My Experience With DishTV. Review on Dish TV

I wrote a pre-purchase review about a month back titled "Why I chose DishTV". Thanks to all those who read that review (and those who didn't). Since MouthShut doesn't allow two reviews of the same product by the same user I am removing the ealier one.

I managed to get DishTV installed on the 14th Of July. Looking at my own unpredictable schedule and availability I opted for the DVR instead of a normal STB. My total cost was approx Rs 17000/- (DVR + Maxi package + installation). Unlike most others, I made the entire payment by cheque only, thanks to all those who wrote the previous reviews.

I will try to keep this review unprejudiced with minimum possible subjectivity.

How I did it:

Based on the feedback on the pathetic customer service of DishTV, I made it a point to my dealer that I will take the deal only if he pre-activates my card before delivery.

My dealer agreed and complied. So I did not have to follow-up with customer service for activation (at least spared on one count ;)).

First the pros:

• With my cable transmission I used to observe a horizontal bar slowly scrolling up (sometimes down) across the screen (these are also known as hum bars). This is normally caused by improper earthing of transmission equipment at your cable operators end or your tv set. With DishTV I did not observe these hum bars anymore.

  
  




• There is no vertical wavy lines sometimes seen on cable channels (also known as co-channel interference, sometimes caused by signal boosters). Picture is not grainy. In simple terms, this doesn't have the problems and imperfections related to analog transmission.

  
  




• Feature wise, the DVR allows a lot of convenience, if your service provider and equipment allows you to use those features.

  
  




• DishTV has recently started beaming the test signals for the Star bouquet.

  
  




• Picture quality is above average, and mostly uniform across frequency bands, whereas (most of you must have noticed this) cable transmission quality is quite bad for channels transmitted at higher frequencies.

  
  

However, picture quality is certainly not equivalent to DVD as claimed by DishTV.

PAL transmission at full DVD quality requires 720 x 576 pixels @ 25 fps. What we get from DishTV can't be more than 480i. People using HDTV will notice a lot of jagged edges and flickering.

Moreover, the STB or the DVR doesn't have YPbPr output (commonly known as component out), it has only composite AV and s-video out. Without this output you cannot get progressive scan which is common with most DVD players.

I do not know if there is a way of measuring picture resolution for a tv broadcast, I will certainly let you know if I find any.

• One Ku Band transponder can pack approximately 12 channels using standard encoding. As far as I know, DishTV has leased 11 Ku Band transponders on the NSS6. Which means a maximum of 132 channels. Including the star packages DishTV is transmitting about 158 tv channels and some radio broadcast as well.

For example DishTV beams about 16 channels using its transponder 4.

This is possible in number of possible ways, viz using better video compression like mpeg-4, or using mcpc, or by compromising on the audio/video quality (eg send low resolution video).

I am fairly convinced that DishTV has adopted the last one.

Now the cons:

Customer service is horrible, and is likely to give you nightmares. There have been days when I desperately wanted to pack all my DishTV equipment, carry them all the way to Noida and dump them on Subhash Chandra's head.

When I bought the package, I opted for the Bengali regional option. DishTV activated my card with the Hindi/Punjabi regional package. It was seven days' nightmare to get this rectified.

One fine morning I stopped receiving the Sony packages, MGM, Zee TV with my system showing the message "No Access". Another seven days' nightmare to get that rectified.

Now I have a new problem:

My DVR reboots automatically every 5 minutes for channels coming from transponders - 1, 2, 3, 5.

It has been almost three weeks with this problem.

Here is what I faced when I approached DishTV's customer service with this problem:

• Initially when I called up customer service, I was told that I need to do a set-to-set download of the software. When I called up my dealer he told me that there is no spare DVR box in Bangalore to do this, since Bangalore has only 5 DVRs sold so far.

  
  




• When I called up DishTV to inform this they told me that I don't need to do a set to set download it is a transponder related problem. And will be rectified at their end soon.

  
  




• Obviously, the above didn't happen. When I called up DishTV again they told me that I need to do a set to set download.

  
  




• Till now I am switching between "You need to do a set-to-set download", "You don't need to do anything, we will rectify this problem at our end"

  
  




• Finally I wrote to KaonMedia (my dvr is Kaon make). And they told me that they will release a new software soon, and I will receive an OTA upgrade for the same.

  
  




• I am waiting for this upgrade while my DVR continues to reboot every 5 minutes.

  
  

For the DVR I get a constant DishTV logo at the bottom right corner for all channels. For normal STB this logo appears only for a few channels, and not for all.

This could potentially cause a burnout of that portion of the screen. Flat panel tv owners be very careful (esp. plasma owners). Plasmas are very prone to burnouts.

Let's take a look at their competitor/s:

The main (may be the only one considering a national presence for paid channels) competition is the recently launched Tata-Sky dth service.

Their package currently consists of 55 channels only and is certainly more expensive.

Tata-sky will be shipping Thomson equipment, which I am sure, will have far better quality as well as reliability than what Kaon or Zenega has.

I am also hoping that they will have a better customer service than what DishTV provides.

Now for the final advise (in order of priority):

• If you can bear your cable transmission for some more time then continue with that, till Tata-Sky adds more channels to its offerings, and more information on their customer/technical service is available.

  
  




• If your cable tv operator provisions a DVB-C set top box (commonly supplied by Hathaway), go for it. My observation that Cable STBs have better picture quality than Satellite STBs.

  
  




• If your cable transmission and/or service is absolutely unbearable, go for DishTV's normal STB.

  
  




• But don't even dream of buying DishTV DVR (unless you are insomniac and don't mind spending sleepless nights following up with DishTV's customer service).

  
  

Best....

Debashis