Airtel launches triple play with Airtel Digital TV interactive

Close on the heels of Tata Sky's premium service Tata Sky Plus, triple play digital TV interactive, an internet protocol-based television service.

With this, Airtel will deliver the triple play advantage of telephony, broadband and TV veiwing on a single telephone line. The triple play service will be initially available to customers in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida starting 19 January 2009.

Speaking during the launch function, Atul Bindal, president, Telemedia Services, Bharti Airtel, said, "Today, with the launch of Airtel digital TV interactive, we begin offering the Triple Play Advantage offer to our customers - leading in with voice, then broadband and now television and video on demand. We offer our customers a 'single knock on the door' experience - a uniform Airtel quality of experience with a single customer service interface and a single unified bill for voice, broadband and TV and video entertainment."

Airtel's IPTV headend with  MPEG4-10 compression technology, will allow it to offer more content and better quality images as well as services like live broadcast television, network based time-shifted TV, real video-on-demand and a host of other interactive services.

This technology enables high-speed broadband connectivity which in turn delivers superior digital video and audio quality.

Besides the latest technology, Airtel digital TV interactive brings many firsts to the TV viewing experience. While Interactive 2.0 offers a completely interactive experience including the freedom of ordering pizzas and movie tickets from the comfort of your TV set, the Time Shift TV transforms TV into a two-way experience, allowing the viewer to pause and rewind live TV as well as auto-record and store favourite programmes for seven days.

The largest expanding library of movies on Movie on Demand with 100 block buster titles gives the viewer complete on-demand access - any movie at any time.

Customers can gain access to the future of TV entertainment on Airtel digital TV interactive by choosing from two entry packs – the Magic@ Home Pack at Rs999 per month which gives 135 channels including 256 kbps broadband speed with unlimited download and a landline connection and the Combo Pack, the IPTV and Broadband Plan at Rs599 per month, which gives 117 channels including 256 kbps broadband speed with download limit of 2.5 GB.