Sun Direct, the DTH operator from the Sun TV group, has added several new High Definition channels over the last several days, and has now overtaken rivals Dish TV and Videocon D2h in terms of the number of English movie channels on its HD platform.

The move comes more than a year after ISRO launched the GSAT 15, which promised to make more capacity available at the location at which Sun Direct is broadcasting from.

GSAT-15, launched in late 2015, has 24 Ku band transponders, all of which can be used to beam DTH services into the country. A single transponder of 36 MHz is able to support around 8 full-HD channels.

The satellite was placed exactly where one of Sun Direct’s two existing satellites are placed. Like Dish TV, Sun Direct uses two satellites to ensure that it has enough capacity. For beaming standard-definition channels, it uses the satellite Measat-3, located at 91.5 degrees east.

It also one transponder on INSAT 4B located at 93.5 degrees east — same location as GSAT 15 — to beam its HD channels.

Sun Direct used to have all its channels beamed from 5 transponders on the INSAT 4B. But in July 2010, power problems on the satellite forced the shutdown of 4 transponders, forcing Sun TV to move most of its channels to the neighboring Measat-3.
This also forced Sun TV to send its engineers to each and every household to re-tune their dish antennas to the new satellite.

As of late last year, Sun Direct had the lowest number of HD channels among all operators with the exception of Reliance Digital TV. With a big increase in the number of transponders at 93.5 degree location, Sun TV can easily overtake every other operator in the number of HD channels it can offer.

Dish TV and Tata Sky have the highest number of HD channels in India, even after the expansion at Sun Direct.

Using its 6 transponders on Asiasat-5, the Dish TV offers close to 50 HD channels, while Tata Sky has started offering lots of HD channels after moving its subscribers from the less efficient MPEG2 format to the more efficient MPEG4.

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