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The advertisement in question that caught my eye is this: (source: TOI)

I immediately jumped at the thought of having a SUN DTH at home by disposing the earlier hathway connection, considering I am getting this offer at just Rs.499/-. One look at the asterisk (*) next to it prompted me to go right down to the ad again, where I was expecting a Conditions Apply, which indeed was there too!

I was further expecting they would ask me to sign up for atleast a year, but what I actually found was quite contrary to my expectations! Installation charges Rs. 1000 extra, + taxes (@ 12% of 499 bucks, which is almost another 50 bucks!

So there you go Sun Direct DTH is yours now for “just” 499 + 1000 + 50 = Rs.1550/-. Sun, who do you think you are hoodwinking? We are smart for all this guys. Try something else more genuine. Like adding Worldspace might sound like a better bet now that Airtel is giving us that!

Technorati : Bangalore, Bengaluru, Blog, Cable tv, DTH, Dayanidhi, Dayanidhi Maran, Dinakaran, Direct to home, Dish TV, Dish TV India, Flextronics, Jayalalitha, Kalaignar, Kalanidhi Maran, Karnataka, Karunanidhi, Maran, Reliance Bluemagic, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Insurance, STB, Set top box, Sun, Sun TV DTH, Sun TV direct DTH, Sun direct dth, Sun network, Sun tv, Tamil nadu, Tata Sky, Technology, azhagiri, doordarshan, hathway, james murdoch, madurai, million, remote, rupert murdoch, stalin, subhash chandra

I had been observing the DishTV service ever since my father in law installed it at his house a year back. However I did not have a chance to check on Tata-Sky service until now - that is until I myself was a victim of the satellite broadcasting hooliganism if I may use that word freely here. I am putting together my experiences on both of these services, before Airtel (Bharti) and Reliance IPTV launch their services in Bengaluru.

I kind of like writing informally, but I ll try to be as formal as possible with the comparions of course with pictures to aid you understand better.

Customer service

I made a call to DishTV and I received the required answers almost immediately. They had both IVR options as well as direct customer rep talking to me, which made me feel good. At that time I did not intend to go for their connection, but nevertheless, someone from either Bangalore or Delhi always called me regularly to see if I was still interested in opting for their service. Finally I got it installed for my father in law under the freedom offer where for a given set of channels, other than box cost, he need not have paid anything anytime. With respect to retaining customers, Dish TV is making all efforts and I would give them 8/10 for their dedication in this respect.

Coming to Tata Sky, I totally made two calls for installation. While the first call was answered in about 3-5 minutes time, the second one had me waiting for almost 15 minutes before someone on the other end decided to pick up the call. Having said that, naturally as a customer I got really annoyed and made clear my feelings to them as well. My box arrived on May 30, and an installation was scheduled for June 3. Then I get a call on June 1 and the voice on the other side tells me (not asks me) - “We are reaching your house in 30 minutes, and you have to be there for installation of the box!” I mean what the hell ? I am not at home, and you just say you are coming by? Is this how you schedule installations? - I didn’t want to buy that argument and asked them to come on June 3 itself. Now this is when I casually made the second call on June 3 to find out if they are coming by. I have no answers until 15 minutes. To add to this misery a recorded voice on the other end goes on saying how I can SMS some code to them to order an ACTVE package, for my box that is not at all installed! The conversation went thus:

CustomerServiceRep(CSR): May I help you sir?

Me: Sure you can help me, how about changing that stupid SMS message details to some song or something more soothing so that I can wait in peace while you decide a right time to answer my call according to your astrological calculations.

CSR: Its a nice feedback sir, we will definitely consider it for your sake!

Me: And perhaps you can also have someone call me back if the estimated time for answering calls is going to be more than 2 minutes

CSR: Yes sir, good feedback again.

Me: Nowhere have I had a wait of more than two minutes for a rep to talk to me. Is this how you define customer service?

CSR: Sir, you are lucky, that I could get to you in fifteen minutes atleast. Earlier it used to take half an hour for such calls you see!

Me: I work with Tata and Sky, so are you trying to tell another insider like yourself the real story? Then why will people like DishTV not overtake us in competition?

CSR: Sir we dont consider Dish to be a competition at all. We are afraid only of Reliance, not even Airtel sir.

