Going back into hibernation? and the Sunday F1 debacle!

Well its been quite sometime since MTV India was removed unceremoniously, and despite numerous requests to bring back the channel from subscribers, there has been no statement from Dialog TV, not that they used to do that anyway.

Channels are propping up in this region like mushrooms, some good and some outright lousy. One good channel that propped up recently was Star World Premiere HD, which is telecasting some of the latest shows straight out of the US. Besides the fact that not all Indian DTH providers are carrying the channel, needless to say that if Dialog wanted it, then they can carry the channel.

Then there was this little event on Sunday when ESPN Star Sports decided to carry the Singapore GP on Star Sports 2, none of us saw that coming... howz dat umpire!

The result Dialog TV dropped ESPN to carry Star Sports 2, good by the F1 fans & bad by the football fans & both have a considerable following in Sri Lanka. All the while when Star Cricket was telecasting the Cricket match in Hindi. So the wise thing that should have been done is to retain ESPN and replace Star Cricket with Star Sports 2 for the F1 on that day.

We are a bit concerned about the increase of Hindi programming on ESPN Star Sports network specially after their so-called regionalisation plan. For some reason they seem to think that we Sri Lanka love their Hindi stuff, Hindi programming does have a following in Sri Lanka but strictly limited to movies and music only and doesn't cover Hindi commentary on sporting events.

Hopefully Dialog TV is selecting the correct language for broadcasting these sporting events, since some sporting events are carried on dual language feeds, hope the technical staff is not trying to polish up on their Hindi. 

Okay the sole cause of - MTV India missing, Star World premiere missing causing us to miss out on all the first run shows from the US, in fact its being telecast in the region 24hrs after the US broadcast. Often at times before the torrents are active in addition to contend with the possibility that F1 might be relegated to Star Sports 2 more often than ever is - the fact that Dialog TV doesn't have space to broadcast channels.

So we are being forced by an Axiata to watch time shared channels, contend with channels being replaced all the while being charged a fortune for the subscription. It's time for Dialog to make some investments and convert the whole system to MPEG4 DVB-S2 and switch all set top boxes FOC, instead of concentrating only on margins. There were reports of some set tops boxes being replaced but that was just it and nothing more.

We hope Dialog TV management takes note and takes action immediately, maybe you will have for forego the bonus this year but new channels, means new subscribers, more cash, BIGGER BONUS.

Please keep us updated on the latest on Dialog TV as the days progress.

The tale of two MTV's......

It has been over a month since we made our last blog post, and after the removal of MTV India from Dialog TV and the conversion of some channels to MPEG4 DVBS2 nothing significant has happened resulting in the prolonged drought in terms of posts.

There were reports of non premiere subscribers receiving the MPEG4 DVB-S2 set-top box, not the same decoder issued that was issued to the premiere package subscribers, rather this is supposedly a display-less non PVR enabled low featured set-top box.

Reports did come in of certain subscribers receiving this set-top box but it seems that like the conversion of premiere package subscribers it hard to ascertain how many have received this box or not. We are lead to believe that the conversion is taking place since Dialog has to switch more channels to MPEG4 DVB-S2 in order to correct the imbalances and the new channels in the pipeline.

Talking of new channels, there are reports of MTV Sports due for addition in October provisionally, as in all thing Dialog TV we can surely expect a postponement. This leaves us wondering about the other MTV which was temporarily removed being MTV India. That too is said to return soon, making at wonder which channel will face the axe to make room for these channels. MTV Sports which mostly reruns Neo Sports network programming will be telecasting mostly the same content as Neo, in addition to some of their original programming. If its a choice between MTV Sports and MTV India, then Dialog TV should opt for MTV India since its a channel that subscribers were paying for that was removed after the addition of Sirasa, Shakthi and Shraddha TV.

We hope steps are taken to reintroduce MTV India soon, in addition the conversion to the MPEG4 DVB-S2 system should be sped up. 

In addition the "Dialog Test Channel" was renamed to "Dialog Test Channel1", probably indicating some testing being carried out on that channel. We have always maintained that Dialog TV shouldn't waste that channel slot due to the lack of channels on the platform, hopefully steps are taken to add a channel on that slot.

Please keep us updated on the latest on Dialog TV as the days progress.