It looks like TataSky is leaving no stone unturned to free up valuable bandwidth on its platform. Due to delays from ISRO in providing the promised transponders, TataSky is loosing the edge in the highly competitive DTH market in India due to lack of HD channels on its platform. TataSky has the lowest number of HD channels out of all the DTH operators in India.
TataSky has tied up with Broadcom to provide them with MPEG4 based standard definition set top boxes which they are replacing free of cost for all of their old subscribers. These are the oldest boxes that subscribers purchased during initial years of DTH launch in India. All SD+, HD, HD+ & newer SD boxes are MPEG4 based. TataSky plans to replace around 5 – 6 million such boxes over a period of one year.
This move will free up a lot of bandwidth on TataSky’s existing transponders as MPEG4 technology takes up a lot less bandwidth than MPEG2 without much loss in quality.
[via BGR.in]
