New Channels on Dialog TV

During the months of June and July 2007, Dialog TV has been introducing new channels to their lineup. A total of 13 channels were to be added (excluding STAR), and 11 have been launched so far. These channels are available on the third transponder.

Updates: HBO Family was added on June 15. NDTV and SRTV were added on June 17. GOD Channel was added on June 19.

Here is the list of the 11 available new channels, according to channel numbers on the decoder:-


CH37 - TEN Sports - WWE, Cricket, Le Tour de France and more


CH38 - Hallmark Channel - Family friendly and other interesting programming


CH39 - SET - Indian Idol and Hindi entertainment


CH40 - HBO HiTS - Seven new HiT movies for each day of the week


CH41 - Australia Network - Entertainment, movies, news and more direct from Australia


CH42 - SET SAB - Hindi entertainment for the younger generations


CH43 - NEO Sports Plus - Sports


CH44 - NEO Sports - Channel dedicated to cricket (mainly Indian cricket)

CH45 - The Buddhist - Sri Lanka's first Buddhist television channel


CH46 - HBO Family - Family friendly movies


CH47 - NDTV 24x7 - Indian English news channel


CH48 - SR TV - Tamil movie channel


CH49 - GOD Channel - Christian religious channel


Here are the channels which are yet to be tested:-


STAR World - American Idol, Oprah and other English entertainment


STAR Movies - English movie channel


STAR Plus - India's No 1 Hindi entertainment channel


STAR Vijay - Popular Tamil entertainment channel 


Picture Quality
As in all test transmissions, you can expect low picture quality at the beginning. Normally, correcting this would be one of the main focuses of test transmissions. However, in Dialog's case, with most channels distributed in digital technology, it is not a matter of picture quality. But Dialog has a wide variety of technical problems such as picture freezing. Picture freezing was first seen on the SET channel after DialogTV's launch in February 2007. It then seemed to spread on to other channels. This was possibly the case for the new channels as well. Therefore the main focus of the Dialog TV test transmissions is getting the technical problems solved.

But enough of technical details. Of course, at the beginning the quality of the new channels was plain awful. This made me rather reluctant to boast about Dialog's new channels. This lasted until Monday this week.

The NEO Sports, NEO Sports Plus, SET SAB and CNN channels were removed temporarily on Thursday last week. CNN had picture freezing, but now it seems to have been solved after the reappearance on Monday (July 9). The NEO channels returned on Tuesday (July 10), together with no picture freezing and with much improved picture quality. Then the other channels too were given better compression and thus better picture quality.

Update: SET SAB is back, as of June 12 2007.

During fast movements on TEN Sports and Hallmark Channel, the picture would previously be covered in black and white blocks as a result of very heavy pixelation. It was worse that watching a video on a 56k internet connection. But since Tuesday, the fast movements were very clear and 90% of the pixelation had disappeared. The overall picture qualiy had improved greatly.


Sound Quality
Sound quality has rarely been an issue on Dialog TV (yes, surprising). Even with the new channels there is not much of a problem.

But in some channels only one side of the audio is provided. Stereo sound incudes at least 2 sides (channels). It is not yet clear as to why this is done by Dialog TV.

In case of HBO HiTS, it is a feed coming from Hong Kong. Therefore these is commentary in both English (on one side) and Chinese (on the other side) during advertisements of their programming. Therefore it is suitable to block the Chinese side during advertisements. But this has to be changed during the movie, as otherwise there will be an awful sound quality with only one side of audio.

But yesterday I noticed Chinese and Englich commentary going one after the other. Mybe HBO has stopped the dual language on dual side thing, because then people or services have to block the unwanted commentary. One language at a time is much better.


EPG
The Electronic Programming Guide for seven days was introduced for most channels in Dialog TV throughout this year (2007). The EPG for the new channels are already being introduced.

TEN Sports and Australia Network had EPGs when I checked around 3.30 pm today (July 11). Hallmark Channel surprisingly did not. But probably the EPGs for other channels will appear throughout this week, or month.

Update: EPGs are also available on HBO HiTS and SET, after the evening of June 11. Also the Australia Network, HBO HiTS and many other EPGs of older channels have descriptions of the program.


STAR Channels
Due to technical problems the launch of these channels have been continously delayed. But it is confirmed that they will appear within this month (July) or the next (August). Lets just hope that they do not have heavy pixelation, or the much feared picture freezing when they arrive.


For now, I congratulate Dialog for the introduction of the new channels. I hope they sort out the package structures properly and introduce the right channels to the right packages. At the moment, the package settings are creating a bit of a revolt among Dialog TV customers.