IPTV India: Against DTH?
by Abhishek on August 15, 2008
Viewers are spoilt for choice. DTH is a credible option and at the start of the day, I had no frigging clue to the pent up demand for the same. The Direct To Home players like Tatas and Zee have spent oodles of cash on advertisements and hardware roll out that it appears unlikely that a newer player would be able to get a toehold.
Here in the grand strategy of Anil Ambani unfolds. He got the ad labs, poured in money in content creation and would make a huge moolah out of “exclusive” deals with media players. The value added services is a growing market and there is a HUGE space for exclusive content; I was surprised to know that there is a seperate channel for gardening; Tata has one for home tuitions. Although, it cannot replace the classrooms but then parents are keen for any degree of experimentation.
Coming back to IPTV. Does anyone of you readers think that this could make any degree of impact on the viewership? I feel that most of the people mistrust the landline outages (which are so frequent) unless there is a fibre to home coming to their homes with simple instructions to operate the set top box. The present hardware is designed to confuse the first time users; somewhere it ought to ring the bell to make it as simple as possible.
I would reserve my comments on the two competing platforms till the market matures up. Reliance is lying down low with it’s broadband offering. I am still wondering as to what has been the issue at their end. Why are they delaying the commercial launch? There are any number of ideas floating around and if they claim to be India’s number one network as far as the coverage is concerned, they ought to focus on their cherries. Or else, it would die a virgin.
5 comments
i am waiting for airtel to launch its IPTV services. i really do not trust BSNL with anything.
by Sushubh on 16th Aug 2008 at 01:19 am. #
Same here. Although, I feel that IPTV would be a non starter ever since Airtel is also planning to jump in the fray. Given their limited reach in the country, it would be stupid to focus on these issues. DH offers them a much wider reach and they can focus on content creation as well as cross media deals to further their broadband market. As it is, it is pathetic with a customised Google page doing the works.
by Abhishek on 16th Aug 2008 at 08:34 am. #
well… they are the best ISP anyone can get at the moment in india. and i hope their IPTV services turn out to be as good.
DTH has issues of connectivity during bad weather. IPTV on the other hand works through wired connections and should be better in comparison.
by Sushubh on 16th Aug 2008 at 10:41 pm. #
IPTV would certainly compete with DTH as both of these technologies have a similar product offerings. The VOD service on DTH is called the NVOD( Near Video on Demand), where as in IPTV its a two way interaction and is called video on Demand.IPTV would cater to the high end segment who would be willing to pay that extra amount for a qulaity interactive service. If infrastructure and pricing woes are tamed, IPTV would certainly make it BIG..!!
by Manish Dixith on 30th Dec 2008 at 02:21 pm. #
Hi,
This is a good initiative for the DTH revolutions going over, IP TV can be further established for few foreign channels as well which DTH is not providing, Clarity concerns better cabling to be permitted by our government.
by Vijay periasamy on 08th Jul 2009 at 07:45 pm. #