Airtel Digital TV, one of the leading DTH service providers in the country introduced the Android- enabled set-top box in the second quarter of 2017 that revolutionized the Direct-to-Home industry in India. With this service the subscribers of Airtel DTH recharge service can watch internet based programs on television besides watching the regular broadcaster channels on TV.
The set-top box of the Airtel internet TV is provided with streaming programs of Netflix, YouTube and also allows its subscribers to download Google Play store onto the television set to play games that were till now played by them on their smart phones. The purpose behind launching this amazing STB was to give their customers an end-to-end entertainment experience that could be accessed and experience from a single device. During the launch the customers had the option to buy either this STB and then use Airtel DTH recharge service to activate it or buy the STB with a one year subscription of more than 500 channels. Both the options had different price points attached to them. The company now sells the Airtel internet TV at major retail channels online. Another first-type feature of this service is that it comes with a intuitive interface and has voice based search facility –the user can speak into the remote to search for a TV program or an online program.
The biggest drawback to this service is that only about 40% of the television sets in the Indian households belong to the smart category whereas majority of the TV sets are the conventionally type. So typically a customer would have to spend some extra money to upgrade his existing television set to experience this service.
A very important feature of Airtel DTH recharge is that when one is travelling outstation, he/she can temporarily deactivate the account. There is however restrictions on the number of times the deactivation can be done in a years’ time and there are extra charges for the same. They are:-
- The services can be reactivated by Airtel DTH recharge only thrice in a year
- There are applicable service charges: – Rs. 30 is chargeable for a period of one month of deactivation; Rs. 100 is charged for a connection that is deactivated for 3months and Rs. 200 is deducted from the recharge amount when the connection is unused for a period of 6 months and above.
- The best part is that the account can be reactivated at point in time within the allowed period and once the charges against deactivation are debited from your account it will not be refunded back.
- Also while reactivating a deactivated Set-top box via Airtel DTH recharge one must make sure that the set-top box is in the power ON mode. Even in the standby mode the recharge may not be effective.
- In case of any assistance required, one can call or email the Airtel customer support team and they will help out the subscriber with reactivating their deactivated account.
