Airtel IPTV Ownership Experience

[gopichandpai]

I guess replacing the set top box probably should fix all these issues.

---------- Post added at 05:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:31 PM ----------

I have also heard that IPTV will work fine if 4Mbps plans are supported in your area...

 

[Sushubh]

of course iptv requires more than its share of the bandwidth on the wiring coming to your place. if the local network is not capable of supporting iptv, airtel should never have delivered you a connection.

 

[gopichandpai]

It is pretty sad to see that airtel has given a low priority and profile to its IPTV product.


[*]First of all there are so many new channels in the market and none of them are added to IPTV. Apart from Sony Mix there is no addition to IPTV at all.
[*]When the STB is switched on, it still shows Diwali Dhamaka startup screen. Its been more than 3 months after Diwali and start up screen is still the same!
[*]IPTV website airtel.in/iptv still has the old list of channels. Package details on airtel.in/iptv are not up to date. It is impossible to know which package has which all channels.
[*]IPTV website airtel.in/iptv has History TV 18 logo and IPTV is not providing that channel. Airtel has confused Fox history and Traveler channel with History TV 18.
[*]View Demo Now link (view) doesn't have demo even so many years after IPTV launch.
[*]IPTV site still shows the old list of movies(bottom left corner of airtel.in/iptv)
[/list]These are only the subsets of many other issues. It just shows how lazy airtel is about updating the site and how airtel takes care of its own product.

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Gopichand Pai

 

[s2_unicorn]

I had a coupla queries. Would appreciate if anyone could help me out.I've had an Airtel broadband connection for the past two years (1mbps, 15GB). Recently, I got a new flatmate, who had his own Airtel broadband connection shifted into the place where we're living right now - so currently there are two broadband connections at home - one of which will obviously be cancelled, and we'll probably upgrade the other one to a 2mbps 75GB connection. Now, we're also thinking of shifting to Airtel IPTV from the current Tata Sky. What I want to find out is that does having IPTV affect your internet speeds? Does it make sense to have one connection only for IPTV, and the second for normal browsing, etc? Both of us stream a lot of stuff, so would IPTV create a problem with speed? If so, what is the minimum speed required for IPTV connection? The Airtel website says any broadband connection is upgradable to IPTV with a 249/- topup. Is it possible to have IPTV with say a 256 kbps connection? If so, then I can keep one connection at a base speed, say about 200 bucks a month (plus 249 for IPTV) and keep the other one purely for browsing / streaming.Is there anything else involved if I take the base IPTV connection - 249 bucks a month?Would love it if someone would help me get some clarity on this. Apologies if the query is stupid - I'm just a novice here

 

[mehrotra.akash]

I had a coupla queries. Would appreciate if anyone could help me out.

I've had an Airtel broadband connection for the past two years (1mbps, 15GB). Recently, I got a new flatmate, who had his own Airtel broadband connection shifted into the place where we're living right now - so currently there are two broadband connections at home - one of which will obviously be cancelled, and we'll probably upgrade the other one to a 2mbps 75GB connection.

Now, we're also thinking of shifting to Airtel IPTV from the current Tata Sky. What I want to find out is that does having IPTV affect your internet speeds?
Not directly, but IPTV is expensive unless you take it with the 10GB FUP 2mbps plan

Does it make sense to have one connection only for IPTV, and the second for normal browsing, etc?
Thats not possible, you need to pay for broadband on the connection you use IPTV on
Both of us stream a lot of stuff, so would IPTV create a problem with speed?
Nope

If so, what is the minimum speed required for IPTV connection?
IPTV is not linked with your broadband speed
The Airtel website says any broadband connection is upgradable to IPTV with a 249/- topup. Is it possible to have IPTV with say a 256 kbps connection?
Yes
If so, then I can keep one connection at a base speed, say about 200 bucks a month (plus 249 for IPTV) and keep the other one purely for browsing / streaming.
You can, but isnt 550 pm for IPTV whose quality is going down by the day a bit too much?

Is there anything else involved if I take the base IPTV connection - 249 bucks a month?

Would love it if someone would help me get some clarity on this. Apologies if the query is stupid - I'm just a novice here

Would advise you look at Tata Sky plus HD as well

IPTV is awesome, but has its drawbacks.

Number of channels in timeshift has been going down (its 27 now compared to 45), glitches are more frequent

Worth the Rs 112 that it costs with the 10GB FUP plan, not worth Rs 250+ pm

That said, if you want to go with it, initially take the 1099 plan with IPTV and 10GB FUP 2mbps and after 2 months shift to 75GB with IPTV topup after observing if FUP is applied to you or not

Its applied to me only 1-2 months in a year

 

[gopichandpai]

What I want to find out is that does having IPTV affect your internet speeds?
It will not affect the internet speed. You can browse/download at full speed and there won't be any disturbance in IPTV. You can disconnect one of your broadband connections.

Is it possible to have IPTV with say a 256 kbps connection?
Yes you can have IPTV on a 256kbps connection. IPTV requires about 4mbps which will be given separately to IPTV irrespective of your broadband speed. Which means IPTV will be running on 4mbps connection and your broadband speed might be 256kpbs.

There are about only 146 odd channels on iptv. I also heard airtel stopped giving new iptv connections.

You can go with iptv as a secondary TV connection rather than primary connection.

 

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[Sushubh]

my experience is around one year old. if you downloaded a bunch of torrents and saturated your line, it did end up affecting the IPTV feed. but this should not happen unless you are on a 2/4 mbps plan. IPTV feed does not use the internet connectivity but the data is transmitted through the same wiring. i imagine torrents saturate the line enough to hurt the local data transfer.

 

[s2_unicorn]

That said, if you want to go with it, initially take the 1099 plan with IPTV and 10GB FUP 2mbps and after 2 months shift to 75GB with IPTV topup after observing if FUP is applied to you or not



My current FUP is 15GB with 2mbps, and we cross that limit every month - which is why we were thinking of upgrading to a 75GB FUP plan. however, from my chat with Airtel, it seems that the max possible FUP with IPTV is only 10GB

Airtel has not been able to give me any concrete information on whether it's possible or not to upgrade - every time I call up one of these guys, I get a different answer

Anyways, have recharged my Tata Sky for another month until I manage to find out for sure - worst case, will upgrade to a Tata SKY HD+ if the Airtel thing doesn't work out.

Thanks a lot for all the help, guys. I'll post here in case I need some more gyaan.

 

[Sushubh]

airtel used to offer iptv as an add-on with their regular packages. but it costed like 300 or 400 bucks over the regular plan.

last i heard on the forum that they have stopped giving new iptv connections. check their website... if this add-on plan is still available... apply for it provided you are willing to pay that much extra.

the 10GB plan is a combo plan. it's a bullshit plan.

- - - Updated - - -



ok. it's 300 rupees in addition to a regular plan.

 

[s2_unicorn]

airtel used to offer iptv as an add-on with their regular packages.

ok. it's 300 rupees in addition to a regular plan.

I agree - the 10GB plan is bullshit. I saw this on the website (subscribe to IPTV services with a top up of 299/- per month) and called them to ask about it. The responses I got:

1. IPTV is not available at all.
2. 299 topup plan is not available, you'll need to take a new connection.
3. only plans available are 1099 and 1199 plans, and you can't increase FUP limit to more than 10GB.

and every single time I called, it was a different response! it's like none of these guys have a clue about what is offered, and the website says something totally different!

as I said, I'll try for a while more to see if this 300 rupee topup is available - that seems to be the only thing which makes any amount of sense. hopefully someone at Airtel can tell me something about it