HD Channels : The current HD gold bouquet has 6 full time HD channels (Star Plus HD, Star Movies HD, Star World HD, Star Gold HD,Nat GEO HD and Discovery HD) apart from that there is Set Max HD which only comes on during IPL matches.

HD quality is superb, at 1080i the images are crisp most of the time, to preserve HD quality, Start is not advertising on its HD channels and fills in remaining time with fillers. So a show which starts at 8:00pm finishes at 8:22pm on Star Plus HD and 8:30pm on Star Plus SD.

Hardware Capabilities : The set top box from Tata Sky is a fairly competitive piece of equipment offering 500GB of storage space. Apart from the space, features like live pause, rewind (live) and slow motion are really awesome. The set top box also has a cool rotating play display which tells you the state of playing from the hard disk.

The box has 2 inputs and HDMI and RCA outputs. It also promises 5.1 channel audio (which I haven’t verified). It has a super light indicator as shown in below video :

You can record 2 channels at one time, if you are recording two channels at one time, it wont let you switch channels and you will have to stop recording. This again is very counter intuitive.

Its takes a while to figure out why its giving the warning and how to stop recording one of the channels. If you had paused a similar warning is given on changing channels, this time with no reason as to why its asking you to confirm a channel change.

The recording can be done in many ways, ad hoc recording, just go to a channel and press record to record the current program. You can also choose a program in the future to record, apart from this there is also an option to record all instances of a TV series.

TV series is a little confusing though, it took me a while to figure out how to edit series settings. The manual is totally useless, offers absolutely no information on operation. Tata Sky really shortchanges customers on manual quality.

The usability of the box is severely reduced due to earlier point. I literally had to tutor my parents on usage.

Apart from the special characteristics, the set top box has the ability to set 50 favorite channels. I also observed that sometimes on changing the channel it wont come on. That’s a major issue that needs addressing.

So that’s it for this part of the review, for the earlier part of the review , head on over to Wisetechie Blog

Overall Positives :

1. Great price of Rs. 3999

2. Tata Sky Service Quality , best in DTH providers

3. Star’s bouquet of HD has no ads till now, 500 GB space is awesome

Overall Negatives :

1. Extremely complex to use for normal folks

2. No proper manual given, no guidance provided by setup staff

3. HD gold pack costs 50 rupees per month extra. So another pack you have to add to your bouquet.

This is not a fake review, this review is as original as it gets. We have been hosted on Stablehost for a couple of months now. We shifted ourselves from Bluehost. why we did that can be read here on Wisetechie blog.

We genuinely feel that this host has done an absolutely stellar job. There are those out there who’d recommend something for the sake of a recommendation, but we’re not one of those sites. If you love your iPhone, your O2 Broadband, or your Xbox, you should have the freedom to say so. Therefore, we’re huge fans of Stablehost, and proud of it.

So coming to the pros of shifting to Stablehost, you might want to read this before taking the plunge and shifting to your next host :

1. Much much cheaper than Bluehost, Dreamhost and the other assorted and related hosts. For about $3 (using coupon) ,  you can get 5GB space and 100GB bandwidth for yourself. Plus you can use coupons for lifetime unlike bluehost and other likes. Also you can pay monthwise and still get the same price, or quarter wise etc.

2. No unlimited sham – Unlimited hosting is fake and a sham. There is nothing called unlimited hosting and any company which claims to sell you unlimited hosting is lying and has a huge number of fine print conditions on file numbers, system use etc.

3. LiteSpeed Web Server – Litespeed helps ensure your website runs faster than it did on ordinary apache installations.

4. Ultrafast support – The support is lightning fast, average support time is 2 minutes and usually less than that. Their ticket based support is faster than bluehost’s chat support on which finding an agent itself is an arduous task.

5. No Downtime – Unlike Bluehost , they dont seem to oversell their servers, till now there has been no downtime on my Stablehost account.

So the bottomline is , if you want a cheap, affordable,fast and reliable web hosting service, stablehost is one of the offerings for you.

You may want to use coupon code BDAY to get 50% off your order

Hello Mr. XYZ,

Your payment of  [amount] has been sent back to the sender of the payment. 

We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows:  (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select "Goods," and (c) provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment such as a gift, then we have requested that the sender find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.

We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we’re sorry for
any inconvenience.

Thank you,
PayPal

No one really knows what Paypal is upto, there are rumours that its a regulatory issue, there are rumours that its a technical issue and further rumours that its an issue due to large number of scams being done in the market.

With both Tata Indicom broadband and Airtel Broadband coming out with Fair Usage Policies for their unlimited internet connections, unlimited Internet isnt quite unlimited anymore. Infact there is no way to see your Internet bandwidth usage on Tata Indicom VSNL broadband unless you have a limited hours based/ data usage based account. Probably the same case with Airtel.

What is amazing is that when I wrote to Tata Indicom broadband about asking where I should be able to see the data transfer, I got a weird copy pasted reply.

Anyway, so I was off to search for a solution to my problem , and I came across NetMeter. Its a small and powerful utility that lets you measure the data transfer across your computer (both upload and download). With this nifty tool you can get an idea as to what is your normal Internet data transfer usage etc.

Download NetMeter :http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/index.php?page=10

As an introductory offer , HP is giving a 15% off Snapfish coupon,  the photobook is available in following sizes :

Sizes available:

2″ X 3″ Mini Book

5″ X 7″ Everyday Photo Book

8″ X 8″ and 8″ X 11″ Custom Jacket Photo Books

8″ X 11″ Classic Photo Book – available in linen and leather covers

12″ X 12″ Signature Photo Book – available in linen and leather covers

Enter Snapfish coupon code PBBLUEOFF15 before checkout for your 15% discount. We got this offer in our email and wanted to share it.

Offer till 31st July !

Image Copyright : HP