As I already had an TATA Sky DTH connection  I was tempted to buy the TATA Sky+ at 4,999 the diwali offer (valid till 31 Oct 2009) the regular price is 8,999 I knew that I would not have bought it at the regular price, well I am very pleased to say that TATA Sky+ has changed the way I watch TV and at the discount price it’s a great value add on to your television setup.

The TATA Sky+ digicomp is like a mini computer, it has an 160 GB internal hard-drive where all the programs are stored it records around 45 hrs of shows, there are 2 tuners, it also has a mini-fan simillar as found on computer SMPS, the fan gets switched on automatically when the digicomp heats up, apart from the standard AV connections, the Sky+ digcomp has component, S-Video, Digital Optical audio output, Coaxial digital audio output when can be used to connect to your Hifi home theater / music setup, as this Tata Sky+ has component out it is future ready for HD channels, BTW this digicomp is MPEG4 compatible.

The Tata Sky+ digicomp box also has Ethernet, phone jack and a USB slots but there are currently disabled don’t know when or how TATA Sky plans to use them but its fair to say its future ready.

The Tata Sky+ box contained all the cables, Standard AV cable, Component, Co-axial and S-Video cables.

As the Tata Sky+ digicomp box has 2 tuners you can do the following things

1) Record 2 different programs at the same time
2) Record 2 different programs at the same time and watch a previously recorded program.
3) Record 1 program and watch another program.

The usage of TATA Sky+ is very similar to the regular TATA Sky connection you just have some extra buttons on the black tata sky remote via which you can live pause rewind, forward or schedule the programs to be recorded, the interface is very easy to use.

The Tata Sky+ digicomp box is very sleek and black in color.

The best thing about TATA Sky+ is that I can just fast forward those pesky ads, when I play back a recorded program this way I am able to finish an 1 hr show about 40 mins!. The down side of having TATA Sky+ is that now I am watching around 1.5 – 2 hrs of tv/day earlier it used to be just around 20 mins earlier coz I always used to miss or used to be busy when my favorite shows aired, now every day in the morning I schedule the shows that I want to record and watch them whenever I get time that is sometimes after 3-4 days of recording the program, there is a also a option called “Series Link” which will automatically record whenever a new episode of a series or serial is aired which is a very cool option but strangely works only with a few serials in my testing.

Conclusion: Overall the TATA Sky+ is a great package and I feel the price of Rs 4,999 is very fair as they are the only DTH provider currently in India to provide DVR facility on a DTH network, but the regular price Rs 8,999 plus 1,000 installtion and a monthly fee of Rs 50 for Tata Sky+usage is on the higher side, I do hope other DTH provider also do come up with DVR boxes on their network as I firmly belive that its essential to have competion as it will result in lower pricing.

I have to say once you get used to a DVR like Tata Sky+ you just cant go back to watching regular TV.