Tata Sky Review

There are lots of bloated things about India. Go ahead, label me an unpatriotic buffoon, pessimist and what have you, but even you will agree when we get talking about India's cable TV distribution system. For those not in the know, its a big mafia in itself. Each area is controlled by a goon or a similar equivalent and anyone making the slightest of noises is "taken care of". Thats an exaggeration of course, but you get the picture.

Even if you can live with that, you can certainly not be living with the quality of the signal or the choice of channels Mr. Cable Gangsta offers. And no Siree, no explanation offered for frequent outages and distorted signals. If you're lucky enough (and Mr. Gangsta and Co are in the mood...) they might, at best, give you a "kaam chaloo hai" reply or something to that effect.

We had had enough of the nonsense and Daddy dearest lost his cool when Mr. Gangsta distorted his favorite, CNBC. You know, that channel, wherein people watch some lifeless graphs all day and routinely skip 2 (or more) heartbeats in co-relation with the percentage change in stock price.

DTH was the only viable option in sight. DTH or Direct-To-Home is defined as the receiving of satellite programmes with a personal dish in an individual home. DTH happens to be far more superior than cable television, simply because it is beamed as a digital signal and not as an analog one. This allows for far more bandwidth, which translates into better picture and sound.

India caught up on the DTH bandwagon in early 2006 and now we have 2 contenders in that very space (2 more on the way, Reliance and Airtel, but thats still some time away, I presume) . Zee Corp. owned DishTV and TATA Sky. Today we'll be taking a look at the latter. (because I brought it, hee hee)

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Installation

Its a right breeze, you don't have to worry about one damn thing apart from the fact that you have the necessary permissions from your residential committee.( I have heard of more than one case, wherein the customer brought the set-top-box from the dealer, but wasn't allowed to fix the dish. So, watch it). The equipment which was brought to affix the dish was really cool. There was a really nifty spirit level which allowed the smart sods from Tata Sky to check whether the setup was absolutely in place. There was a lot more uber-cool equipment, which certainly sent the geek in me into a tizzy.

The whole thing will take a maximum of 2 hours, from fixing to calibration. You are surely going to be in for a surprise, when they finish doing their job.

Video

Oh, Tata Sky, where hath you been before? Seriously, its that kinda reaction when you first switch on the idiot box after the installation. The colors are vivid, bright and just like what they were intended to be anyway. This thing deserves as big a TV you can afford.

Even the news presenters look that much more better(the fairer sex, I mean), even whilst delivering the same old "Breaking News". I am also having a gala time watching all the kids channels. Cartoon Network, Pogo and their ilk. "Mom, I want that pack of chips, its got something free inside it!!" Hee, hee, I love being kid!

Audio

The audio, too, is nothing short of amazing. All the frequencies are reproduced quite brilliantly, and the better the speaker system you have, the better your experience. Speech, music, thunder and rain everything sounds quite lively. Well, more livelier than cable TV in any case.



What more is new?


Showcase

Tata gives you the option of watching certain movies of their choice and a lot of times of the day. You select, pay 75 bucks through phone or SMS, get the popcorn and watch the whole movie with just a single ad break. Neat, I say.

Active Content

This is the real fun part and what makes Tata Sky better than the competition. Active Content, is their way of offering a range of interactive content and keeping everyone happy.

You've got games, stories and learning sections for the kids (look at the marketing genius, they know todays kids have enormous influence over parents buying decisions... smart), cooking and newsroom (4 major news channels in one screen) for mom and pop, astrology for the future paranoid and what have you.

They also have Active Sports, which is a bit too optimized for cricket. You can't really blame Tata for this. India is a cricket crazy nation and that won't change for quite a while. Only thing is that they have taken the "Select camera angle" feature out. Should have kept it, really. Indians would love to know everything about cricket from every god damned angle Tata had to offer.

The pricing

Tata offers four packages in the range of Rs 250/- to 350/-. You can take a look at them over here.

We used to pay the cable guy 150 bucks and he was to increase it to 200 or something very soon. We seriously don't mind paying a bit more for really watching some TV rather than all the worldly noises being picked up the silly analog cable. There's enough disturbance in my life already, thank you very much.

Verdict

DTH is nothing short of an eye-opening experience and Tata Sky makes it all the more better. If you're still stuck with cable TV, you're genuinely missing something. No, a lot more, actually. Go, get it, quick!! The idiot box is dead, the smart box is here.

