157 channels and there is nothing on....

Bruce Springsteen wrote a sometime back, called 57 Channels (and nothing on!), and that fact has both everything and nothing to do with this post. Just talking to people from the big, bad world of television nowadays is quite frightening. Just adding up the things that one already knows, there will be another 30-odd channels by the end of the year. I mean, that is what I know about, and doesn't include the small players. Little wonder that both Tata-Sky and Dish TV have kept the channel numbering sequences open till 1000. In fact, the latter has support for more than 1000 channels. That said, the launch of DTH and the subsequent expansion of DTH thanks to Insat 4B there will be at least three more DTH players starting in the next three months. But, the problem now, less than two decades after DD launched DD Metro and we moved from a one-channel country to a two-channel country, at least in 'Metro' areas.
The costs of establishing a channel today are minimal, unless you discount the 'content' bit and since the same content often rotates - I've seen the same title on AXN, Star Movies and Zee Studio, and Star World and Zee Cafe often run the same show, but different seasons at the same time. But, what gets me is the proliferation of News channels - according to the grapevine there will be at least one major business channel launch soon from UTV (to be headed by Govindraj) and I've lost count of the number of channel that TV18 is planning, four new channels according to some (leaving alone the fact that they will probably start or acquire channels in the general entertainment space and are even planning a foray into print). Then of course, we have INX, which is planning at least two, maybe even three news channels.
I was talking to a Corporate Communications chap sometime ago and he was telling he how the headcount planning for press events is going crazy. Another person told me that this is a reason that I am seeing a huge increase in 'select press briefings' and traditionally fax-heavy PR agencies are not inviting everyone. "We don't want everyone and their uncle to come", one media-manager told me. Oh well, there has to be a plus working in a fairly well-established publication/news channel. Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out why so much TV?

Direct-To-Home TV rocks!

A few months ago, my editor suddenly asked me to change the type of gadget reviews that we had been doing, "They're too geeky and read like bloody press releases. You're cheating the user, why would he read a review if he can get everything online." Sadly, he was right. And of the first product shootouts in the updated column was a Tata-Sky vs Dish TV comparison. After a couple of months, I still have both systems, I bought Tata-Sky and the DishTV folks are dithering on taking back their system, and unlike other gadgets I can't just pack it up and return it because it does need to be manually dismantled.
If you want my honest opinion, my money spoke, I actually bought Tata-Sky, because it is the better albeit more expensive system. Why? Reason one - while I can play around with the settings on DishTV and the system also tells me signal strength and all that, the Tata-Sky user interface and remote is eons ahead in terms of sheer usability. Secondly, and I started noticing this after a while, is that the picture quality on Dish TV is inferior to that of Tata-Sky. When did I notice this? While watching soccer - to be more precise, the Champions League on Ten Sports when I started to notice obscene amounts of pixellation. The adverts promised DVD quality images, what I was getting was VCD quality images with great sound.
Then, I started to keep a sharper eye out during more mundane programming on AXN and Discovery Travel and Living and started to notice 'artefacts' like you see on a badly encoded DVD. To be fair, I noticed that even on Tata-Sky the picture quality leaves a bit to be desired, but I only noticed that on my friends brand-new 42-inch LCD TV. In addition, the program listing facility is also much better on Tata-Sky.
Somehow, I also have the funny feeling that Tata-Sky will also be the first to offer HDTV capabilities on their channel, but given what HDTV will do our news-anchors exposing their physical flaws (though not their false accents), I doubt I'll be seeing that anytime soon. And since Tata-Sky doesn't show CNN-IBN for some strange reason (not that I mind, very honestly but this means that I doubt TV18 can give Tata-Sky a 'honest' review on any of their shows) I don't really care. In fact, I don't really care for news channels anyway, they're quite boring.
At Rs 3,999, the Tata-Sky system is quite expensive, DishTV comes in far cheaper at Rs 3,190, so you basically get what you pay for, in addition the monthly charges aren't much off your cable bill if you subscribe to a 'premium' package - which if you're reading this you probably will - those will cost upwards of Rs 300 a month, but look at it this way, that is still under Rs 10 a day and really thats nothing much. Plus chances are you're already paying around Rs 300 for cable, so the only investment you're making is for the dish and the set-top box - but you get better picture (even on DishTV) and stereo sound. I mean, really!
So, and now let me use a line I used to in high school debating, in conclusion, if you can afford it, just go in for DTH. Conditional Access Systems (CAS) won't really change anything unless the stupid coaxial cable being used to bring TV to your house is changed. Put simply, this is very good and I like it and you only get the 'Active' systems on DTH. I'll tell you why I like DTH, it has made TV viewing fun again, and that in itself is reason enough to get it. And thae fact that you are finally free of the neighbourhood goon who runs your cable TV system.
A colleague and a fellow Stephanian warns me that Anil Wilson, Principal of that hallowed institution has a blog! Well, I'm linking it here. Enjoy!