New Hindi Channels in testing: Aastha, ZoomTV and TimesNow

[hvarma2008]

Just wanted to draw attention to those interested in International programming and specially Hindi channels. The channels in testing are:
Aastha(648): A top rated religious channel
TimesNow(652): A 24 hours news channel from the Times of India group.
ZoomTv(649): A bollywood gossip news and music channel

I also see a MTVH(776) in testing, I am not sure whether that is the hindi MTV?

Does anyone have news on when these might be actually turned on?

 

[r10fret]

They test them for a week or sometimes two and then make them available usually the following uplink cycle, interesting that when I go through the directv internationals @ 95 an "Aastha is no longer availabe message" comes up, Directv also has a channel called MTV-I, which is MTV India, and directv also dropped a free preview newschannel from India they had over a year ago that I though was TimesNow. Looks like dish is trying to cash in on all the uncertainty with internationals on directv, since dish has been adding the new internationals not only at 118.7 but also in the last week adding them at 61.5 to a new MPEG-2 QPSK transponder, TP 6, dedicated to internationals.

 

[Jimmerinwi]

That's one good thing installing customers with Hindi Mega Pak, it's on 61.5 and we can do a 1000.4 instead of 1 1k4 and a 500+ dish, they usually aren't real happy to have two huge dish's on their house.

 

[r10fret]

It seems to me it is not clear what exactly is the plan for EA internationals, first they removed some over the last several years, now they have just added some new ones, one thing is for sure since the rest of the EA is MPEG4 8PSK there is no excuse for dish to continue wasting TPs doing MPEG2 QPSK at 61.5, If they converted the internationals at 61.5 to MPEG4 8PSK SD they would have plenty of space to mirror all of the internationals on 118 for EA in MPEG4 on 61.5.

 

[vdsz]

I am getting free preview of MTV Hindi..I saw it today and then checked on DishNetwork.com. It is part of HINDI: MEGA Packagae.

 

[mruk69]

I have had all of these channels for a few weeks now, except for mtvH which I got last week. I have 110/119/129/61.5.