• Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder

    Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder

    Nachiket 'therapist' Mhatre, Jul 01, 2011 1323 hrs IST

    Needs a larger HDD, more HD content, and a slimmer price tag.

    Neat recording features; Great remote control; Free HDMI cable; Can be controlled through mobiles and web

    Loses signal in rain; HDD smaller compared to competition; No upscaling of SD content; Just three HD channels; HD content is low bitrate; Expensive for what it offers

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airtel digital TV [HD] recorder
Price: Rs 4,890 (new connection); Rs 3,990 (existing connection)
HDD capacity: 320 GB
HD channels: 3
3D Ready: Yes


The CRT has been dying a slow death. Almost all urban households now opt for flat-panel displays instead, which now ship with Full HD (1080p) capability, even for entry-level models. Although the pixel count of these flat-panels has grown five-fold to two million pixels, your average set-top box (STB) still broadcasts DVD quality (480p) content. Unfortunately, rasterised images do not stretch gracefully, which is why your widescreen Full HD display looks awful when paired with an SDTV broadcast. That's a point driven home by the ghastly picture quality evident on HDTVs, for the same broadcast that looks gorgeous on a CRT.

While most decent HDTVs have built-in upscalers that can convert regular 4:3 aspect ratio SD signal into a 16:9 widescreen picture, the image quality is nowhere near as good as an original HD broadcast. With an increasing number of HD channels, it's only wise to pair your HDTV with an HD-capable STB. airtel seems to agree with us on that count, and that's why it arranged for the digital TV [HD] recorder to be installed at my residence for a review. Let's see if airtel's HD DVR has what it takes to make us junk our regular STB.


Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder


Confucius say, small dish equal small signal.



Installation
Ideally, the installation for the recorder should be a quick and hassle-free affair, thanks to its single HDMI link to your HDTV. The only other wires hooked to the device are two separate antenna cables feeding the DVR with two discrete input streams, and a 12 V DC adapter cable. The twin-antenna input cables enable the much touted Watch-One Record-One DVR feature. It lets you record two separate channels simultaneously, or watch a programme while you record another.


Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder


That's airtel's way of telling you to head out and enjoy the rain.



I say ideally, because the ninnies airtel had sent for the installation had a hard time setting up the dish antenna. They could have got the job done quicker if they weren't so rude and uncooperative. For some strange reason, the installation personnel were more interested in knowing if I had paid for the STB, as they begrudgingly went about doing what they get paid to do, as if it was a huge personal favour extended towards me. I understand that when you pay peanuts, you are bound to get monkeys, but that still is no excuse for rudeness and unprofessionalism.

The airtel dish was the same size as that of my tiny Tata Sky antenna, which is a problem because the latter loses the signal every time someone decides to take a piss off the roof. It's no surprise then that the reception on both the airtel and Tata Sky STBs would conk out at the slightest hint of rain. My doubts were confirmed by the signal strength read-out maxing out at 35%. This is a problem easily avoided by using larger dish antennas. The guy who showed up to disassemble the antenna post-review was a lot more amiable, and he revealed that airtel only recently switched over to smaller antennas. It looks like the bean counters got the better of the engineers yet again.


Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder


Front view (click to enlarge).



Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder


Front fascia (click to enlarge).



The Set-Top Box
The airtel Digital Video Recorder (DVR) simply isn't as gorgeous as its Tata Sky counterpart. It features a matte finish box reminiscent of the old-school VCRs of yore. That means the build quality isn't any better than the STBs provided by your local cable guy. The front fascia is no exception, with a rather ghastly airtel logo flanking the status LEDs for power, signal, message, recording, and USB. The bottom edge contains a row of buttons housing the Power, Play, Pause, Stop, Forward, and Rewind buttons. The four-way D-pad at the centre, flanked by the Menu, Back, and Enter buttons will prove to be a godsend the day your remote control disappears in the all-consuming void between the sofa cushions.


Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder


The View Card is neatly tucked away.



Review: airtel digital TV [HD] recorder


Nothing but a glorified SIM.



The panel on the right hand side, pimping the STB's features, opens to reveal a slot accepting what airtel calls the View Card, which is something we already know as the Subscriber Identification Module (SIM). Strangely, there's a USB port at the side, albeit with no official statement on what it's supposed to do. The cheap STBs provided by local cable operators allow playback of DiVX and MP3 files through similar USB ports. Who knows, airtel may even enable that feature through firmware updates in the future. The Ethernet port is another mystery. I surmise it will come in handy if and when airtel delivers broadband satellite internet access through the STB.

