Airtel Digital TV

Airtel DTH got installed at my place in Mumbai yesterday and I am very happy with the overall experience !!

Installation:

I had heard a lot of horror stories about all DTH providers taking weeks to install the dish at a customer’s place. In my case, the dish got installed the next morning!

I bought the set top box from an Airtel customer care center at 7:30 pm. The installation guys came next morning at 10 am and Digital TV was up and running by 11:45 am.

Here is how it went for me:

1. Bought the set top box from the Airtel customer care center

   
   




2. Called toll free number to register the set top box and arrange an installation. The guy gave me a range of one hour slots to select from. I picked 10 am on the next day. The call was long...went on for around 25 minutes.

   
   




3. Next day the engineer calls me at 8:30 am to confirm the appointment. He reaches my place at 10am. There were two engineers - both very professional and very polite. They were very careful about where they placed the dish - they made sure there were no hanging wires (if the wires sway in the wind it distorts the signal). Digital TV was up and running by 11:45 am.

   
   

Pros:

*1. Fast installation and good service

1. Good range of small, add-on packages. I did not want all the channels in the Ultra Pack (424 pm)..just the movie channels. So I took the mega pack (249 pm) + Cine Plus add on pack (35 pm). Complete list of channels is here https://saveondish.com/airtel-digital-tv-packages-pricing/

   
   




2. Great channel clarity...looks great on my Sony LCD :)) Airtel (like BigTV) uses MPEG4 in place of MPEG2 used by Tata Sky and DishTV. From what I have found reading on the internet, MPEG4 gives better quality in fast moving images like football matches or fast action scenes.

   
   




3. 10 Worldspace channels

   
   




4. One remote for TV and settop box (worked perfectly with my TV)

   
   




5. 20% Larger dish. Apparently that provides better reception during rains. We will have to wait till the rains come to check that!

   
   

*Cons:

*1. No personal video recorder (PVR) facility yet like Tata Sky Plus. But I think they should launch it in a few months. When that happens, I am hoping they will come up with a good upgrade plan for existing subscribers

1. Bad, non-informative website. There is not information on the webiste about Cine Plus and other add-on packages