What is DD DIRECT + ?

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Doordarshan, the national broadcaster in India, at present has a network of more than 1400 transmitters spread throughout the country and its signals are available to about 90% (DD1) and 43% (DD-News) population of country. The prime duty of any national public service broadcaster is to make the programmes of national importance available to all its people and nationals. It was estimated that the coverage of remaining 10 % population with terrestrial (single channel) broadcast would cost enormously. Besides that, setting up of terrestrial transmitters in the uncovered areas would have taken a number of years (10 to 15 years). Also, operation of terrestrial transmission would have required a huge manpower (a few thousand persons).

With the fast developments taking place in Satellite Broadcasting, it is but natural that Doordarshan has also come up with an alternative to get the required reach with an alternate technology option “Ku-band broadcasting” which is envisaged for the coverage of remaining population. This is a much cheaper and economical option as compared to the coverage through Terrestrial transmitters.


Ku-band transmission will provide coverage in all uncovered areas including remote, border, tribal, hilly and inaccessible areas in one go within a short time. With this coverage, the national broadcaster proposes to meet its obligation of covering the whole nation and its people not only with national channels, but also make available popular Doordarshan and some other free-to-air channels on its platform. In order to meet its obligations, it has also been decided that 10,000 receive systems (Dish and Set Top Box) would be provided free of cost at public institutions like Anganwadis, Schools, Public Health Centres, Panchayats, Youth Clubs, Cooperative Societies etc. in the uncovered areas.

It may be pertinent to mention here that incidentally Doordarshan would be starting DTH service with Ku band broadcasting as not only uncovered areas are covered with its commencement, but also the whole country gets multi-channel service in one stroke. The signal will be available at each home directly without the use of any cable etc. and one will be able to receive the programmes with the help of a small Receive segment.

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How DD DIRECT+ is different from other DTH systems ?

Most of the DTH Systems, operating all over the world, provide Paid Service. The encrypted TV signals are received from the satellite on the Dish Antenna and transmitted to the DIGITAL DECODER. The customer is provided with a Viewing Card, which is inserted into a slot in the DIGITAL DECODER. The Viewing Card decrypts the TV signals chosen & paid for by the customer. A Viewing Card is a credit card sized smart card, which contains information about the channels that the customer has subscribed to. When inserted in the Decoder it enables viewing of the channels chosen by the subscriber. The subscription charges for viewing these channels are collected by the DTH operator.

However, DD DIRECT+ would be totally different, as Doordarshan would not be charging any subscription fee from the viewers, making the system cheap and affordable for all.

Receive system of DD DIRECT+ would be cheaper as compared to receive system of other DTH operators as all the channels proposed under Doordarshan project are Free-To-Air and therefore SMS and CAS are not envisaged. No smart card/conditional access system is required at the uplinking or downlinking site.