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Discussion Board
(14) Comments
Salil Prabhudes
,Mumbai, on Jul 01, 2011 07:11 PM
I (am unfortunate to) have the Airtel HD STB minus the recorder, and (fortunately) a Sony Bravia EX40 400 LCD TV. However I dont get 1080p as the signal resolution displayed on the TV is 560i. Its definitely not as much as 720 also its i (interlaced, which is an old standard, not p which is the latest standard. (I need to take a look at the contract to contemplate whether to press charges under unfair trade practices). Also the service sucks, they told me the SLA for installation would be 48 hrs from the time of payment, but it was installed in no less than 72 hrs, that too after intensive follow up with the call center and the distributor. Also for the HD pack you need to realign the dish, for which the company sends an "Engineer" The company states an SLA of 5 working days for this. In my case it was 10 working days plus 2 weekends so in total 14 days. The call center people direct you to the distributor(who in my case happened to be Mahima Enterprises, who did not pick up my call for 30 mins, until i sent him an SMS threatening to go to consumer court if he didn't answer my call, even after that his language was far from polite and professional) and vice versa and you are caught in a limbo. Also after 14 days just the dish was realigned and still I was still not getting the 3 (so called) HD channels. It took another 24 hours to get them started cause their "Engineer" was unprofessional enough to conveniently not ask the back end to activate the pack, which ultimately I had to "follow up again" with their TL(Mr Amarinder) at the call center who gave me another deadline and assurances which were not followed (He told me he spoke to the area service manager, but refused to give me his/her number). Don't believe the lies of the call center staff, one (Mr Sachin) of them tells the TLs are present 24x7 whereas the others say TLs are not on call after 10pm IST (Bunch of Liars) Even the TLs are a bunch of liars, they give you new deadlines (which they obviously don't follow) and you end up calling them back again and again and again. I don't have even a single pleasant experience from Airtel Digital TV. One final word of advice, If you don't have Airtel Digital TV, don't fall prey to these "Delhi Ka Thugs" like I have...
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Pawan
,Mumbai, on Dec 06, 2011 04:34 PM
You get 560i mentioned on your TV because the settings on your STB need to change, you find this under system settings where you can choose 1080i and all channels will show the same
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Abhi
,Kolhapur, on Nov 13, 2011 12:05 AM
Does airtel digital tv really has HDMI OUTPUT? tata sky hd has no HDMI port then whats the meaning for that HD??????????
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Pawan
,Mumbai, on Dec 06, 2011 04:31 PM
Airtel has HDMI output, so does Tata Sky HD.
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Mohan S. Marath
,Mumbai, on Oct 20, 2011 12:38 AM
It was nice reading your review but for comparison are both Tatasky and Airtel able to beam the FULL HD telecasts they advertise or we get HD ready telecasts only which the broadcasters intend to call simply HD Telecasts.
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Sreekanth
,Mysore, on Sep 24, 2011 11:44 PM
@Therapist: Can you please tell me how did you confirmed the below statement: <<My doubts were confirmed by the signal strength read-out maxing out at 35%.>> Is there any setting on the STB to check this?
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Sreekanth
,Mysore, on Sep 24, 2011 11:41 PM
A perfect example for how a good review should be!!! The way the review is carried from page 1 to ending is simply outstanding. No complex jargons, unnecessary descriptions.....Speaking about bit rate, bandwidth, literally opening the case and showing the internal HDD are amazing. My respects.
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bhanu ss
,indore, on Jul 20, 2011 06:46 PM
can we remove original hdd and clone its content to a larger capacity one, and replace the new hdd in it. should it work .please try out this,and reply us on your blog.
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Tarunpreet Sing
,Jalandhar, on Jul 04, 2011 11:13 AM
I am user Airtel HD, and they are upscaling the SD Channels. Not sure about HD recorder, but in normal normal HD STB they are upscaling.
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Sachin
,Goa, on Jul 02, 2011 12:38 AM
Initially the dish provided by airtel was bigger size providing better reception and lesser interruptions during rains.older dish are still better for those upgrading to HD. I have been using airtel since its launch and so far only problem faced is the failure of adapter which is now replaced with new compact one.
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vivek
,law, on Jul 01, 2011 04:52 PM
is it possible to read that 320 gig thru comp n extract recrded vid file?
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Nachiket
, TechTree, on Jul 01, 2011 05:26 PM
The video data is dumped to a stream file (*.str), which is deliberately misrepresented on the file allocation table, so that it cannot be located and copied using regular means. Like I said in the review, there is no easy way to do that.
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vivek
,law, on Jul 01, 2011 07:04 PM
one more question I use reliance sd service .The usb port on the back -can it be used for conneceting to a computer and edit the os(not literally).Because I want to get rid of logo ,and some extent hacking and decoding with out SIM ,It is not as difficult as it sounds ,I think so and i know from my c programin classes that printf(#666%%55588) displays text on screen !The interface of the whole system changed after a firmware update and only reliance do that i think.And it runs games n ....so it is more capable software wise than any feature phone.Geohot busy in hacking wii perhapes
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Rahul
,Balurghat, on Jul 01, 2011 03:35 PM
FYI No upscaling of sd content in tata sky
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