In India, you wait for everything. Ticket counters. Gol Gappa counters. Wedding Venues. Sulabh Shauchalya. So when your Tata Sky connection(with the grandiose slangy tom tom of "isko laga dala toh.) made you wait for 10 days to deliver the holy grail of "satellite tv", one wasn’t exactly surprised.
With everyone from your jhadoo wala to your kirana store havin suddenly become the "preferred" dealer for the Digicomp(sufficiently hep sounding name for the tatasky set-top box?), drooling with their credit card bartizans in their hands, it was tough to ignore the brouhaha.
Compounded by the mandatory diktat of having to use CAS in South delhi, and the anti-dish tv rumblings of bad service and reception quality, I chose to ignore the dishy 160 channel offering and went for the Tata and Sky alliance. Here are my unbiased pointers to the experience, which may help you be prepared to deal with the situation but frankly, , dear tv addict, you don’t have too many choices. Here goes.
Choice? What choice?: The TATA SKY subscription package(which offered no choices except a trapping 6 month free ride) grossly under delivers on the real promise of DTH satellite tv.
To me the real freedom from the cable tv operator meant the freedom to watch what I want, and NOT watch what I don’t. Tata Sky does NOT deliver on that parameter(in all fairness, nor does DIsh tV I think) .
There is nothing new in terms of channels which we hadn’t really seen. Moreover, where are all the free to air channels? Hallmark? The cable operator(whose free to air still has many free to air channels(especially music channels) which are nowhere to be seen on.
They should really have all the free to air channels that are beamed across India. Even greek ones
Heck, I shud have the choice to watch even the chinese, germanm frecnh tv if I want. But not so. .
And I am willing to pay for premium channels anywhere in the world. Even playboy( moral policing be damned!). And I definitely dont want to watch the DD north east channel, with its mediocre governmenty programs. I just want quality stuff. Not numbers of channels that dont mean anything. Please.
Your AV channel has just been hijacked: One of the first things that got my goat was the fact that the set top box DOES NOT connect to the usual cable connector at the back of ur TV but hogs ur AV channel. Yeah the one to which you connect your DVD player. Which practically means that all the fancy functions on you tv remote, like the ability to watch the last 4 watched channels, auto scan, etc. are rendered useless.
Startup Time!: It took you 3 seconds to switch on your tv and hit the f\channel you want. No such luck. getting to your favourite sport channel in lightning speeds are days of the past.
Tata sky remote hell; the death of simplicity: Ever had a tough time teaching your elderly parents how to SMS or use the cell phone properly. Well I haven’ had success yet. Now the same nightmare comes to TV viewing. First, you have to juggle between your tv remote and your set top remote for swtiching on both the TV and the set top box. Volume controls and other fancy tv features like picture control, going back to the last 4 watched channels etc are a nightmare to operate now, if not impossible. This would of course vary for the kind of tv you have.
In Tata Sky, with its multiple buttons of favourites, home, channel up down, selection up down and a whole lot of bizarre options, it is clear no usability scientist has been involved in the way this remote and its functionality has been designed.
Even the volume control isnt responsive enuff. You have to adjust that and your TV remote’s volume control to get the optimum sound. And that changes with channel to channel. Eeeeek!
3 digit channel numbers: Want to hit neo sports on your TV instantly? just punch 411. you got dat. 4.1.1. Its 3 digits for any channel you wanna flip too. ^#$%^& I don’t have expletives vulgar enuff for anyone who thot of this concept. Why can’t you start from 1? Like the good old days.
Search and Scan banner: Shoo! Go away: If u hate those movie cds with obnoxius half screen ads, yeah the ones that cover up priyanka chopra’s petite legs(or akshays hairy ones if u are a female reader;-), this functionality of the tata sky will also have you tearing your hair.
So, what is the search and scan banner? Well, everytime you flip channels, you get this blocky blue quarter-screen banner at the bottom which "helps" you to know what on now and next. Ok, we love that. Thank you veru much. But can it please go away now? Shoo. Shush! Coz I can’t see what it says its showing.
Blue screen between channels.waiting, initialising! It’s bad enuff having to watch your PC at office being booted up and staring at the silly windows logo for long times, this nightmare now comes to your tv.
From the startup to using the so-called interactive features to flipping channles, you have to fight the urge to smash your tv screen, as everytime u push the buttons on your tata sky remote to access fucntions like Home, Organiser, Activ, there is an agonising wait. In this instant sms world, dat is a major irritation. thumbs down. Whats more, eveyrtime you flip the channels you are flashed with a blue screen(milliseconds but still) before u see the visual of the next channel. Help!
Bakwaas on Demand:** Satellite tv is for niche tv viewing? right? Wrong. WIth its elementray offering of "latesht" hindi(no english yet!) movies, which you have already seen or dont want to see, this is hardly the ideal movie on demand service. Hell, I wanna see kurosowa. I wanna see shyam benegal. Update your non existent movie database library, folks. This is the internet age.
And the pay per view concept is not even mentioned anywhere. I wanna see the country music awards and the world bodybuilding building championship live. Even if star tv isnt showing it.!
Selecting favourites. Whose?: Tucked away somewhere amongst the blue black and yellow and green buttons of your tata sky remote, is the favourites button. Suppose to be based on a preselection by you. But if you want to watch fashion TV and Zee trendz tv one after the other, you cant. U might get HBO in between. Because dats the sequence Tata sky has in its organised set. Still figuring out htis one. Scream again.
Help, I hate Raageshwari! The morons that we consumers are, we need education. First you make a simple thing like tv viewing complicated. Then you start a 24/7 channel that helps us "learn" how to use it with the nasal twangy and artificial as hell Raageshwari and a wanna be cute lil girl telling us how simple it is to organise what really didn’t need organising in the first place. Can we block this out and can it work only when we need it? Why does it have to be in the list of tv channels?
All in all. I dont know if there is hope. Each service whether tata sky or dish or wotever, has to deliver better standards in usability and quality of services as well majorly up the content variety to take tv viewing to a new level . Till then, i would request Ba