Things to know before getting a DTH connection!

Things to know before getting a DTH connection!

If you are sick and tired of your cable guy, you might be considering getting a DTH connection.

You have lots of choices today. Zee Dish TV, Tata Sky, Reliance Big TV, Sun Direct, Airtel Digital TV…

The fact remains that it could be a bad investment.

Some things to consider before you go and buy yourself a DTH connection!

DTH connection would prove to be more expensive in short and long term.

You pay a big amount initially for the connection which includes charges for the STB Box, Dish and sometimes a subscription for 6-12 months.

All the DTH providers in India are offering locked STB boxes. That means you cannot use a Dish TV STB box with a Reliance Big TV connection card.

There is no return policy offered. You are stuck with the box and the dish if you decide not to continue with that service in the future.

A DTH connection would only work on one TV. If you want to connect multiple TVs, you need separate account for each.

Most of the service providers in India offer a child connection which has a discounted price for a second (third or fourth) television set.

It is often a hassle to make the things work. Especially if you want one package on one TV and another package on the second.

There is also this major hassle of channels. You are unlikely to find a package which has all the channels you want and it is a value for money deal.

Most of the times you are required to pay for multiple channels to get access to one channel which you need.

Some of the companies do not even have options to get all the channels available in the market.

Another problem occurs when a channel decides to raise its price. The DTH provider then removes the channel from the package and you are required to pay an additional fee for that.

So, in some cases you might not end up getting all the channels in the package you get initially by the time the package validity ends.

There are lots of other factors which makes DTH a much more complicated decision compared to the old provider Cable Guy. He made things a lot easier for us by dealing with media companies. In the end, you tend to get a better value for money deal from him rather than a DTH provider.

The only problem is that in most cases the Cable Guy is this evil maniac who drives you crazy even when it is pretty clear that you would end up discarding him to get a DTH connection.

We can only hope that the Cable TV industry wakes up to the mess and realize that they have much to lose by providing a lousy service to the end customer.

We can also just hope that TRAI wakes up and make the DTH companies offer a better value and product to the customer.

We should have access to an open STB which can work with any connection. We should have the power to choose the channels we want to see and pay for individually.

And we should have the end satisfaction knowing that we are indeed the king in this market. Which we are not at this point of time. Definitely.