DD FREE DISH PLANS TO ENCRYPT WITH MPEG-4
DD FREE DISH PLANS TO
ENCRYPT WITH MPEG-4
DD Direct Plus, (recently renamed DD's FreeDish) is India's only Free- To- Air (FTA) DTH platform. Fully owned by Government broadcaster - Prasar Bharati, it cannot officially be termed a DTH platform, since the DTH license norms specifically state that no broadcaster can have more than 25% stake in a DTH platform!
The free-to-view service was launched by
Prasar Bharati in 2004. The public broadcaster
obtained funding for the service, on the basis
that it would be much cheaper to cover the
sparsely populated and remote areas of the
country, via DTH than install additional
terrestrial transmitters. DD already had almost
700 terrestrial TV transmitters - the largest
network in the world. As part of the program,
Doordarshan even distributed free TV sets and
DTH reception antennae to several thousand
remote villages and communities, in the
country.
Since the transmissions are non-encrypted, any
Indian home can purchase their own Ku band
Dish + LNB + STB and perpetually receive
approximately 60 Free-To-Air channels. The Ku
band downlink transmissions all utilise MPEG-2
compression. Now a mature technology, FTA
MPEG-2 receivers are available for4 less than
Rs. 1,000 each, in the retail market. "It is
almost impossible to ascertain the total
number of viewers because we have never
marketed the dish or set-top boxes. More than
90% of the boxes are from the grey market,"
says Jawhar Sircar, CEO, Prasar Bharati.
DD FREE DISH PLANS TO
ENCRYPT WITH MPEG-4
DD Direct Plus, (recently renamed DD's FreeDish) is India's only Free- To- Air (FTA) DTH platform. Fully owned by Government broadcaster - Prasar Bharati, it cannot officially be termed a DTH platform, since the DTH license norms specifically state that no broadcaster can have more than 25% stake in a DTH platform!
The free-to-view service was launched by
Prasar Bharati in 2004. The public broadcaster
obtained funding for the service, on the basis
that it would be much cheaper to cover the
sparsely populated and remote areas of the
country, via DTH than install additional
terrestrial transmitters. DD already had almost
700 terrestrial TV transmitters - the largest
network in the world. As part of the program,
Doordarshan even distributed free TV sets and
DTH reception antennae to several thousand
remote villages and communities, in the
country.
Since the transmissions are non-encrypted, any
Indian home can purchase their own Ku band
Dish + LNB + STB and perpetually receive
approximately 60 Free-To-Air channels. The Ku
band downlink transmissions all utilise MPEG-2
compression. Now a mature technology, FTA
MPEG-2 receivers are available for4 less than
Rs. 1,000 each, in the retail market. "It is
almost impossible to ascertain the total
number of viewers because we have never
marketed the dish or set-top boxes. More than
90% of the boxes are from the grey market,"
says Jawhar Sircar, CEO, Prasar Bharati.