IndianMascot
Core Member
The explosion of HD channels across the world has been immense over the last five years; however India is clearly lagging behind with around 35 HD channels, and most DTH companies only able to offer viewers around 15 of those.Whilst limited satellite bandwidth has often been cited as the key barrier to HD content growth, the production costs and revenue economics are still a challenge.
The US saw an immense growth in HDTV households post digitisation - penetration increased from 17 per cent around 2006 to over 75 per cent today with over 55 per cent possessing more than one HDTV. In India there are now more than 20 million HD-ready homes, yet only 2 - 2.5 million STBs have been rolled out across the country. So why hasn’t HD picked up, considering consumers are investing in HD televisions?
IDOS 2013 hosted a distinguished panel, including Videocon D2H deputy CEO Rohit Jain, Times Television Network CEO - English Entertainment Channels Ajay Trigunayat, Star India senior VP of Legal and Regulatory Pulak Bagchi, Dolby Laboratories India country manager Pankaj Kedia and Chrome Data Analytics & Media founder & MD Pankaj Krishna; to discuss how and why HD can be pushed to drive distribution and digitisation initiatives across the country.
The key question posed was, do consumers actually know the true attributes of HD. This is an interesting question and could largely explain the slower rollout of HD content seen in India so far. Pulak Bagchi pointed out, “If consumers have never experienced the quality difference of HD nor understand its attributes, how would they know whether they wanted it or not. Also, does the consumer really understand the difference between ‘HD’ and ‘True HD’ and that having an HD television does not mean that you are viewing HD content?”
Rohit Jain of Videocon D2H believes HD is the mass driver and corroborated the statement by pointing out that “d2h is now able to convert a sizable percentage, well over 15 per cent of their new subscribers to HD services, driven by better marketing and education of customers on the improved quality user experience of HD.”
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