Doordarshan adds DTH channels
January 12, 2015
By Chris Forrester
India’s public broadcaster Doordarshan will boost the number of channels on its DTH ‘Freedish’ platform from 59 to 64. The additional channels were added on January 10th and are designed to be part of a wider eventual expansion to 112 channels by utilising MPEG-4 compression.
This first stage sticks with MPEG-2, however. Viewers will need to re-scan their set-top boxes to get the enhanced bundle of channels.
“Presently, we are leasing five transponders for giving 59 MPEG-2 channels. Now we will be upgrading to provide 64 channels by using only four transponders. We will be pushing 16 MPEG-2 channels per transponders,” advised CK Jain, Deputy DG at Doordarshan.
“The fifth transponder will be used for providing MPEG-4 channels. Apart from that, we have hired one more transponder for providing MPEG-4 channels. So we will have six transponders out of which four will be used for MPEG-2 and two for MPEG-4. For MPEG4, we will be using two transponders to provide 48 MPEG-4 channels,” he added.