Finally the CSR hangs up thanking me for my feedback and promising installation on June 3 itself. At about installation time, 6pm, I get another call saying since its rainy and since the guy’s vehicle is not ok, he cant do the installation. I shout at him and ask him to finish it the next day and the next day they promptly complete the installation. I give Tata Sky 5/10 for their customer service. In one word, its pathetic and they have a lot of catching up to do.

Installation nitty gritties

The installation personnel wear proper uniform, and come with the complete set of necessary tools required to complete installation. Both providers bring the dish antenna, along with LNB and the wires required. They also carry power drills and enough clamps to secure wiring properly. While the DishTV antenna is oval and large in size, the Tata sky antenna is smaller and more circular in shape. The LNB however is similar.

Tata Sky antenna and LNB

DishTV antenna and LNB

While the DishTV antenna is able to be clamped only on top of walls, the TataSky antenna can virtually be clamped anywhere due to flexible moving clamps. Irrespective of terrain this antenna thus can be fit in most places which is a breeze. Also the entire wiring for DishTv is NEVER clamped anywhere, and it looks very clumsy, whereas the TataSky wiring is fully clamped securely to the wall making it more neater in terms of installation.

Tata Sky wiring (first) and DishTV wiring (second)

For installation, I would give DishTV 6/10 where as Tata scores higher at 8/10.

Set Top Box and Remote Control

I also did a comparison of both set top boxes (DTV and TS - TataSky). While the DTV box is called Zenega and is from a taiwanese company called Handan BroadInfocom Co., Ltd, the TS set top box is from Thomson Electronics, a french company which is the world leader in set top boxes at the moment. The Zenega box has RF in/out, a serial port (intended for interactive communication later on?) and also aux in and tv out along with CVBS out to output to TV. The Thomson box on the other hand misses out on Aux IN and serial port and only has basic RF in/out with CVBS. These are at the rear of the box. On the front side though I liked the TS box better since it has a concealed smart card slot which makes it more durable and out of reach of people who dont know whats in it. Also the LEDs for on/off and alerts are neatly arranged along with front side switches for other operations. The Zenega box on the other hand, has no smart card (atleast as far as what I could make it out to be) and has the front side buttons on the side stacked up vertically. Personally since I dont use these buttons much, its of less relevance to me where they are placed honestly! On box design, DishTV and Tata both score in their own ways, but total about 6.5 to 7 /10 if not more!

Tata Sky box:

DishTV box:

Coming to the remote controls - this area is of extreme interest to me for a few reasons. I firmly believe that a remote must be user friendly, intuitive and most of all extremely simple and accurate to use. So I would naturally expect large keys to fit my fingers and a nice holding position for the remote itself. While the DishTV remote is too puny and rather obscure with most options too small to read for people with glasses, the Tata remote on the other hand is nice to hold, chunky, fleshy and intuitive. There are blue colored keys for important things and the others are black making it easy to use. However, Tata has chosen to name the buttons in a funny way such as having Organizer, Home, buttons as opposed to EPG or Menu buttons found on normal remotes. One thing I think a company must never do is to try and introduce new formats for something accepted and being used in the industry. One such gadget is the remote. Tata, please dont mess around with the names on the remote, they really irritate users at times. I am a set top box veteran and it pains to see such remote control labels which none can understand!

Tata Sky remote:

DishTV remote:

For design, I would give the Tata remote 8/10 and the DishTV remote only 6/10.

EPG (Electronic programme guide), menu and other screens and their usage

Having fairly large amount of expertise in this area, I found the Tata menu system a much better overall menu system to work with rather than the skimpy DishTV menu system. The EPG for instance on the Tata boxes is quite comprehensive and is in matrix format showing me multiple channels and multiple time lines. The EPG on the DishTV box however, shows me only one channel’s information at a time. Also the navigation button design is really horrible with respect to looks on this system. Tata on the other hand uses a highlight system which is more pleasant to use. This clearly shows DishTV has not been investing time and money to make that user experience well worth it yet. Tata with NDS’ software have ensured that nothing is left unturned to satisfy the user to the fullest level possible.

