Sun Direct DTH service is primarily popular in South India and want to grab a market share in North India. They boast to be the cheapest in India at INR 999 for a year full of TV subscription.
Sun Direct DTH has launched India’s first High Definition (HD) TV service. Well, its not exactly HD TV channel service, but it is a good start. Read on to find more.
First, lets look into how the setup is gonna work:
The service will be similar to standard DTH service. However, the new set top box (STB) will have HDMI and Optical/Coaxial output for HD video and Dolby 5.1 sound respectively. You can connect your HDTV through HDMI cable and 5.1 home theater system using optical/coaxial cable. It is still not clear if the the HD signals will be 720p or 1080i or 1080p. The sound output will be Dolby Digital 5.1.
The service actually delivers only 2 South Indian channels in HD. Names of which are unknown and could not be found anywhere. Looking at the following images on their website, it looks like they are gonna be movie channels:
This is probably because none of the TV channels in India are producing content in HD. Looking at large number of SD TVs compared to HD TVs in Indian households, I do not think that they are planning on moving to HD either.
In addition to delivering only 2 movie channels in HD, the Sun direct HD service seems to be too costly. Here is the package they are offering:
An entry cost of > 10k and a monthly price of INR 100 per HD channel is simply absurd. Even if they have the cheapest yearly charge of INR 999, it does not justify charging insane amounts per month for the same content in better quality.
Despite the high entry cost and subscription fee and only 2 HD channels, the service does get the credit to make HD transmissions in India a reality. Hopefully we will see fruitful results when competition warms up in this arena.
3 responses to “Sun Direct DTH launches India’s first HD TV service”
it good to see sundirect hd in india
Where you able to find out what HD channels were launchedd….do have any more informaton on 2 HD channels on Sun direct and other HD channels in India.
[…] Sun Direct HD DTH set top box exchange offer has raised some eyebrows in the industry, Economic Times reports. According to rival DTH companies, consumers are not at the liberty to exchange their set top boxes as, apparently, they do not own them. […]