DTH providers ramp up HD offerings: Analysis of new channel additions

In the first two months of 2024, the two largest pay DTH operators — Tata Play and Airtel Digital TV — have gone a long way in closing the gap with respect to their HD channel offerings. Tata Play increased its lead as the company carrying the largest number of HD channels, and the only one with over 100 HD channels, with the addition of Sony Sports Ten 4 HD (Tamil/Telugu sports) in January — the first DTH to do so, a month before Airtel followed suit — followed by Investigation Discovery HD (American crime dramas dubbed in Hindi) in February. And on Thursday (29 February) it filled the final missing gap in its music portfolio by adding the long-pending and delayed Gemini Music HD, the Sun network’s Telugu HD music channel, which was available on Airtel and Sun Direct for a long time.

This is in addition to adding many more HD channels from broadcasters like Disney Star, Zee, Doordarshan and Sun — specifically the new channels Sun Bangla HD and Sun Marathi HD — towards the end of 2023, which enabled it to cross the 100 mark, and today very few satellite HD channels (most notably those from ETV, another Telugu broadcaster) are missing from Tata Play. After the addition of Gemini Music HD, there is not a single HD channel which is absent from Tata Play but present on another DTH.

Not to be left behind, meanwhile, second-placed Airtel Digital TV added a large number of HD channels, including four in February alone. In January it added the only Kannada movie channel, Zee Picchar HD — a few months after its Tamil counterpart, Zee Thirai HD — and in February this was augmented by the only Malayalam HD movie channel, Asianet Movies HD, followed by a hat-trick including two Marathi channels (Sun Marathi HD and Pravah Picture HD) as well as Sony Sports Ten 4 HD which was added by Tata Play the previous month. With all these additions, it now has over 90 HD channels, comfortably ahead of third-placed Sun Direct.

Below, we will briefly analyse the impact of all these additions on the overall HD portfolio of these two DTH platforms, and how Tata Play and Airtel are getting far ahead of Sun Direct and the Dish TV/d2h combined entity, which are lagging behind in a number of HD channels. For reference, these are the channel numbers of the new HD channels added in January and February.

Tata Play: very few HD channels missing today, and none which are present on another DTH

After the addition of Investigation Discovery HD from Warner Bros. Discovery on 20 February, one of the last gaps in Tata Play’s HD channel portfolio was filled, since it was the only missing HD channel in the Hindi GEC category. On top of which its addition of Gemini Music HD — the only Telugu HD music channel, which has been available on its home platform of Sun Direct (LCN 838) as well as Airtel Digital TV (LCN 931) for years — means that it now carries all five satellite HD music channels in India today: 3 from Viacom18 and 2 from Sun. Tata Play had long been rumoured to onboard Gemini Music HD along with the other recent HD additions, but the addition had been delayed for reasons unknown; now, Telugu viewers finally have reason to rejoice. Gemini Music HD’s addition means that there is not a single satellite HD channel that is absent from Tata Play but present on another DTH.

This aside, there are several satellite HD channels which are currently not present on any DTH operator, but here too Tata Play is in discussions with broadcasters to add them. Most noteworthy are the HD channels from another Telugu broadcaster, ETV, which has so far failed to get any of them added by TV platforms — with the exception of its flagship GEC, ETV HD, which is present on all five pay DTH operators. Presently it operates three other HD channels: the Telugu channels ETV Plus HD (comedy) and ETV Cinema HD (movies), in addition to the kids’ channel ETV Bal Bharat HD which is available in a whopping 12 languages. It is expected that Tata Play may finally make headway in adding the HD channels from this broadcaster and give them a DTH presence for the first time.

Moreover, there are a couple of other HD channels that are not present on any DTH operator at present. On 19 January, Doordarshan launched its first-ever regional HD channel, DD Tamil HD, as part of an ambitious rebranding exercise — the channel was previously called DD Podhigai — with a new look and programming slate. Few other DD regional channels have received as much attention as DD Tamil in recent years, and with its new logo and look that stands out from other DD channels, DD Tamil HD stands a good chance of being added by Tata Play — especially as DD Sports HD, DD National HD and DD India HD were all added by it towards the end of 2023.

