India’s Dish TV is to launch a conditional access module (CAM) to allow consumers with set top boxes from other direct to home (DTH) satellite TV operators to switch to Dish TV’s channel feed.
According to the The Economic Times, the CAM will cost INR 990 as part of an annual subscription offering 95 channels. Dish Freedom requires a device be inserted into a common interface slot in an MPEG-4 set top box (STB), plus the realignment of the dish antenna to the frequencies used by Dish TV.
“We expect inactive DTH households in metros and smaller cities which are not happy with their direct-to-home connections to buy our product and switch to Dish TV signals,” Salil Kapoor, chief operating officer, Dish TV, told The Economic Times.
The CAM will allow access to some channels, however it will not provide customers with Dish TV’s value added services such as pay per view movies. It will initially be available in five locations in India, prior to being rolled out across the country.
There are currently six private DTH providers in India – combining to provide 32.05 million viewers with pay TV - with Dish TV leading the pack in terms of subscriber numbers. Each are, according to clause 7.1 of DTH licensing conditions from the Telecommunications Regulation Authority of India (TRAI), required to use open architecture for their STBs.
In practice, this has not been the case. In June, following a complaint, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) ruled that India’s STBs should become technically and commercially interoperable according to the terms of the operator’s broadcast licence.
Responding to a Tamil Nadu Progressive Consumer Centre petition opposing proprietary STB hardware, TDSAT then directed the Union government to mandate the Bureau of Indian Standards to lay down standards for MPEG-4 technology.
TDSAT said by setting MPEG-4 as India’s set top box (STB) standard, consumers would be granted freedom to receive another MPEG-2 based DTH bouquet by inserting a CAM in their existing MPEG-4 STB’s common interface slot, rather than having to buy another STB.
MPEG-2 boxes cannot be adapted to decode MPEG-4 signals, so do not represent a feasible option for standardisation.
According to the The Economic Times, the CAM will cost INR 990 as part of an annual subscription offering 95 channels. Dish Freedom requires a device be inserted into a common interface slot in an MPEG-4 set top box (STB), plus the realignment of the dish antenna to the frequencies used by Dish TV.
“We expect inactive DTH households in metros and smaller cities which are not happy with their direct-to-home connections to buy our product and switch to Dish TV signals,” Salil Kapoor, chief operating officer, Dish TV, told The Economic Times.
The CAM will allow access to some channels, however it will not provide customers with Dish TV’s value added services such as pay per view movies. It will initially be available in five locations in India, prior to being rolled out across the country.
There are currently six private DTH providers in India – combining to provide 32.05 million viewers with pay TV - with Dish TV leading the pack in terms of subscriber numbers. Each are, according to clause 7.1 of DTH licensing conditions from the Telecommunications Regulation Authority of India (TRAI), required to use open architecture for their STBs.
In practice, this has not been the case. In June, following a complaint, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) ruled that India’s STBs should become technically and commercially interoperable according to the terms of the operator’s broadcast licence.
Responding to a Tamil Nadu Progressive Consumer Centre petition opposing proprietary STB hardware, TDSAT then directed the Union government to mandate the Bureau of Indian Standards to lay down standards for MPEG-4 technology.
TDSAT said by setting MPEG-4 as India’s set top box (STB) standard, consumers would be granted freedom to receive another MPEG-2 based DTH bouquet by inserting a CAM in their existing MPEG-4 STB’s common interface slot, rather than having to buy another STB.
MPEG-2 boxes cannot be adapted to decode MPEG-4 signals, so do not represent a feasible option for standardisation.