New HD channels on Airtel

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Prashant_Jindal

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I noticed today that some new HD channels are listed in Airtel.

1. Star Plus (Channel 125)
2. Star Movies (Channel 211)
3. Star Gold (Channel 180)
4. Star World (Channel 150)

I am not sure if these channels are being broadcasted as of now or not. But Airtel website do mention them along with charges.

Can someone with Airtel HD confirm this? How is the PQ and AQ?
 
Have just now sent the request to Airtel to activate the HD package,let's see how it goes,will keep this forum updated accordingly.
Also awaiting the Sports HD chanels,
Of course thanks to Prashant for information.
Cheers
 
As expected Airtel sent a reply that process will take 5 days, however on contacting their CC,I was told that my Airtel dth connection had to be realigned to satellite 2 so that's why 5 days.
Incidentally Airtel enggineer had comevalmost a month back to realign , but of no use.
I was told to confirm realignment , Chanel 999 should work .
So will update in next few days
 
umeshdhingra said:
As expected Airtel sent a reply that process will take 5 days, however on contacting their CC,I was told that my Airtel dth connection had to be realigned to satellite 2 so that's why 5 days.
Incidentally Airtel enggineer had comevalmost a month back to realign , but of no use.
I was told to confirm realignment , Chanel 999 should work .
So will update in next few days
Click to expand...

Aren't you already on SES7 satelite? I think Airtel is re-aligning all the customer's dish to new satelite SES7.
 
I have one more query.

For HD recorder connection, does set top box belong customer or Airtel?

In case of SD connection cancellation, Airtel guys take the set top box away as that belongs to Airtel. I don't know why as they do not provide lifetime warranty for it so how come it belong to them. If something happens to box or replacement, they charge 300 for the same.

I am confused. Airtel HD recorder costs 4000 and if set top box does not belong to customer, it is highly overpriced. In that case I may wanna go for TataSky HD.
 
Last edited:
Hi Prashant,
I hv used all DTH service providers till date, started with Dish, switched to Reliance and then switched to Airtel and added Tata .
Even though I am satisfied with Airtel (Dish was worst PQ) and Reliance was zero customer service, I give 100 percent marks to Tata sky DTH,specially the customer care and their online account services.
Also Tata Sly dth is offering all asli HD channels for quite some time, except moviesnow.
Yes, you do hv a point on the discrepancies on return of faulty set top box set, but , I am still in favour of Tata sky dth.
Will talk to Tata sky dth abt the faulty HDR etc and post my comments on Sunday.
Cheers
 
Ordered for upgrade to Airtel HD recorder today at 1 PM and to my surprise Airtel guys came to my house at 3 PM. That was pretty fast.

Airtel HD recorder box is bigger than what I expected. Also the build quality is not good. It gets heated quickly too.

There are two cables now from the dish to the STB. They have used one of the existing cable and added one more cable. Ofcourse they had to change the LNB also for getting two cables connected to dish. Signal strength is just 40% but quality is now 100%. For SD box, strength used to be 80% and quality 60%. Not sure why strength is so low in case of HD DVR. I guess may be because of two cables.

Package was activated in 30 minutes.

SD channel: PQ has improved a lot. Picture is sharper and brighter. But I think Audio was better in non-HD box.

HD channel: PQ is very good. Audio is good but SD Channels have better Audio. I do not have HT so can't confirm 5.1 DD. Star Gold has amazing PQ. Watched Rajneeti in HD and it was better than expected. All star HD channels are good. But HD programming is different than SD counterpart. Loved the Discovery and NGC too. Somehow did not like Movies now HD. It looks upscaled version of Movies Now SD. Both have same programming and same advertisements. I doubt Movies now is broadcasted in HD.

Airtel HD package cost 65 Rs which include Discovery, NGC, Movies Now, Star Plus, Star Gold, Star World and Star Movies.
 
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What the hell. Just found a big problem with this Airtel HD Recorder.

