We recently moved to the outskirts of chennai. The local cable operator demanded more money for the same channels, we used to view. So I was left with no choice but to go for Dth. The popular being sun direct. It had an installation cost of Rs.1250 and the cheapest package costs Rs.499 for 6 months. The only concern was that the equipments will remain the property of sundirect. I felt Rs/1250 was too much for installation charge. Then I had to look at the free DDDirect+ telecast by doordarshan. The term “free” was more luring so I decided to go for it. The equipments costed 2200Rs. And I personally installed it on my house top. I was all set and was quite happy when I got all the 50+ channels.
A week passed by and I found that I could only watch 3-4 channels of those 50+ list. Yes, the rest are all junk or target a different audience. Those 3-4 channels where either Tamil or English channels. I hate watching Hindi and other language channels. Having known Hindi, I still couldn’t count more than 3 channels that aired meaningful and viewable programs in Hindi. The problem is DDDirect+ wants to cater for every indian, but it failed to understand the reality that number of channels a particular person views (based on his taste and language) is very less. And one feels cheated/frustated by the end of the day.
DDdirect+ should have copied the strategy used by SunDirect , which also caters to all sections of the country. But they have packages that are language specific. They have a freedom Tamil package with 145 channels in Tamil,English and few Hindi and Freedom Telugu with 145 channels of Telugu,English and few Hindi. Thus people of particular region can subscribe to the package of their choice and they’ll feel satisfied.
Since DDDirect+ wanted to give all channels to all people, it had to stick with a single satellite, the number of channels that can be telecast becomes less. And even if space is available one can imagine the amount of redtape before a channel is allowed to telecast. With multiple packages as sun direct, they would have been free to put each package in a separate satellite. Adding new channels wouldn’t have been so hard.
All this just shows that it wasn’t a well planned exercise. And with channels disappearing all of a sudden, I’m quite concerned that I might even loose those 3-4 channels that I watch.
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Now DD-Direct has introduced DD-HD, the most foolish move ever. How many people in India have HD TVs?. The only tamil channels that DD had are no more viewable due to poor transmission or possible transponder failure. Instead of improving the transmission and allowing more channels in, DD has foolishly introduced HD, for the sake of competition. No redemption, till there are fools in DD, who doesn’t know how to compete and what people really want.