Tataplay has dedicated favourites from LCN 900 ..one time you can switch to 900 and then use ch+ - to navigate through fav ( no dedicated switch) which is much better than airtel which has no fav system in xstream box... With regards to hd quality I agree with you , tataplay quality is compressed not like true HD whereas in airtel hd channel quality is superb! Plus the colors are more tuned to natural in airtel but in tataplay they have applied some filter or something its not true..in simple words airtel hd channels have rich colors whereas tataplay looks like filtered.
Hoping they will fix this after gsat24 migration but again not sure when ..so I would say wait for a month and see .
please note every tv need some tweaking for every dth ..play with the settings bro
Also may I know whats your tv resolution and size?