Programming guide does not get updated for majority of the channels. And recorder do not work for any channel which does not have programming guide updated. So I can not record, pause most of the channels.

Can anyone with Airtel HD Recorder confirm this? Are you getting EPG updated in your box?

I have raised a complaint with Airtel for this. Lets see if it gets resolved or not. People on some forums have raised this concern and it is not resolved for last three months. It looks like I may have to go into legal action against Airtel to get it resolved. :(
 
Prashant_Jindal said:
What the hell. Just found a big problem with this Airtel HD Recorder.

Programming guide does not get updated for majority of the channels. And recorder do not work for any channel which does not have programming guide updated. So I can not record, pause most of the channels.

Can anyone with Airtel HD Recorder confirm this? Are you getting EPG updated in your box?

I have raised a complaint with Airtel for this. Lets see if it gets resolved or not. People on some forums have raised this concern and it is not resolved for last three months. It looks like I may have to go into legal action against Airtel to get it resolved. :(
Click to expand...
Even TS+HD depends completely on EPG and you could not even pause or rewind live TV unless EPG exist. Infact recordings stop abruptly if EPG vanish even for a second for the programs under recording (happened several times during the first few days of IPL 2011 when several people did not get updated EPG which included Max HD channel - so TS ended up refreshing EPG for all for several days which was abruptly disabling recordings or switching to live telecast when watching rewind'ed coverage). However TS is good in updating EPG thought about 10% of the times its not accurate!

On a side note this might well be the reason why Dish TV is probably the ONLY DTH operator today without a DVR - as they don't provide an EPG for relayed DD Direct+ channels! This is even when they advertise those channels like they are provided by them when in reality they take those channels directly from DD TPs (this arrangement is actually best as it saves Dish TV in investing in more redundant TPs and expanding their uplinking head unites - best for us as we get best quality of such relayed channels).

So if EPG is unavailable for that channels, you could not even do Time based recording as otherwise possible on Airtel HD DVR?
 
Yesterday the Airtel EPG had lots of issues thru the day, and , inspire of me switching on and off the set top box , the EPG didn't work properly.hoping that it's fine today
 
Yesterday night I switched the STB off and on. After that EPG got updated and I could do record and pause functions.
Why is this EPG problem seen only on HD Recorder? I never faced this in non-HD Airtel Box.

HD channels are pretty good. I wonder how they look in TataSky+ HD. I heard TS has better quality than Airtel. Must be awesome. Picture is too good. No pixelation. Now I can make full use of my LCD :)

Only thing remaining is buying a HT (probably Onkyo HTS3400).
 
prankey said:
Even TS+HD depends completely on EPG and you could not even pause or rewind live TV unless EPG exist. Infact recordings stop abruptly if EPG vanish even for a second for the programs under recording (happened several times during the first few days of IPL 2011 when several people did not get updated EPG which included Max HD channel - so TS ended up refreshing EPG for all for several days which was abruptly disabling recordings or switching to live telecast when watching rewind'ed coverage). However TS is good in updating EPG thought about 10% of the times its not accurate!

On a side note this might well be the reason why Dish TV is probably the ONLY DTH operator today without a DVR - as they don't provide an EPG for relayed DD Direct+ channels! This is even when they advertise those channels like they are provided by them when in reality they take those channels directly from DD TPs (this arrangement is actually best as it saves Dish TV in investing in more redundant TPs and expanding their uplinking head unites - best for us as we get best quality of such relayed channels).

So if EPG is unavailable for that channels, you could not even do Time based recording as otherwise possible on Airtel HD DVR?
Click to expand...

So there is no failsafe option for recording in case EPG is not working. It depends so much on EPG that in case it is wrongly updated, recording will be a waste. I guess DTH companies have lot to learn. These companies make mockery of the customers as they know there is no strong legal procedure in India.

I have not tried time based recording yet. Will do it later and update the information here.
 
I forgot to share one thing about Airtel CC. I wonder who trains them.

