per month.

Services

Like all operators Dishtv also has Active channels where you get some services like Traffic updates, movie tickets, Travel service but they are specific to some cities and I think its a waste of service. Games and kids fun service are good ones for people like me who have kids at home.

Customer Care?

When I chose Dishtv I knew the lower the amount you pay the lower the services you will get and I was ready for it. Initial few months was a pain with customer care but now the customer care is getting better. I always use the Call me feature from customer care. You send an sms to the Call center number and they will call you in few minutes. This is working great.

HD?

I had a CRT teleivision few years back never had any idea about buying an LCD TV. Now 6months back brought a Samsung 32" Full HD lcd tv and im thinking about HD. Did some review and found Dishtv HD is not good. For Now Videocon and Tatasky are the best options for HD. Videocon HD DVR box sells for 4500 and the monthly expense is 400+ rupees, including Cricked HD channels and movie channels. Dishtv doesnt have a HD DVR or a DVR yet although they were the ones to launch a DVR many years back but was a big flop.

Payment?

From the begining of purchasing till now I have been paying through Dishtv online payment. Like the customer care the website was pathetic in the beginning and now a re-worked Dishtv website is user friendly. Earlier I used to get 404 errors after payment was confirmed. Now it is good.

Offers?

There were good offers earlier like Pay 6 mnths get 7, Pay 10 mnths get 12. I chose the latter option once and saved 2 months. But now they have completing removed this one. I think only Dishtv do not have this offer which is very bad. For now im using the Pay2 get 1. Which is not getting extra month free, but getting 1 month of higher pack free for the first month of payment.

Suppose you are in gold pack and pay for 2 months, you will get the platinum pack for the first month free. Which so far seems to be the only sensible one.

Shockingly you can avail this offer only once for your STB. Horrible!. I'm shocked.