It looks like TataSky pushed a software update yesterday for all its TataSky HD customers which updated their set top box software to a version which contains a major bug. Once this update is applied, the HD channels won’t have Dolby Digital sound over HDMI. Instead, they will switch to the traditional stereo sound system.
I have been following the HD launches in India closely since the last year, and this is what I think might have happened:
TataSky launched the HD set top box in India in June 2010. At that time, its competitors had already launched HD set top boxes and were pulling in TataSky’s customers who wanted to switch to HD. In a race to get ahead, they launched the HD box in a hurry . In Feb 2011, they launched TataSky+ HD with an updated software version. This software version had a revamped UI, but had this weird bug where HDMI did not carry Dolby Digital audio. Instead, the users have to use optical or coaxial out from the box to get multichannel Dolby Digital audio to their home theaters. And yesterday, they pushed the same buggy piece of software to normal TataSky HD boxes as well. And since these are mandatory over the air updates, everyone’s boxes were updated.
It looks like no body even cared to test the software properly. As, apparently, the menu system shows a big logo of TataSky+ even in normal (non plus) set top boxes. I was hoping that they would fix the HDMI issue in the new software, but now I have lost all hope. A company, who does not even check a fairly obvious visual issue, would hardly care about something as particular as the HDMI issue.
I guess the only possible way to get this issue fixed is to bombard the customer care with complaints about this. So I urge everyone here who is facing this issue to register a complaint. Also, if you have registered at mytatasky.com, it will be much better to log a complaint there in the My Queries section as that seems to get much more attention.