New HD plus package cost 65 Rs but I could not find it online to apply in my package. So Yesterday I applied a topup of HD Plus which was around 40rs. But it had only Discovery, NGC and Movies Now HD.
I wanted other channels too so called up the customer care. He said this package has these 3 channels only. I told him website has listed a HD package for 65 Rs which has Star channels too. He said there is no such package. I asked him how many HD packages they have. He said they have two packages (one cost 44 incl tax and other cost 71) but both of them have same 3 channels only. I asked how is this possible. Two package costing 44 and 71; still having same channels only. I told him package with 71 rs will have star channels too. But he said he has checked the information and it does not contain them. Finally I asked him to apply that 71 Rs topup because I thought this executive does not know what he is talking. He applied the topup and bingo. I got all 4 star HD channel too. :)

If Airtel CC does know much about their packages and topup, how can they even handle any technical query. I dont think they will understand if we talk about HD resolution or DD5.1 audio. :)
 
Prashant_Jindal said:
If Airtel CC does know much about their packages and topup, how can they even handle any technical query. I dont think they will understand if we talk about HD resolution or DD5.1 audio. :)
Click to expand...

Not a chance.... Last time I tried he was asking me, are you getting sound or not .... :mad::sad:
 
Another thing which I found.

Some of the channels are coming through one tuner and remaining channels on the second tuner. It is not like odd channels on one tuner and even channels on second tuner. There is no pattern.

Now if I start a recording for a channel on tuner 1, I can not watch any channel which comes via tuner 1. I can only watch channels coming via tuner 2. Similarly if recording is started for a channel on tuner 2, I can only watch channels on tuner 1 and not tuner 2. Due to this, a lot of restriction is there. This is a bad feature. They should have kept one tuner for all channels and second tuner for recording purpose. This way if we start a recording, we will be able to watch all channels.

Are other Airtel HD recorder facing this problem too or is this issue specific to my box only?

How does it work in case of TataSky+ HD? Can we watch all channels even if recording is started for one channel?

This problem was resolved after I switched off/on the STB. Now I can record a channel and watch any other channel with no issues.
 
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This thread is interesting. Lot to learn about HD broadcast in India. I have decided not to take HD DTH at least for another year. I would rather download HD contents or buy Blu-Rays and watch them in their glory. I read somewhere that a 720p BRRIP is much better than the 1080i HD DTH channels.
 
baijuxavior said:
This thread is interesting. Lot to learn about HD broadcast in India. I have decided not to take HD DTH at least for another year. I would rather download HD contents or buy Blu-Rays and watch them in their glory. I read somewhere that a 720p BRRIP is much better than the 1080i HD DTH channels.
Click to expand...

May be u r right. 720p BRRIP is better than 1080i DTH. HD DTH is still in infancy stage. It is yet to grow. But I could not wait any longer so bought this one. Still I am sure once you watch HD channel, it is difficult to watch SD counterpart. People with HT will enjoy HD channel more as they can get 5.1 audio.

Picture is lot sharper and colors dynamic in HD channels. Sometimes it feels awkward to me watching HD channel as I was not used to watching them on my LCD. I have always watched downloaded movies on my laptop only.
 
This HD recorder has mind of its own. Morning when I did recording of one channel, it stopped showing many channels. It will say you are not subscribed to the channel.

I complained to Airtel. Their executive came to check and guess what. This problem did not show up. We could do recording of one channel and still see any other channel. Only if two recordings are done simultaneously, it will not let you switch to any other channel. Which is the intended behavior.

But Programming guide was not working well. Sometimes it shows up info and sometimes it does not. Star Movies HD and Movies now HD showed info but not other HD channels. He tried to download the latest software but it did not work out. It did not even start beyond 0%. I think someone else has also raised this concern in the forum. Then the guy replaced LNB on the dish, still the problem was there. Finally he said they will replace the box tomorrow. Hope that new box tomorrow works fine and gets its software downloaded.

Although I dont think programming guide not getting updated regularly has to do anything with the box. They must have this problem in the system.
 
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