W3hobbyist

I am looking to buy a new Nokia phone and I went doing a price-check of the Nokia E63 in the popular gadget stores in Thane. All of them(Pragon, Mango, Nokia Priority dealer) quoted about Rs.12,000 however the Planet M mobile store quoted around Rs. 13400. That Rs. 1400 or 11.6% above the market rate. When I exclaimed that it was a bit too much, the salesman did some “checking” on their computer and blankly told me “Sir, the price has changed now. New price is 12,200.”. Also it is my experience that for many other gadgets, the price is on the higher side as compared to other stores.

Moral of the post: Be careful with Next Electronics and Planet M mobiles. You may be the “Next” in line to be overcharged.

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Its almost 6 months that I have been using a Set Top Box (STB) from InDigital. My top-line cable operator is Incablenet (Hinduja TMT). CAS as such has not been implemented in my area(Thane East)–so I get almost 200 channels for Rs. 280 monthly. It used the MPEG-2 technology.

Installation-

The installation was easy and was done my my cable operator. There is no ‘dish antenna’ to be installed on the terrace or near the window. The STB can be placed just besides your TV. The input connection is the same co-axial that was earlier used to be plugged directly into the back of your TV. With STB, this cable input is fed into the STB. The output is drawn through 3 cables – 2 audio(L and R) and one for video–all of which are fed into the ‘AV input’  of your TV. The TV should be set to ‘AV’ mode. The STB required a ‘CAS card’ — its size is of a credit-card and functions like the mobile phone SIM card. Total time for installation is under 5 minutes.

Remote control-

The remote control is lean and decent in looks, unlike those fat and ugly remote controls I have seen with Reliance Big TV. Few buttons on the remote control are redundant. The keys could be confusing at times.

Switching on the STB-

After switching on, it takes around 10-15 seconds to ‘actually’ switch on. During this gestation duration, it just flashes the Incablenet logo. Then, it switches to the first channel no–101[Channels start from 101 as opposed to 1]. In some models, it switches to the last channel or the most viewed channel. Its seems that the STB keeps on learning your preferences(some models only).

Picture and sound quality-

The picture quality is remarkably better. The sound is crisp-clear. The co-axial cable needs to be well maintained-esp the pin that feeds the signal from co-axial into the STB. If this pin this rusted or loose-connected, the picture and sound may be scrambled[like a CD when it is scratched]. This caused a lot of annoyance initially until I replaced the pin.

Changing the channels-

Changing the channels is not so smooth. Every time you change to a new channel, it shows a black screen for some time(1 – 2 secs) and then the actual picture and audio can be seen. It is thus a pain and not user-friendly. There is a blue bar shown at the bottom of every channel which shows current time, the now running serial/movie name and that of next serial/movie. In some models, . These details in the blue bar do not get updated automatically. You need to escape that bar(ESC or OK button) and bring it up again to update again. This is another drawback.

Changing the volume-

This functions against your intuitions. The volume is relative to the main volume control of your TV set. The volume is set on per-channel basis. This means that though you may adjust the volume of one channel, you may need to re-adjust it when you change to another channel. Though once set for a particular channel, it remains at that level until you switch off the STB.

Channel listing and surfing-

Channels can be listed alphabetically or serially. When listed serially, the channels are grouped by their genre–i.e.–All music channels together, all finance channels together, etc. This genre grouping makes it easy to find closely related channels.

Radio-

Though many radio-stations are available, there are mainly regional and Govt.-run stations. Radio-stations from all over India are available. There is no FM/SW1/SW2/MW/AM/etc. switch. Stations from these frequencies are available under one-roof — serially one after the other.

Other utilities-

The only other utility I see is games. But I think these require a subscription in addition to my monthly cable Tv charges. There was no way I could use them so no review about it.

Miscellaneous:

The error codes are descriptive and understandable by the lay man. There is facility to lock channels, bookmark/favourite them. “Service messages” can be sent by the service providers(I have received 0 in the past 6 months) and there is an option for firmware upgrade.

[.::Screenshots coming soon::.]

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