The new era of direct-to-home TV dawns
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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With 3 direct-to-home options available cable may face the biggest challenge
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SATELLITE SOLUTION: A terrestrial satellite uplinking station sends programming to a geostationary satellite using the Ku transmission band (10.9 GHz to 17 GHz).
FORTY SEVEN years ago this month — on September 15 to be exact — a small 500 watt transmitter beamed India's first test television programme to viewers within a 25 km radius of Delhi. Regular transmissions were to take another six years and the second city — Mumbai — saw TV only in 1972. But for most Indians, television dates from 1982 — when the Asian Games came to India — and low powered transmitters ( LPTs) came on line almost at weekly intervals, simultaneous with the introduction of colour.
The neighbourhood `cablewallah' became a fixture in hundreds of towns, in the early 1990s, leading to the — first and till date — the biggest explosion in India's television audience.
Second big leap
It may be, that the second big leap forward is already happening right now: pushing an audience of over a hundred million Indian homes into a new era of digitally sharpened, crystal-clear television delivered directly to the viewers' homes by a satellite-based system which also enables new levels of hitherto undreamt of choice in programme selection and manipulation. Say `hello' to the new era of Direct to Home (DTH) television, also known internationally as Direct Broadcast System (DBS).
Dish TV, the first commercial DTH offering in India from the Essel group backed by the considerable experience and resources of the Zee TV group in India came in late 2003.
In August this year, the second paid service, Tata Sky was launched, a joint venture with the parent company of the other big satellite television group, Star TV. Two other DTH offerings can be expected any time now: The Chennai-based Sun TV group and the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG) have both been granted letters of intent to commence operations.
For those who want the convenience of direct television via satellite without having to pay any monthly charge, Doordarshan's DD-Direct which has been around for nearly five years, is one of the world's small number of free-to-air satellite television systems, offering all the Doordarshan terrestrial language channels as well as a small number of Indian and international news and entertainment options.
Uplinking station
All these service providers use the same technology: a terrestrial satellite uplinking station that sends programming to a geostationary satellite using the Ku transmission band (10.9 GHz to 17 GHz).
This has the advantage that the dish antenna that the customer needs to install is fairly small, less than a metre in diameter. In addition, one has to connect a satellite receiver-decoder (also called a Low Noise Block or LNB because it converts a whole band or `block' of frequencies to a lower band) which most suppliers bundle into what is loosely called a set-top box because it can sit on top of the television set.
Smart card
To make sure that one receives only the combo of channels one has paid for (and to enable them to suspend services if you fall behind with your monthly payments!), most DTH providers incorporate a smart card that stores relevant information and sits in a slot in the set top box.
Give or take a few hundred rupees, this initial installation cost is around Rs 3000 in India while the monthly subscription depend on the number of channels one opts for (anything from 50 to 200) could vary from Rs 150 to Rs 300.
So, for the first time, customers can be said to have a real choice of technologies in the way they receive their chosen television programming: There is the original way — using a simple directional antenna to receive the signals from the nearest terrestrial transmitting station of Doordarshan. Very few customers are satisfied with the one or two stations that this technology provides.
Then there is the cable TV subscription route, which is how the vast majority— nearly 68 million of the 110 million Indians who own a television set — get their programmes. Here too, there is a distinction: Many metro providers now provide the option of a digital cable system which vastly improves the quality of the picture, increases the number of channels offered to something like 150 and provides a number of helpful features like a scrolling index of the content on most channels and an on screen reminder of what one is watching.
It comes at a higher initial cost (for the digital set top box) of around Rs 3000 but the monthly subscription in many areas has remained more or less what it was in the pre digital days — around Rs 200-Rs 250.
The DTH option offers all the advantages of the digital cable service — with some more interactive options. Dish TV has been touting the ability of its customers to select the camera angles, choose commentary language or get player statistics and match highlights, any time they choose during a cricket telecast.
Splitting the screen
Tata Sky promotes the ability to view four English news channels simultaneously by splitting the screen. Both players offer pay-by-use features like Indian and international movies or special events, at around Rs 75 a go.
In the three years that it has been around, DishTV has garnered about 1.4 million subscribers; new comer Tata Sky is probably acquiring about 500 subscribers a day since its launch — but first mover DD Direct accounts for the rest of what is a 4 million strong market today — expected to grow ten fold by 2015.
The entertainment trade weekly Screen carried a headline last week: "Cable, cable go away/ DTH wants to play." One of Dish TV's advertisement slogans is "Starting now, India will stop watching Cable TV." Both might be overstating the case for direct satellite television.
Technological advance
As it stands, DTH is an interesting technological advance on the way most of us have been watching television. It may spell freedom from shaky, grainy pictures and frequent signal breaks, not to mention flash `strikes' every time the local cable operators face a problem with the satellite TV companies.
But for those who have already tasted the quality and reliability of digital TV via cable and set top box, DTH may offer too little that is new to make a change worthwhile.
And it is worth remembering that another option may be on the way IPTV or Internet Protocol Television, where multiple TV channels can be received by a broadband internet connection... with the advantage that the channel works well in both directions.
If the saga of the mobile phone in India is any indicator, all these technology options will have to fight it out in the `maidan'.
There may be different ways today to reach our drawing rooms at different price points — and for the first time a customer for television in India can say: I am offered quality and I have a choice.
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