You can see some of the screens yourself and decide. While DishTV have a small PiP in place in the menu, Tata have chosen to cautiously ignore using it as we internally know that such features are prone to problems for the developers causing boxes to crash every now and then. The layout of the menu is much more organized in Tata Sky with useful information that we can always refer back to. There are help screens, with a dedicated help button on the remote and also account status screens, alerts, favourites and the list goes on and on. Look for yourself to see which is best! I would give 9/10 to Tata on their User experience and 6/10 to DishTV in this aspect.

Tata Sky screens:

DishTV screens:

Extras (Games, Quizzes, Stories and everything else under the sun)

So getting TV programs is no big deal. The set top box companies have to think that extra bit to make TV more interactive for children and adults alike. So what do they do? DishTV has an array of quiz programs and games which people can play. They are not exactly the most intuitive ones, but nevertheless you can kill some time with them. Tata on the other hand has ACTVE brand of games, story telling, news channels, religious darshans all bundled into the boquet of channels. While I personally did not like any of these much as they were pretty kiddish, I feel that they would still be of some use to children.

One has to remember that loading of these games or quizzes takes horrible amount of time, sometimes more than 2 minutes which is extremely annoying to any user even if he is a child. I personally feel set top box software development guys must stop including such time consuming applications on their boxes and stick to technology in terms of connectivity or video/audio format support etc. You cant please all at the cost of making the box slow. And thats not the only thing - non technical people like my mother and wife were easily able to hang the software on the Tata box without even pressing too many buttons. The software buckled just on entering and trying to play a game. Shame on you guys. Why did you throw caution during testing to the wind? Is it because we are Indians and would tolerate anything and everything? Wrong! Take notice before time runs out. Give us quality software at the least! If I were the testing coordinator releasing this box to customers, I would have failed the tests even before the box reached the store shelves.

Tata Sky ACTVE menu option screen (ACTVE stories)

Thankfully the DishTV software is more stable and does not crash often. I would give 6/10 to Tata for their ACTVE nonsense and about 7/10 for DishTV for their extras.

Packages, costs, boquets and brickbats

While DishTV is almost making their box cost zero (meaning offering the box to readers like you FREE of cost), Tata prefers to keep the cost at about 2,400 including installation charges of Rs.1000. Even servicing my Maruti Swift Car does not cost Rs.1000 and I wonder what is the great deal and brouhaha about charging users Rs.1000 under the guise of installation charge. Instead why not make DIY (Do it yourself) kits for users? So they may also learn and save money at the same time?

However one point to note is that the DishTV free box scheme still means you pay atleast 2,499 which is compensated by 3 months free subscription (which otherwise amounts to 300 * 3 = 900) + free movies worth 2,490. Now if I am neither a movie buff nor the movies available to view are not the latest it still means I am paying 1,599 towards the box alone which essentially means the box is not free.

For me a free box is something where I start paying monthly subscription alone with no installation charges, box charges or free movies or any other freebies. Consumers open your eyes and understand this simple fact. The profit margins are eroding for set top box companies, but still they come up with ingenious means of recovering the box costs! So remember - THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE LUNCH ANYWHERE IN INDIA!

Tata on the other hand has more reasonable schemes such as discounts for you if you refer friends and family members, like giving you monthly offs on the charges. Also upon bulk purchase for 12 months you get 2 more months free. The showcase movies package which promises movies worth Rs.4500 free is a raw deal just because the movies in showcase are not the ones you would love to watch always!

Tata Sky old pricing:

Tata-Sky new pricing:

Dish TV pricing for south and non south categories:

Additional boxes in one home for each extra TV and their costs

The Bane of today’s technology is that one box can work only with one TV even in 2008 ! Welcome to India! This country has still a long way to go by the time affordable multi tuner based server-client architectured set top boxes make it into homes (home gateway solutions). So lets review each providers scheme of things then for additional connections.

Tata Sky’s policies are simple here. Each additional box would cost Rs.1,499 with an installation charge of Rs.500 as opposed to Rs.1000, and the same package would cost Rs.125 more on each of the boxes at home. So this means the box cost remains the same irrespective of how many boxes you buy. So if I own 2-3 TVs realistically speaking, then I end up paying Rs.4,500 for the boxes alone which is a horrendous cost on me for a gadget that will depreciate in future sooner than later.

