HD is finally here!. Review on Dish TV

I guess this is what I had been waiting for all my life. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Let me pull it back a bit.all my conscious life! It just doesn't get better than this…

DishTV true HD is plain fantastic. Razor sharp images to fill your senses like never before. You can happily blame me for patronizing, but you probably won't when you experience a visual of panoramic scarlet sunset, a leaf frog leaping in slow motion, splashing a crystal dewdrop on lush green foliage, a dolly shot from a chopper into a majestic valley, a gorgeous babe bathing in aquamarine sea in a remote getaway or a screeching *Bugatti *chasing another on a freeway. You would know there and then that your world has changed forever.

You would just sit there in awe, your jaw touching whatever you have beneath you, ogling at those ethereal, un-pixellated visuals in the most vivid detail and color that you have ever imagined. Add to that the booming, high fidelity sound from the quivering woofers of your home theater system, shaking every inch of your living room!

I won’t be surprised if anyone wants to prick themselves to believe what they see. You have simply never seen this quality on TV.EVER! HD is finally here and here to stay and all the bucks that were spent on fancy ‘Full HD’ plasmas and LCDs have turned out to the best spend ever made on any white goods!

Channels

Presently you will have to do with just 4 HD channels, namely, Discovery HD World, Nat Geo HD, Zee TV HD, Zee Cinema HD out of which only Discovery and Nat Geo are true HD channels(16:9 aspect ratio, 1920x1080 resolution) and Zee TV and Zee Cinema have been up scaled to a better resolution. One can certainly hope for more in the near future as this is the next big thing which every DTH operator is vying for a slice of. They had FIFA world cup and Wimbledon telecast in HD as well on ESPN HD and Star Sports HD respectively while those events lasted. Hoping they would have more on offer for other major sports events as and when they happen.

Installation

You just need to call up DishTV or visit their website to order. I was amazed to get a call from them within 30 seconds of my clicking the ‘submit’! The only problem is that they are a bit too courteous to my liking and they apologize and thank you enough number of times to make you want to scream! SLA after placing the order is 24 to 48 hours. The technician who installed at my place got his but in in a day and a half. It’s a quick affair if you happen to be an existing DishTV customer(saves the time for installing and aligning the dish antenna). The whole thing will be up and running in an hour or so and the activation is pretty quick too.

Hardware

The big bonus is the sexy STB(set top box). This cute little black beauty so oozes ‘HDism’ from left right and center. A digital clock and a channel number display are certainly much better than an on/off indicator its predecessor had. The remote continues to be as tacky as it was however. Fortunately there are no extra charges for the HDMI cable to marry your lovelorn plasma/LCD with the STB for the long awaited HD signal. They don’t provide an optical cable along with though, which is required for 5.1 channel Dolby audio. But they are not providing 5.1 channel audio as of now anyways so my home theater system will have to wait for its perfect match. Nonetheless, the audio quality is still mind blowing.

Price

Patience is an under-rated virtue. Launched at 5990/-+ installation+ service tax, it just took a Tata Sky offer of Rs. 2550/- to bring them down to earth at 2990/-+ installation+ service tax in a couple of weeks. What do you have when you chicken out to competition – a lot of gleeful potential customers AND a lot of angry existing customers who were short of patience and went for it as soon as it was launched @ 5990. So we had an Apple story repeated but hearing that DishTV is doing a Steve Job as well and they will probably give a charge back of Rs. 3000 in the accounts of all who bought at 5990/-.

You get a 2 months HD pack+ 2 months of platinum pack along with this. In addition to this, you have an option of surrendering your old STB(in working condition) to get a Rs. 400 recharge in your account. Also, any left over balance in your existing DishTV account is transferred to your new VC.

You would compulsorily need to subscribe to Platinum+ HD pack once you have switched to HD, which means a minimum monthly outgoing of Rs . 440.

Pros

Breathtaking picture and sound quality. Better responsiveness of remote with the new STB. Colors are vivid and brighter as compared to its SD predecessor – even for the channels that are in SD. Menus and Guides look better than the Dish TV SD STB.

DishTV is the only DTH provider with 4 regular channels in HD right now. Other operators are not offering Zee and Zee Cinema in HD.

HD channels are offered as separate channels. One can continue to watch all the old SD channels like before.

Cons

No option to stop audio though HDMI cable along with the optical cable or standard audio out. So you basically have to put your TV on mute if you are using a home theater system for audio.

No program guide for HD channels yet

-Zee Cinema and Zee are not true HD(not 16:9 aspect ratio) like Discovery and Nat Geo

One has to change the aspect ratio of the TV manually when one switches between SD and HD channels(could be the limitation of my TV though)

Technical Bull* for the Uninitiated

HD around the world is offered mainly in these 3 specifications – 720p, 1080i and 1080p, the most common being 1080i which happens to the case for all the DTH operators in India as well. ‘p’ indicates progressive scanning which means that the transmission has all the lines(or pixels) being refreshed in each single frame while ‘i’ denotes ‘interlaced scanning’ meaning that only half the horizontal lines in each frame are refreshed in each single frame. So 720p is basically 1280 * 720 pixels each frame, 1080i is 19201080 pixels with 540 lines being refreshed each frame as opposed to 1080 lines. 1080p, also known as full HD has each frame being transmitted as 19201080 pixels. Needless to say 1080p is the best and is the most bandwidth hogging. So even in the western world, 1080p is not usually provided by each operator for each channel. The difference between these resolutions is not too visible however to the naked eye apart from very fast paced action scenes maybe where the movement of subject between the frames is very pronounced.