New TV viewing trends

While we in India have started to use digital television for watching our TV programmes from 2004 with launch of DTH & Digital cable, and digital TV has pick up in recent years after launch of TV services by several operators, here's some new trends emerging for watching television (in western countries). Many people are getting habituated with new trends, and in coming days this would completely change the TV viewing habits.

PVR: In India, TATASKY have introduced PVR to the TV market, but in Western countries PVR is becoming essential device for catching up TV programmes. Many viewers now record programmes in hard drive inside STB, so they can watch & enjoy the programmes at their convenient time. The programme can be scheduled to record manually, through EPG. Whole series of the programme can be scheduled so any episodes are not missed.

NPVR (Catch-up TV): It could be just like PVR, except the programmes are not stored in customer's STB, but stored on the network by operator. Customers of the operator can watch the programmes On-Demand at their convenient time and have not bother of scheduling the recording for their favourite programmes.

Push VOD: Video On Demand (VOD) is a popular term about Video delivery service by DTH/IPTV where customers can order video (Movies/TV Programmes). Push VOD is similar to VOD, except here customers don’t order VOD, but VOD content is downloaded by operator in STB’s hard drive. The content can be rented until the offer period, after which the content is automatically deleted from STB. This service is beneficial for HD videos in IPTV where HD video live streaming is not possible due to high bandwidth requirements.

Online TV: Many Channel broadcasters are providing web-consoles (web based applications) on which their programmes can be watched. Many consoles now also offer live channels. So Live TV can be directly watched on PC, and TV is no more needed to watch programmes.

Home Networking & Game console: Game console providers like Sony Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo are joining hands with TV operators to provide TV content through game console through broadband or home networking. Over the broadband, the game consoles are connected to TV operator’s network and Live TV is streamed directly to console. In home networking, the recorded content from PVR STB can be watched on console within home network

Ridiculous channel packages by TATASKY

DTH operator TATASKY is well known for its after sales service & good Customer Care service. But one thing many of its customers agree (as per different forums) is that channel packaging by TATASKY is worst.
Their move to remove Sports channel out of base pack was welcomed by many saying that this would bring base price lower, and also avoid burden on un-interested customers. But later it introduced Life-style Gold pack and putting all new channels like Imagine, Colors in it, but what was ridiculous that FTA channels like 9X were also added in that pack, and even business news channel from UTV. This channels were no way related to lifestyle! And many other DTH operator do provide this GEC channels in base pack with other Hindi GEC.
Later they introduced many pack a Cosmo pack for English movie channels like TCM, World Movies, etc. It looked fine as package contained special genre channels, but again TATASKY made a strange decision of adding business news channel ET NOW to this pack. This would be most stupid decision about channel packaging by any pay TV operator.
Customers should lodge a protest about such packaging to TATASKY, and better TATASKY should explain about their ridiculous packaging. This type of channel packaging is causing lot of discontent among customers, and TATASKY should act on it before it is late (i.e. customers shift to better options).