DishTV has a pricing of Rs.2,499 for each room with 3 months subscription discount. As stated earlier even if we subtract this amount of Rs.900 the remaining comes to Rs.1,599 for each extra box. Add a recommended installation fee of Rs.200 and what do you have? Rs.1,800 for each extra box. As compared to Tata, this is about Rs.200 lesser. But at what cost? You dont get the free movies for Rs.2,499 that you spend, and your subscription amount for second and subsequent connections remains as much as your first one: this means if I am paying Rs.300 for say Dish Maxi, for one connection, I end up paying Rs.900 for three connections.

Dish TV extra room equipment pricing:

Obviously its a no brainer that Tata sky is cheaper here. Dont get misled by free movies. You can always watch a paid movie at a theater such as PVR for a better experience! For this section I give Tata Sky an 8/10 and Dish TV 6/10.

Anomalies in transmission

While I have not seen much of DishTV lawsuits, arguments and counter arguments, Tata Sky seems to have gotten into some trouble with the sports channels, inviting their wrath by making customers pay for what has to have been free. After a bit of media bashing Tata seems to have calmed down and gotten back onto track to offer these sports channels once more.

Meanwhile DishTV has taken the opportunity to woo more customers when Tata was busy flouting broadcasting rules!

After all this only means broadcaster is king. No one likes to lose his money. And no one likes double crossing as well! Shame on you Tata Sky for this kind of gimmick. This was absolutely unnecessary. You can always earn this money in other ways - how about manufacturing more versions of indica until 2020 ? and testing it on the guinea pigs ?

Payment mechanisms

Both the providers offer SMS based and internet based payment mechanisms which make life easy for customers. Even more easier is the remote control based payment and subscription which is the defacto standard in the industry today. In this respect both score 9/10.

———–

So then friends, here ends the (hi)story of both the service providers. Now you are better informed to make good decisions! Safeguard your interests, think long term investment and look at what you need more proactively. If you like this article, share it with your friends so that they too benefit from it.

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Technorati : ACTVE, Audio, Bangalore, Bengaluru, Blog, Cable tv, Cooking, Darshan, Dayanidhi, Direct to home, Dishtv, Epg, Espn, Favourites, Flextronics, Games, Handan, Home, India, Internet, Karnataka, Koramangala, Korea, Life in Bengaluru, Lnb, Manual, Maran, Multiple tv, Multiroom pricing, Navigation, News, Organizer, Payment, Pip, Remote, Screen, Set top box, Sky, Sms, Sports channels, Star sports, Stories, Sun direct dth, Sun network, Sun tv, Taiwan, Tamil nadu, Tata, Technology, Thomson, Tv, Video, Zenega

You must be wondering why the number of articles have gone down over the past week. Well, problems with health, kids homecoming and work at office - enough to summarize whats happening? Ok so what do we have new in Bengaluru? How about a few hotels opening up newly in the city? Or the BIAL cock and bull stories? Well in my own best interests I thought of going back to my line of work - set top boxes.

Bengaluru has just seen yet another service start up. You Digivision. Here is their Ad for digital cable TV boxes in Bengaluru.

Firstly a bit of gyaan on cable set top boxes. What is the necessity of these cable set top boxes when we have so many other boxes with dish antennae that can receive signals from the satellite directly? Well these cable boxes are of a different kind. Earlier we used to get Analog signals for all our channels over the cable that we fed directly into our TVs and could tune to any channel we liked and watch it to our satisfaction and hearts content. Unfortunately world over, the well known broadcasters are now moving their service to digital signals which our TV’s (read old outdated idiot boxes) cannot receive/decode and show us what we want on the screen.

The YOU digivision box is a digital cable box (perhaps its criminal to even call it set top box) which will precisely help in decoding these digital signals sent over cable and can show you those cool channels that you always liked to see once again on your TV. This box is capable of decoding digital signals and instructing your TV to show you the decoded signal. A very nice article by Mike on this phenomenon is available here. You must read this to understand more about this technology/box offering.

So then what is You Digivision all about ? Dont we have similar boxes like that already in the market? Did you think Tata Sky, or DishTV? Well those are satellite receivers with set top boxes. I was more referring to Hathway boxes that are referred to as set top boxes! These boxes only decode digital signals sent over cable. In my locality for example, my local cable operator who runs miles and miles of physical cables all over the locality has tied up with Hathway to offer digital signal decoding as well. So does that mean if I fix a YOU DV box instead of the Hathway one, I d still be able to decode all signals and view them on my analog TV ? The simple answer is NO . Why is this? Simply because Hathway would have scrambled the digital channels so that a smart card inserted into their own box is the only one who could decode these channels and any other box within their network will simply fail.

