A digital experience

Saturday evening when I walked in home I saw this strange looking bright yellow box sitting next to the TV. A first glance made me think of it as a toy box my mother may have picked up for our little neighbour. But the curiosity got the better of me and post-dinner I digged in to find out what it was, even a toy so be it.

This little fellow is supposed to be our access to a digital TV experience. It's the In2Cable provided "indigital" set-top box for a FREE trial period of one month. After the Sunday morning installation we got a demonstration of the features which include:

• Digital TV reception (I am not sure how much but does kind of make the picture sharper)
• A very interactive menu to surf across the almost 100 channels it has to offer. (and some Radio/FM channels)
• A favorites section which lets you collect your most viewed channel in an easy to surf list
• Synopsis of the current program playing on the channel
• TV Channel Schedules

I don't know if we are going to keep this post the FREE trial period. The two remote controls make it very uncomfortable to control the channels from one and volume from the other - I wish that could be worked out.

This is supposed to be the box we are going to have to use after the conditional access system is implemented in India. Now this is a very common cable television system prevalent in Europe (I had been exposed to this in the year 2000 during my visit there and is also common in Middle East countries) I really do wonder what took them so much time to bring this technology to India. Although currently the card has not much value since all channels are available but later the card would be programmed as per your bouquet of channels chosen. Till then let's enjoy the digital experience.

Tags: Digital Television , Set-top Box , In2cable , Indigital