My rating 9/10

It was almost need of the hour...
I was thinking about switching to DTH service for a quite long time...
and I had a same kind of feeling you have regarding local cable operators (a.k.a. Gangsta & Co.) ... :ohyeah:

Just a quick note, by any chance have you ever seen the broadcast of DishTV I heard its quite inferior to that of TataSky but it also costs less... :whistling

And also the important part, customer service...
assuming that you bought that service very recently you might not needed their help... god forbid... but it plays a very important role...
Indian companies or for that matters any company selling product or services in India doesn't even recognize the need of good customer service... (a very general statement, no offence to anyone concerned)

So as you are using it, may be you can give us a update regarding this! :thumbup1:

Hope its going to be a great viewing experience for you!

I am using a tata sky connection for a while now and have faced no problems till date. I have made changes to my packages almost 3 times in last 6 months and whenever i have made any requests, they have been very prompt to revert and handle my issues. Their service quality is what impresses me the most. From what I have gathered, in comparison to other dth operators, TS has the best customer care service!

My experience of Tata sky DTH too has been very good. The installation was a breeze and the quality and content is great too.

I too rate in 9/10.:thumbup1:

Thanks, thats a great review.. the cable quality does suck.. Readin up to find the right DTH and based on reviews, tata seems better then the rest.

My family recently relocated to Chennai and we wanted to switch over to another DTH provider (We were with Dish TV for several years now). We called up the Tata Sky Helpline and got the request registered. Now comes the action.

Someone from Vishaly Agency called us and referred to our request for DTH. We gave him a time slot to visit us - he took sweet additional 4 hours to knock our door :-). We live in a high end apartment community and all wiring etc are fully concealed. All DTH cables are pre-wired and run from the roof to each apartment. The technician from the agency tells - 'these are not useful wires/cables and needs full replacement'. Just for the record, the same wire was used by my tenant previously and more than 100 apartments use the same quality pre-wiring without any issues on quality of images or sound. He wanted to wrap up(as it was already 6ish in the evening. He just 'ordered' us to get the wires changed and then call him. 'Yes my Lordship!'.

I spoke to the Agency Manager the next day and he arranged one another person to get the DTH service installed. He comes up and rips off the wires off the concealed wiring extensions and goes 'Sir....this wire won’t do any good. Pl change them'. I was awestruck....he pulled out the extension which was the major source of DTH wiring. The technician felt very proud of helping me identify that the wire won’t work.....remember my neighbors are still using the same cables.

Putting more pressure to the agent, I was informed someone will visit on Sunday and no prizes for guessing what happened. Monday I call them and ask them to come between 2 and 6 PM and get the work done. They accepted and we were waiting....again no prizes for guessing.

Tuesday, they come in again and say....you should not have ripped off that cable, we could have made it work. What the ****?

Its Tuesday evening now…..till now, I have no connection. Having gone through this ordeal, I worked out an option and bounced it to the technician and he happily agreed to do it. This is going to cost me a few thousand bucks now. They have promised to come in tomorrow. What is the impact? –

1. The concealed cable extensions were ripped off – I have no way to get them connected easily
2. This would impact multi room facility which was wired. I cannot do multi room STBs now and we all have to depend on one TV (Damn Tata Sky)
3. All this is because I insisted that I get the connections on the pre-wiring, which is monetary impact to Vishaly agencies or the technicians they sent

Have brought this out to Tata Sky Customer Service and they say they will make sure it gets fixed by tomorrow (same sentence the agent kept saying all these days).

Easy to ask: Why can’t you move to another provider – this is why I don’t want to:
1. Damage is already done to my infrastructure
2. My son wants Tata Sky, as he is bored with Dish TV now
3. Wanted to go for the recording feature

God Save Me!:no:

Tata Sky is undoubtedly the best DTH operator in the present time. Its offerings are the cheapest in the market along with superb service. The customer service part is also very satisfactory. The movie in demand section has great collection of both old and new movies and that too at a minimal cost.

When I was thinking about going for DTH few months back, I had Tata sky in mind and was prepared to go for it. They have been heavily promoting it in advertiments as well....but around that time...I read about Big TV from Reliance..there was a review published in CHIP.....decided to go for Big TV....and its' been a good experience.....also going to try Tata sky to see who stands where.