The features advertised above are hardly of any luxury for me today as any other provider gives those as default ones with the box. For that matter this box does not even have a PVR functionality where I can record something to a hard disk! So if a box cant decode the scrambled signal given by my provider, and does not do recordings even, I fail to understand what is so great about this box that I must buy it.

So if any of my readers want to add on something to this story of your own understanding do leave me comments!

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This had to happen. The Set top box (STB) market was too crowded, and competition was, is and will be hotting up in future as well. So lets analyze in depth who were the providers who were there, and what change Sun TV has brought in with this Direct DTH launch. Erstwhile when the government opened up the possibilities for competition in the Direct-To-Home sector, there were only few takers.

Of this one of the early adopters of the service was Hathway and DishTV. While Hathway milked money from its customers without giving anything at actuals, DishTV was truly supposedly into the DTH market in reality. Hathway had subscribed to the DTH at its CO (Cable operator) end, and multiplexed the output along normal cable lines to homes. Just to add fizz to the drink, they screwed up the Analog transmission considerably making users feel that digital is the way to go (sic!) Without much option for thought as to why this is happening and due to little competition from others, the customers choice was to only agree for a set top box from Hathway that would bring in “DIGITAL” content into your homes. At that time it was a one time Rs.3999/- per set top box (~ $90+) which was a hideous pricing in itself. Generally in markets outside the world, STBs are sold even for as little as $10 - $20 range. However we live in “Incredible India”, so everything had to be incredible about things. I always never liked Hathway due to many reasons, they even overhyped their 64kbps (yes you read it right … 64kbps!!) internet as though it was the most ultimate thing on earth and internet could never be delivered beyond that speed and again charged Rs.3000/- a month for this nonsense of a service.

My STB from hathway even had a “Smart Card” except that it was just smart enough to boot up the STB and be there doing nothing more about it. So much for fleecing customers saying “Hey now you are proud owners of a Smart Card STB! Being in the STB domain in the industry, having seen everything about the set top box, these terminologies and explanations and assurances seemed only more like bullshitting (pardon the language) about flimsy technology. The problem with Indians has predominantly been paying too much for technology even before it was already there in full form. Which means something like buying a CD writer for Rs.10000/- when today a PC itself costs Rs.15000/- !!

The situation did change. In came Dish TV and DD Direct to home - the former was a private player from the north and quickly established lots of centers all over India and business flourished. Yet the cost of the STB was still 2999/- about 1k lesser than previously. Hathway began to feel the heat now. Dish succeeded to a great extent but their User interface graphics, and menu systems left a lot to be desired. So was Hathway graphics system as bad as ever. For those who dont know about this, there is a company called News Digital Systems (NDS) who operate out of Israel and Bangalore, who write the software for most boxes in Europe, UK and even for Hathway! This was a company of the STAR group owned by Rupert Murdoch and James Mudroch.

DD direct on the other hand was offering free DD channels of all languages and offering their own STB for a smaller pricing compared to Dish TV more or less. Their reach was more to the rural areas and the poor who always had loyalty in the government undertaking - Doordarshan.

This situation did not change for sometime until the great Ratan TaTa decided to do something about his own fortunes in this segment and launched the much famed Tata Sky DTH service. The prices were similar, the boxes were better, facilities in the box was even better, the user interface and graphics (menu systems) were more adorable though this was still done for TaTa by NDS. So money and strict requirements makes a superb change to a better viewing experience.

Needless to say Tata also tom-tommed about its STB and DTH all over the world and India, saying it has the best Digital experience like never before etc,etc. Little did everyone realize that the public at one point will understand that its just digital content that is transmitted over every STB and DTH and the quality of this content will be pretty much the same irrespective of the provider. Providers like Hathway and Dish started offering hefty discounts on their boxes and services some even giving away a six month free viewership deal due to this onslaught.

So what were the problems with TaTa sky? The billing was fine, the customer service was great with too less a turn around time. But the issue was with the channel boquet and packaging system. While there were many north indian channels in most packages, most of south india were either not familiar or happy with their channels in the list - they were too meagre in number to be compelling enough to go for the tata sky service. If TaTa had woken up on this beforehand, something could be done, but alas - the best was yet to surface.

