Purchase:
Bought the STB on 13th Sept from Forum Bangalore. Got it installed on 30th Sept. Learning from reviews here, I bot it 2 weeks before my T-Sky was supposed to die. For Big, 2 weeks time was also insufficient, anyway, Tata doesn’t kill your account till 4 days after account hits zero. So was not without tv for a single day.
From 13th to 30th, I called them 20-22 times. After installation, it takes them 24 hrs for activation. For me it took less then that.
Post Install:
1st, 2nd Oct being holidays, gave me lot of time to play with Big.
This is what I found/noticed:
Audio quality is better then Tata. Has more depth and detail.
I have Sony Bravia 32" S Series, Video looks similar to Tata, but wont comment till I try Big with Component cable
I saw a USB port on STB, but dont know whats the use. No way to reach the USB device through menus
No way to view account balance like Tata has
STB is smaller then Tata, but has a big ugly adaptor that eats lot of space on your switch board or your power strip
Paying 1990 for a year is cheaper then Tata’s 300/month. Only channel loss I suffered was Colors.
I now able to watch 9x-M, Zee Premier and many other channels that were not in Tata or were offered under some add-on package. I dont care about sports channels, so didnt check what channels I gained/lost
Looking at the crap all channels serve these days, only criteria I used was the cost. And Big wins here Tata comes to 3600/year, Big comes to 2000/year.
Technology wise, I will be dissatisfied till I get HDTV. So MPEG3 or 4 or 5, sound all same to me..!!
Me and my wife both enjoy the AIR/Rainbow radio channels, need to see till how many days ambani is able to provide them. Tata also used to provide radio, but I think is out of transponder space..!
To conclude:
To me, all service providers in India are backward. In terms of quality of service, customer service etc. And this will continue till India gets really fast, honest and brutal consumer courts and I think by 2050 it can be achieved.
*About Big:
*Being from Reliance family, you can expect poor quality on all fronts, fraud, cheating, including incidents like engineer stealing away recharge voucher..!
All DTH providers are free to add/remove channels from the package you buy. So what you are getting today may go away tomorrow. And being Indian consumer, consumer’s voice is as useless as a street dog’s bark.. so enjoy the channels till they show up.. and when there is none, there is always doordarshan.. simply priceless...!!
Other Crap:
I have stayed in US and have used Comcast and T-mobile. Most of the times I was able to get good, fast, useful and polite response from their customer care. I hope one day Indian businesses would learn from west. US companies go bankrupt servicing customers, Indian customers go bankrupt calling Indian companies for service.
Lets hope for very best for customers in west where Indian companies are buying companies like grocery.. hope they will not treat customers same way as they do here... best of luck US, UK people!