(28 April 2007 3:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati is launching a massive exercise to help DD Direct Plus' more than four million viewers stay tuned even as the pubcaster's DTH service shifts from the Netherlands-based satellite NSS 6 to the Indian INSAT 4B, for which a meeting of hardware manufacturers and LCOs was convened by Prasar Bharati CEO B S Lali.

Sources told indiantelevision.com that the meeting held on Thursday evening discussed the issue of this shift and the question of informing the viewers (TAM figure 4.8 million) across the country, especially the tech-challenged rural and remote area households, the prime target of DD Direct Plus.

While NSS 6 is located at 950 East, INSAT 4B is located at 93.50, which will require a detailed process in each DD Dish as well as STB, comprising two basic sets of exercises: realigning the dish antenna; and reorienting the STB which, a senior engineer pointed out, is a far more complex task.

DD's DTH would be available across five transponders in the KU Band on INSAT 4B, on the frequencies 10990, 11070, 11150, 11490 and 11570 MHz, with all of them having vertical polarisation and a uniform symbol rate of 27500 ksps.

DD DTH is going to beam 10 channels from each transponder, which adds to its total of 50 channels, of which most are Prasar Bharati's own channels, and engineers explained that though further compression is possible using the MPEG 4 technology, DD prefers to use MPEG 2 and beam fewer channels from each transponder "for ensuring better quality."

"We don't want picture freeze or sound distortions, which may in the long run make DTH seem like a bad choice," the official said.

Senior engineers explained: "To get the signals from the new satellite, each antenna has to be rotated (with the person standing behind the dish antenna) clockwise by 1.5 degree to the right and tilted up by 1.5 degree.

The awareness campaign for subscribers on D's national networks as well as DTH platforms will start off from May 15 and the transition will start officially on June 1.

"However, there will be no blackout, and we shall keep beaming from both satellites for sometime," the official explained.

They guess it would take at least 15 to 20 days for the subscribers to do this and for the ground-level service providers supplying DD DTH dishes to complete this, as each STB needs a lot of work.

Meanwhile, though DD's contract with the five transponders on NSS 6 closes on May 31, Prasar Bharati has requested the Netherlands-based company to use the space on one transponder till June 15.

Prasar Bharati pays NSS around Rs 22.5 crore annually for hiring transponder space, and for the extended 15-day period, the pro rata payment would come to Rs 3.7 crore, "which is cheap considering the huge subscriber base we have," a source said.

After reorienting the dish antenna comes the real time-taking - and for the technologically backward rural and less educated people - headache, that is, using to remote to make necessary changes in the STB.

In the first step, one would have to delete the channels (six steps) on the NSS 6 satellite.

This would be followed by a seven-step procedure of changing the name of the satellite, and then, in the next step, it would take four clicks on the remote keys to undertake the LNB configuration.

The most tedious work, "Transponder Edit" would be eight steps in all, but that whole process would have to be repeated for each of the five transponders, engineers explained.

The last four clicks on the remote would be channel search, and once this is complete, the STB will scan all the channels of DD Direct.

All this is part of a two-page handout to be issued to the operators across the country to from next week, to be given to users and helping them out with the resetting of the STBs.

The special note in the handout says that these changes are suggestive and may vary from different makes and models of STBs.

Lali asked the operators to use their countrywide personnel to spread awareness and also help individual customers.