d2h and Dish TV ST-2 releases list of new channel numbers effective from 30 August

DTH operator d2h, owned by the Essel Group that also owns Zee Entertainment Enterprises, has unveiled its list of new channel numbers on Friday (20 August). The big LCN change will take place on 30 August, the Monday after next. These LCNs will also be applicable to those subscribers of Dish TV, the Essel Group’s other DTH service, who have their satellite antennas tuned to the ST-2 satellite, which offers more South Indian channels than the NSS6 and SES8 satellites used by Dish TV for its non-South Indian customers.

d2h becomes the first Indian DTH operator to officially use channel numbers greater than 2000 for ordinary channels (though Tata Sky uses LCNs in the 20xx series for Internet-based channels such as Travelxp 4K HDR, and Dish TV NSS6/SES8 allocates channel numbers in the 2xxx and 40xx series for channels shared from DD Free Dish). Tata Sky and Dish TV NSS6/SES8 use channel numbers until 1999, while Airtel Digital TV and Sun Direct have only 3-digit channel numbers.

Also, HD channels are now placed immediately before the corresponding SD channels, like Tata Sky does. Previously, HD channels in d2h occupied channel numbers 900 to 997 and were arranged by genre, in a similar fashion as Sun Direct, where the HD channels start from LCN 800 onwards.

Note: LCN = Logical Channel Number.

Home Channels (LCN 90–99)

Hindi General Entertainment Channels (LCN 100–183)

Hindi Movies (LCN 300–377)

Hindi Music (LCN 453–467)

English GEC (LCN 500–508)

English Movies (LCN 556–573)

English Music (LCN 601)

Sports (LCN 620–665)

Note: Sony Ten 4 is in the Tamil section (LCN 2953).

Hindi News (LCN 721–763)

Urdu (LCN 777–789)

Regional Hindi News (LCN 817–857)

Hindi Business News (LCN 871–873)

English News and Business News (LCN 891–934)

Infotainment and Lifestyle (LCN 953–985)

Kids (LCN 987 and 1101–1125)

Religious (LCN 1201–1223)

Punjabi (LCN 1355–1431)

Marathi (LCN 1454–1523)

Gujarati (LCN 1607–1651)

Odia (LCN 1707–1789)

Bengali (LCN 1806–1879)

Assamese (LCN 1957–1999)

Bhojpuri (LCN 2059–2077)

Telugu (LCN 2356–2507)

Kannada (LCN 2606–2733)

Tamil (LCN 2857–3021)

Malayalam (LCN 3106–3237)

Historically d2h has been a laggard in terms of adding new channels, and lacks a number of important channels, with the struggles especially increasing since its merger with Dish TV a couple of years back. It has the fewest HD channels of the five major DTH services. While others have ramped up their channel addition, both Dish TV and d2h have struggled in this department. This big LCN reshuffling provides a much-needed opportunity for d2h to free up many LCNs for adding new channels, especially in the HD channel department, where it faced space constraints earlier and had to cram together many channels in the 9xx series.