DTH Vs Cable-an Analysis

The successful launch of the India's first fourth-generation satellite , Insat-4A will stir up competeion to provide Direct-to-Home(DTH)television.In 1990 , thousands of local operators aal over country set up satellites TV channels to their neighbourhood through cable strung along on electric poles etc.For the first time Indian viewers were able to watch forign TV channels.Cable Tv created revolution thus ended Goverment's monopoly on what people watched on TV(thus it also gave liberty to Electronic media).
Today there are 70,000 cable operatorsin India.They serve half or more of the 100 million.But now there's a growing friction between private channels that charges cable operators for content.TV channels are unhappy because cable operators often under report the number of subscribers they serve & therefore pay less than they ought to pay.
"With DTH, the TV channels can cut out the cable operators and gain control of entire value chain from providing content to reaching roadcaststo individual homes." points S. Chandrashekhar formely with ISRO and now on faculty of IIM,Banglore.For DTH a small dish mounted on the roof picks up TV signals broadcast from a satellite.A set -top box(costing few thousand bucks) then deciphers these signals and feeds them to a conventional television.
DTH has one major loophole that it can serve only certain minimum number of channels provided by a particular service provider and they cannot use the same device to recieve channels from different service provider.
So this battle will stir up & perhaps consumer will be at benefiting end