Decades ago the state-owned Doordarshan was a household name in India. But, with the coming of private channels, the ages-old popular channel slowly starting losing its sheen. The coming of Internet and smartphones only made the situation worse for the channel and people slowly phased it out of their life and gave it a honourable place in the history books. Well, now Doordarshan is back with a bang, as they say it.
Seeing the popularity of smartphones among the masses and losing its audience to it, Doordarshan decided to gear up to use this trend to its advantage and offer free TV service for smartphone users in 16 selected cities in the country.
The service which has already begun from February 25, 2016 is available in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Jalandhar, Guwahati, Chennai, Lucknow, Ranchi, Patna, Cuttack, Indore, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Raipur, Bangalore, and Aurangabad.
Doordarshan is making sure that the best of quality is being provided to the viewers without any problems like snowing or ghosting etc. Further, to make the deal all the more attractive to customers, Doordarshan's Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) division is working their best to make the smartphone users receive the free media content without any internet connection. Unfortunately, there's one tiny glitch in the arrangement. In order to directly watch the programs, the viewer requires an integrated Digital Television setup, which only works in a few LG, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung smartphones.
In order to make the free TV service functional in tablets and other OTG-enabled smartphones, DVB-T2 dongles can be used. Further, Wi-Fi enabled dongles come to the rescue when one want to avail the service in moving vehicles.
According to a statement released by DD statement, there will be "no charges for watching the DD channels. Also, no Internet is required after installation of the software." This means, in order to receive the free DD signal, the users are just required to download the software and connect their smartphones to the dongles. Thus, to avail the service, they make only a one-time investment for the purchase of dongle, as after that no money is charged for content streaming. The dongles can be bought from online shopping sites Snapdeal, Flipkart and Ebay.
So, do you think with this move Doordarshan will be able to revive the same place in the hearts of the viewers that it had decades ago? Tell us your views in the comment box below.
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