One car, many screens - Review Dish TV Mobile TV

With traffic jams getting longer by the day, we are slowly getting to a point where commuters in the metros spend up to three hours every day getting to office and back. As you tend to leave home early and return late, most of us end up missing news and other television programmes.

A DVR can record your favorite soap operas so that you can catch up when you finally reach home, but then you can also have a television in the car. While this is not an advisable option if you are planning to watch TV and drive, it makes more sense if you have an SUV or MUV with a chauffeur driving you about.
And now with Dish TV launching its Personal TV, everyone in the vehicle has the option of watching the channel of their choice.



However, priced at Rs 2,45,000 for the startup edition, this is not exactly cheap. The latest version uses a new antenna from Ray Sat and has four screens with individual DTH boxes that help you stream different channels on each screen.
To give you privacy, all TV sets are coupled with wired headphones which can be upgraded to a wireless model at an additional cost. The basic screens come from NECVOX and you can choose a better screen or larger screen if you want.

A single wire downlinks from the RaySat dish antenna to a dish controller in the back of your car which is powered by the car battery — but be careful, for if you run this system with the engine shut, the battery will drain in about an hour. The trunk will also hold the four receivers and Dish TV claims the wiring is done professionally by their trained dealers — but the wiring in the demo car didn’t seem all that professional. Each TV also comes with its individual remote control, just make sure you point it at the right screen.

Sadly, Dish TV hasn’t been able to do a really professional job. They use the same Zenega DTH set top box they use for home which means you will need to change the card after a few months and that won’t be all that easy. They are also not clear how the service will be outside the big cities. As of now, everything looks like a ‘jugaad’, especially the additional infra-red receivers that jut out from under the screens.

The single TV version costs you roughly Rs 1,90,000, while the four-screen variants start at Rs 2,45,000. The annual subscription of about Rs 10,000 is included in the first payment. Since television channels are broadcast on a DTH system using horizontal and vertical polarisation, not all channels are available at one go. You can get up to 162 channels if you put a single TV system in your car, but for multiple TVs, you will get only 81 “popular channels”.
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The above review appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday May 30, 2010

An app store just for India - Airtel's Application Store Review

Apple changed the way people looked at the phone with the first captive application store. Peers were quick to launch competition for the iTunes store, and the Ovi Market Place for Nokia phones, the Android Market Place for Android phones, and then a Microsoft Market Place were up and running within months. Now, Airtel has taken the plunge by launching its own app store for Indian customers.

So why did Airtel have to open an app store when all smartphone users have their company stores to download applications? I didn't take long for me to realise that the store make sense for people with phones that can run Java applications but don't have credit cards to charge the apps on.

The Airtel store has about 1,400 applications split into multiple categories. Though the store is useless for iPhone, most of the applications are tested to work with BlackBerrys, Symbians and Windows Mobiles. Some even work on Android phones.
There are some good free apps like Snaptu which allows users to use Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, look at the weather reports and read RSS news feeds. You don't pay anything for downloading the application over GPRS, but data transfers are billed to you. These apps can only be used on GPRS, so even if your phone has Wi-Fi you will still have to log on through the slower Net connection.

But that is the least of your problems as the service is also limited to Airtel customers. Then, you can't transfer the downloaded applications to another phone. Some of the applications are really bad and there is no way you can do a trial before you buy it; there are also no screenshot available on the Internet. You can only use the maps on Airtel GPRS network, so if you are on roaming or the Airtel signal is weak, you can't use the application. Plus, these are early days and no one knows if the Airtel App store is here to stay.

Anyway, I think it is a great step forward, especially with the many cheap Chinese smartphone available in the market. Here's hoping the apps become better.

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The above review appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday March 07, 2010