HD Access Fees on Tata Sky DTH

[armaan_99]

TATA seriously looking for customers to tell them TATA. They are acting weird after GSAT launch. Was hoping channel carriage access fee will make them come out with better plans. They look completely lost. How many customers Tata Sky will pocket post digitization in four metros??? Guess Service/Installation Engineers can go for Annual leave.

 

[sarkar007]

Yeah. If you want an HD channel for which you do not currently have the SD variant of, you will have to subscribe to said SD variant. You cannot subscribe to the HD channel, you can only get "access" to it when you have its SD counterpart.

tl;dr So, you will be paying "only" for the SD channels (not taking into account the audacious HD access fees).

You just have to add the SD version of the channel by paying Ala-carte fee. If you are already paying the HD Access fee, it gets added automatically.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[manig]

Today I am getting all the 11 HD channels as I should have (being the Annual HD Gold subscriber till Feb'13). I guess Tata Sky was stormed by annoyed subscribers like us.So no more grudges against TataSky, for now. They should also take back the stupid SD channel = HD channel viewing method.

 

[SVK]

If they have 20+ HD channels, then this Access thing makes sense. So far this Access Fee is non-sense. Most of us would be rather interedted in Sports & Movies HD channels, but we would be getting "all" unwanted HD channels first

 

[ajuravi007]

Dont discount me guys when you are planning to go out of TS....I have not made up my decision but in 3 months time i should be in a position to move out TS...

 

[fusion123]

I hope TS adds few more worthwhile HD channels in the coming couple of months else the HD access fee will not make sense and they'll end up losing customers & revenue from them.

 

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[baIaji]

Who wants to agree to this?Dear Mr. Cuttackam,Greetings from Tata Sky.This has reference to your email dated 3rd October 2012 addressed to our Chief Service Officer Mr. Anand K V and our discussion, regarding your concern about HD Access Fee.At Tata Sky we believe that people either watch a particular genre like movies, news, music, cartoons, etc. or they don t. Hence our packages have been arranged by genre to enable our subscribers select and pay for what they like to watch. To add further flexibility of choice, in addition to packages by genre, all channels are also available on a la carte basis.However, we could not do so to our HD channels while their number grew from 2 to 11. Even now all channels in any genre do not come with an HD version.With the number of channels having reached 11 and expected to grow rapidly in the coming months, covering all genres, the practice of putting all HD channels in a single HD pack is being discontinued & instead the channels are being added to their respective genre based packs. If you are paying HD Access Fee, you automatically get the HD variants of the channels you have selected as part of your base / genre / ala carte pack.This works in your favour as· You can continue to pick & choose content in genre based packages just as you would & we in turn, ensure that the HD content for those relevant channels is automatically made available to you. More channels of the same genre, as and when they are introduced, are automatically added to the pack.· This also protects you from a price increase each time a new HD channel is introduced thus avoiding frequent price increases which now will only need to go up after addition of a substantial chunk of HD channels to compensate for the bandwidth they use. Incidentally, an HD channel consumes 3 times the bandwidth of an SD channel.We are aware that some of our competitors are offering HD channels to subscribers only when they subscribe to packages of approximately Rs 450 or above. We had the option to do the same. However, we decided against it as it would have forced many subscribers to pay for content they weren t interested in and did not watch. On Tata Sky you could even subscribe to our cheapest pack of Rs 200 PM and for Rs 100 extra could get HD versions of 7 channels in the pack for a total sum of Rs 300 PM.Thank you for writing to usWarm RegardsS Nithyananda MurthyTata Sky Customer Care

 

[rajivkrishnan]

what a lot of tosh. I am ready to bet that as soon as the channel count hits 30 the HD Access Fee will surely go up to 30.

 

[shr]

The HD Access Fee is a good thought but bad implementation. The economics might work in the following scenario -1. User picks very large set of packs so the HD fee is spread thin2. TS adds numerous HD channels in their spread to ensure at least 10 HD channels for every type of audience3. HD content gets diversified in to Regional languages satisfying a diversified set of needs to construct packagesWhere did they go wrong?1. For those who want only the HD channels and a mandatory basic pack, there is no option but to choose numerous genres that hold each HD channel & pay up the HD fee.2. The new method should have attempted to reduce the cost for the end customers as opposed to increasing it.3. The HD fee could have been progressively higher with the number of HD channels available for the user. It will be ridiculous to pay Rs 100 for 2 Sports channels.4. Many customers would feel the entry cost for HD is high and may stay in SD.When I heard about new channel addition by end of year/early next year, I signed up for a 2 year HD megapack. Hopefully, in the next 2 years, more content is added to justify HD access fee.

 

[Sushubh]

i guess the best scenario would have been what the dth and cas was supposed to bring to the market. ability to choose INDIVIDUAL channels for the consumers. these pseudo bundles are largely designed to force the customer to pay for channels he would not be watching.