Additionally, there is also Tarang HD — the HD feed of Odisha’s most popular GEC, Tarang TV, from local Odia broadcaster Ortel Communications — which is so far available on only its sister company, Ortel Cable. The only other HD channel in Odia is Star Kiran HD, which became the first Odia HD channel with its launch in June 2022, and a year later was added by Dish TV (only the NSS6/SES8 satellites for non-South Indian customers) in August 2023 and Tata Play in October. Unusually for a Disney Star regional channel, Star Kiran has been an abysmal failure in the ratings chart despite its efforts, and therefore the addition of Tarang’s HD version on Tata Play should help to increase the visibility of the most popular Odia entertainment channel in high-definition quality.

Once these additions are completed, Tata Play will have all satellite HD channels in India today — for the time being, until new ones are launched — cementing its position as the unassailable leader in the Indian pay DTH sector.

Airtel Digital TV: only Star Kiran HD and Disney Channel HD missing from Disney Star

For its part, Airtel Digital TV has done a commendable job bridging the gap with Tata Play in terms of its HD channel offering, thanks to its addition of five new HD channels including four in February alone. As a result, only a small number of HD channels are missing from Airtel, including some that are exclusive to Tata Play (MTV HD, DD News HD and Jaya HD) and others that are not carried by any DTH platform, like the above ETV HD channels and DD Tamil HD.

Notably, with the addition of Zee Picchar HD in January, all 19 of Zee’s HD channels are available on Airtel Digital TV — in addition to Tata Play — as in October 2023 Airtel had also added the lifestyle/food channel Zee Zest HD. Tata Play became the first DTH to carry all Zee HD channels at the end of the same month, by adding the Hindi premium movie channel &xplor HD — which was exclusive to Airtel for four years — as well as Zee Picchar HD (the first DTH to do so) and Zee Thirai HD (the second after Airtel) in addition to four Disney Star HD channels.

Speaking of Disney Star, of the 31 satellite HD channels that it has on air — the highest of any Indian broadcaster (before its merger with Viacom18) — 29 of them are now available on Airtel Digital TV after its addition of Asianet Movies HD in Malayalam and Pravah Picture HD in Marathi. There are only two Disney Star HD channels which are still missing from Airtel: the Odia GEC Star Kiran HD (as mentioned above) and the kids’ channel Disney Channel HD, which are both present on Tata Play and Dish TV NSS6/SES8. Disney Channel HD was launched in March 2023 by Disney Star along with several other channels including Star Gold 2 HD, Asianet Movies HD, Vijay Super HD (Tamil movies; added by Airtel in October 2023) and Star Sports 1 Tamil and Telugu HD.

In fact, when Airtel added the new Marathi channels Pravah Picture HD and Sun Marathi HD on 16 February, it missed out on adding their East Indian counterparts Star Kiran HD and Sun Bangla HD. Disney Star launched Pravah Picture HD and Star Kiran HD in May and June 2022, respectively, along with their SD versions; meanwhile Sun Bangla and Sun Marathi launched their HD feeds at the end of November 2023 without any announcement, and these were almost immediately added by Sun Direct and Tata Play. Having added both Marathi channels, Airtel stands a good chance of adding the corresponding Odia and Bengali HD channels from the respective broadcasters as well, to balance out its offerings.

Still, the wait continues for many other pending HD channels on Airtel, most especially Viacom18’s three HD music/youth channels — MTV HD (Hindi youth, exclusive to Tata Play), MTV Beats HD (Hindi popular music) and Vh1 HD (English music) — all of which remain missing over 7 years after they went on air. These are the only HD music channels from any Indian broadcaster apart from Sun (which runs Sun Music HD and Gemini Music HD) after the closure of HD music channels from Sony and other networks.

However, Airtel Digital TV has done a commendable job of keeping abreast with the latest HD channel launches, and it’s not too far behind Tata Play in that regard. With the official announcement of the mega-merger of Disney Star with Reliance Industries’ Viacom18 — after the equally hyped merger of Zee and Sony collapsed acrimoniously — the combined Disney/Reliance broadcaster, India’s largest by a long distance, should hopefully take the effort to make its channels widely available across all platforms.