As the Indian DTH television industry ages into its 4th year, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) Big TV is making a big splash through Big TV.

The Indian DTH market is estimated to touch 30 million over the next 5-6 years.

Big TV will be the fifth player in the Indian market. Tata Sky had recently dropped prices. Sun and Dish have come up with innovative offers to woo their share. Bharti Airtel and Videocon are yet to initiate their services.

Big TV will launch with ~200 channels including 32 movie and 20 music channels. There are various service bouquets priced approx between Rs.250-300 a month with specific offerings targeting the south Indian audience.

Their website lists several offers, but was understandably plagued by busy / slow response at the time of writing of this article.

ADAG has a substantial advantage owing to its telecom and entertainment businesses. Despite being a late entrant, it should be able to do well given the already existing spread of the group and the nascent market. It may be recollected that ADAG is already a 4 year sponsor for the IPL.

One of the let-downs has however been the absence of a HD service provider. Switching of services would mean yet another generation of set-top boxes for the customers and purchase of a whole lot of HD content for the service providers.

It’s time to wake-up and embrace the HD standard rather than to restart on technology that we already know has been in existence for years.

Popularity: 21%