2012 - The Year in review

Well we are now approaching the final few days of 2012, we would like to take a look back at the year that was on Dialog TV. Firstly before we start we wish to state that we are unable to confirm the arrival of Sirasa TV, Shakthi TV & MTV Sports on the Dialog TV platform. We reiterate that any moves to introduce the channels that categorically ridiculed the pay television concept on national newspapers and is now begging to be added to every pay service in the island should not be carried out at the expense of international channels be it English, Tamil or Hindi. If Dialog wants to add the Maharaja's then it should be done only at the expense of existing local channels, however we don't advocate channel replacements so the Maharaja's should be kept waiting until transponder space is increased. After all they are the ones who first pulled their channels out of pay television networks.

Now lets back to the focal point of this post and thats Dialog TV's 2012. Well it has been a mixed bag, but there has been a positive aspect to Dialog TV this year compared to the last few years. Dialog managed to introduced HD, though exorbitantly priced and now within the purse of the average Sri Lanka the point is that they still managed to launch HD. Hopefully 2013 will see some price reductions in HD connection rentals. 

The launch of Pay Per Day television is quite exciting and we are not sure how it's faring at the moment, we are quite sure that 2013 will be a good year for Pay Per Day television. The major stumbling block is the initial cost of the equipment with a decent warranty which is almost twice the investment for a post paid connection. If Dialog is able to drop the cost of the initial investment then Pay Per Day will definitely take off, plus this concept is not promoted enough. Understandably Dialog is having difficulty convincing local television stations to carry advertisements of Dialog TV which is viewed as a competitor by local media. Sadly Dialog is only a service provider and the channels available on Dialog TV should be open to DTV advertisements.

A few channels have been introduced mainly in the HD front whilst some have been replaced on the SD and HD lineup's. The most controversial replacement would have been the dropping of Australia Network in favour of a local channel, many say Sirasa TV was the channel which would have been introduced but we will never know since Dialog reversed the decision after complains from subscribers and the entire scenario being highlighted in this blog. Dialog made a very good decision retaining Australia Network.

The reintroduction of Zee Studio & Zee Cafe at the beginning of this year is quite notable after it being abruptly taken off the lineup just about an year earlier.

2012 has been good for Dialog TV with many new services being introduced after the sleeping giant was awakened after a few years in hibernation. Dialog however still has a long way to go, the channel sharing has to be stopped and separate slots have to be allocated to the channels that are sharing one slot at the moment. This will only be possible with either the conversion of MPEG2 to MPEG4 or purchasing more transponder space.

We hope we covered 2012 in a nutshell, our apologies to all concerned if we have missed anything. Oh and not to mention that we have noted that the Maharaja's have paid some people to comment on this blog asking for Sirasa. Not all the requests are from the Maharaja stooges, many are genuine requests but there have been quite a bit from the Maharaja paid stooges too.

Please continue updating us on the latest on Dialog TV.