I’ll break the product review down in three parts: 1) Product Quality 2) Customer Service 3) Usability and Interface

Product Quality:

Well we don’t have much here other than that remote really and even the remote could have been better. The one that comes with Tata Sky has a sturdy look & feel and design and has a little bit of rubber and plastic like material. The color is soothing and when you hold it, it doesn’t feel cheap.

BigTV’s remote is comparatively small in size, is painted red, silver and black and light in weight. The exteriors are all made of plastic, has no rubber like material to go with it. So there is nothing wrong there but I still like Tata Sky’s remote better as holding a remote like Tata Skys feels good.

Round 1 Winner = Tata Sky.  A very close round but Tata Sky wins by a small margin.

Customer Service:

Where should I start from!! It’s a saga of relentless bad customer service at every level, again and again!

It took me a day and a half to get through to the support on BIG TV’s 1-800 number, only to find out that there is no option of buying BIG TV over phone.

I visited the outlet to buy BIG TV (PCH Zone in Hyderabad). The sales man did not have correct information about how many channels will the service offer, or what subscription packages does Reliance has.

I requested for a list of channels based on which I can decide which package to go for only to hear “Sorry Sir, we don’t have a list of channels offered by BIGTV but you will have all the channels you want to see”, what? How would you know what do I want to see?

If that was not enough he said “Sorry Sir, you currently don’t have an option of buying other packages” so the only thing I could do was pay close to Rs.2000 or 1,990 (I think) to be precise and get the Set-Top-box.

Never mind. I paid and got the BIG TV set-top-box with a guarantee from the sales man that the installation will be done within 24 hrs. However, installation happened almost a week later after making innumerable calls to the BIG TV’s support and the dealer.

That brings us to my painful experience I had with the Reliance call center.  I wouldn’t be wrong if I say that Tata Sky’s support service is 100 times better than BIG TV’s and at the end of the day that is what matters the most.

I called countless times and not once! Believe me NOT ONCE, did I talk to a representative who could talk proper English. I am not expecting anyone to talk very fluently but the least I expect form a representative is to understand what is being asked or said and communicate back. None of it happened on any of the calls I made.

Round 2 Winner: Tata Sky, hands down.

Usability and Interface:

So far I found just 1, hmm maybe two features helpful.

1. You can create your own profile with any name. I can create a profile with the name “Abbas” and store all my favorite channels in it. This is not offered by Tata Sky, in fact Tata Sky has a limitation of 20 channels which can be set as favorite (sort of a profile).
2. The channel browser I thought was good. It shows you a quick snapshot of what’s happening on the other channels.

Other than these two points, there is nothing which can convince me that the interface is intuitive and better than Tata Sky’s interface.

Till date I couldn’t figure out how to set a channel reminder, I don’t even know if I can set a reminder. You might say “Go refer to the user guide” right? I didn’t have to do that on Tata Sky. I never referred to any user guide, isn’t that what intuitive interface is all about?

Another thing I noticed that the system goes into a complete lag if you try to change the channels quickly. I had never seen this happen on Tata Sky. It literally takes about 5-7 seconds to change the channel once you hit the button.

Round 3 Winner: Tata Sky

Verdict:

In our opinion Tata Sky is superior and a better choice when compared to BIG TV.

Note: I didn’t mention anything about MPEG-4 quality, because I did not notice any difference. It could just be me!

Image Source: BIGTv.co.in