Enter the Sun Direct DTH service. Sun TV was a rags to riches to rags again story in its umpteen years of existence. During its glorious days, it was the cause of envy of many a Tamil broadcaster, due to the ultimate patronage it enjoyed from the Karunanidhi family. Quality content, great picture and sound quality made it a true domain player. When MK came to power, it also got an unprecedented upsurge in viewership while it pitted itself against Jayalalitha’s JJ TV (man how much lower can people stoop to by naming a TV after them!).

All this was fine - until Dayanidhi Maran did one fatal mistake, that of discussing who would don the mantle of tamil nadu politics after MK - ie., which of his sons would make it as CM ? Unfortunately he used Dinakaran news paper as a means of conducting this poll, and due to the anger and violence it caused in tamil nadu, MK bore all the brunt of mud slinging - the end result - him deciding to kick Sun Network on its ass. And this he did with great pomp and splendor. He openly aligned with Raj TV, favouring them over Sun, he poached Sun’s acting cast to Raj and he even launched his own Kalaignar TV (now isnt that fit enough to comabat JJ TV - oh god!). During these days Maran lost his plum job as Communications minister, and the country perhaps lost a visionary too - remember he was at the forefront of lowering mobile call rates, ushering in 2Mbps broandband, and sort of creating exponential reforms in the telecom segment.

Of course he did divert Motorola and Nokia to our own yours truly Tamil nadu in the meelee, but in the general context he did much more than any communications minister ever did. With his flamboyant english speaking skills and business attired attitude, he caught the fancy of many people around the world. True to his professionalism, he even kept quiet when his entire TV network was being pulled down by none other than our own Kalaignar.

Media barons in the making surely have their own strategies up their sleeve and Dayanidhi and Kalanidhi Marans were not far behind either. Yesterday they upped the ante and contiunued their onslaught over the digital broadcasting domain with the launch of Sun Direct DTH - a direct to home service with a difference addressing all of previous bad learnings, finger burns, and market issues. The result - a service with a FREE set top box (common oldies, wake up now), a FREE dish - yes no catch here. - upto 90 channels of entertainment (radio and tv) - for just (hold your breath) Rs.75/- a month (~ $2.00). Holy cow. Interestingly TATA sky is now offering 1 million minutes free, I begin to wonder why!!

Click on this image to see the Sun TV Direct DTH plans and costs

Is it not clear that Sun intends to hit the volume segment and make its revenues. And DTH is not a business where Mr.Kalaignar can poke his nose or alter the business dynamics. Sun just shut him up with offering his own tv over their network and so also jaya! now this is called an even playing field. So now the set top box that I bought for Rs.3999 is invalid and is an e-waste ! Damn the growth of technology. Millions of peoples Rs.3999 is now down the drain.

So now the box and dish are free. Whats left? the service itself going free? Remember the great RELIANCE group is still there waiting to hit the market with Reliance Bluemagic. And with their recent Reliance Insurance, Reliance Fresh, and Reliance Mobile plans they have done well, atleast the pricing part. Its understood that Reliance will launch the IPTV (which connects the STB to your computer). With STB, PC and content available, you can watch everything on demand now, maybe with or even without advertisements! So where will your money then go? It will go to content. Anything that you get as an offering on the content side (serials, movies, songs) will be paid. The box will remain free. And content is like food. You cant live without eating food. You cant live without seeing movies, or entertaining yourself with music or playing games. And your kids will be most influential in asking you to buy these content - for which you will continue to pay. So Reliance, welcome to the club - all the best - prepare for the onslaught and it will be the survival of the fittest, fastest, cheapest and best! And dont forget adult entertainment is yet to make a big hit and that for sure will be the real money earner.

So do we see DishTV and Hathway pack their bags? Well mostly yes! Tata might make its box free in the shorter run and start offering IPTV along with Sun and Reliance. So this will then be regional dominance if not anything else.

We would then say - consumer is going to be benefitted the most - but a word of caution here. Dont buy technology when its too costly. Wait till it falls in prices. Wait till there is sufficient competition. And then the consumer will be the one who rules.

If you like this article, please comment.

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