Category: Technology

You digivision launches in Bengaluru

You must be wondering why the number of articles have gone down over the past week. Well, problems with health, kids homecoming and work at office – enough to summarize whats happening?Ok so what do we have new in Bengaluru? How about a few hotels opening up newly in the city? Or the BIAL cock and bull stories? Well in my own best interests I thought of going back to my line of work – set top boxes.

Bengaluru has just seen yet another service start up. You Digivision. Here is their Ad for digital cable TV boxes in Bengaluru.

Firstly a bit of gyaan on cable set top boxes. What is the necessity of these cable set top boxes when we have so many other boxes with dish antennae that can receive signals from the satellite directly? Well these cable boxes are of a different kind. Earlier we used to get Analog signals for all our channels over the cable that we fed directly into our TVs and could tune to any channel we liked and watch it to our satisfaction and hearts content. Unfortunately world over, the well known broadcasters are now moving their service to digital signals which our TV’s (read old outdated idiot boxes) cannot receive/decode and show us what we want on the screen.

The YOU digivision box is a digital cable box (perhaps its criminal to even call it set top box) which will precisely help in decoding these digital signals sent over cable and can show you those cool channels that you always liked to see once again on your TV. This box is capable of decoding digital signals and instructing your TV to show you the decoded signal. A very nice article by Mike on this phenomenon is available here. You must read this to understand more about this technology/box offering.

So then what is You Digivision all about ? Dont we have similar boxes like that already in the market? Did you think Tata Sky, or DishTV? Well those are satellite receivers with set top boxes. I was more referring to Hathway boxes that are referred to as set top boxes! These boxes only decode digital signals sent over cable. In my locality for example, my local cable operator who runs miles and miles of physical cables all over the locality has tied up with Hathway to offer digital signal decoding as well. So does that mean if I fix a YOU DV box instead of the Hathway one, I d still be able to decode all signals and view them on my analog TV ? The simple answer is NO. Why is this? Simply because Hathway would have scrambled the digital channels so that a smart card inserted into their own box is the only one who could decode these channels and any other box within their network will simply fail.

The features advertised above are hardly of any luxury for me today as any other provider gives those as default ones with the box. For that matter this box does not even have a PVR functionality where I can record something to a hard disk! So if a box cant decode the scrambled signal given by my provider, and does not do recordings even, I fail to understand what is so great about this box that I must buy it.

So if any of my readers want to add on something to this story of your own understanding do leave me comments!

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Next opens showroom in Koramangala, Bengaluru

I had written earlier about OASIS opening up shop next to my home about 300 metres away. The fun did not stop there! Koramangala seems to be a place of plenty and more and more to come in future too. It has become a hub of very interesting shops and things to do. At this rate it will be a mini Bengaluru in itself. I have Pizza Hut right next to my home. So if I ve gobbled up a huge pizza and am feeling heavy, I can go over to the new NEXT showroom opposite Pizza hut to do some window shopping of all electricals and electronics!

I wonder what more is in the offing for this locality. However I still have fond memories of Everest School, a school run for the little children, the students among which my own cousin was one of them. It was exactly on the same spot where NEXT now stands that once upon a time there was a little school with little kids being taught interesting things. Many a sports day, a flag hoist was conducted at this very place which has now given way to this swanky building selling home appliances. Of course this was exactly 15 years before when Koramangala was close to nothing in terms of economic progress. I guess the owner of this place too has caught a whiff of the real estate smell. Of course one cant imagine a school being run in a building as small as this anymore! Its now the time of International schools, since the national ones have no meat left in themThis building also houses MAX NEW YORK LIFE, an insurance provider of all sorts. While the guy at the bottom ensures you waste your money, the guy on top ensures you save money to waste

So thats it for now, yet another showroom in Koramangala to waste time on!

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aShopCommerce : possibly one of the best shopping cart software around on the web!

You have an online business, and now want to make your products accessible to the public. What better way than to have an ecommerce framework designed to just that? No hold on! Now there is a much easier way to integrate a shopping cart software onto your site. aShopcommerce just does that and in style.What I liked about their website is the elegant design, which is simple to look at and understand all information about their offerings. The features for the shopping cart are nicely defined classified into setup, inventory, layout and design, payment options, shipping and tax information, web optimization, sales analysis and service and support sections, security and many more such sections.

If you are selling less than 500 products, for as little as 69$ a month, you can have all these features integrated as a shopping cart software, into your own site. On the higher end you can list upto 5000 whopping amount of products/merchandise for as little as $350 per month. What you get in return for that is a completely pluggable ecommerce software. For a list of features click here

From customizable themes for your cart, complete control over product information, integration with well known payment gateways, hosting of the shopping cart, databases and sms alerts, ashopcommerce has it all for you. So if you are a budding vendor who just wants to make it big in the online shopping market, look no place else. Click here now for some great shopping cart software.

Better caring the better way.

Have you ever wondered who will take care of you when you are old? Have you ever wondered how old age care homes in other countries work? Bettercare is one such website which answers this and many such questions. It is a service which helps you find the best nursing homes available for caring for your elders.

The website itself is neatly designed and easy to read and understand. It has three major classifications – your care options which provide you a list of options for care homes available around your location, News and views which shares important news about care for the elderly, and a nifty and sweet forum for like minded people waiting for care or giving care to discuss the topic.

The first section deals with different types of care – care from home, rented residential care and finance based care options. It also contains links to charity organisations around you. The news and views section has news snippets, expert talks, and tips to lead a healthy life. The forum allows users to talk to each other, and the section also contains letters sent by visitors and nostalgic experiences shared on the site.

So if you are looking for inputs on nursing homes, go no further. BetterCare is the best example!

Portable DVD Player from digitalframez

In earlier times watching movies was possible only on a TV or a standalone DVD player or perhaps a laptop which came with lots of associated peripherals. This not only increased complexity but also reduced the entertainment scale with such huge devices. For people on the move this was really bad until portable DVD players entered the scene.

Whats essential about portable DVD players is to keep track of its size, the disc formats supported, the outputs it provides so that it can be used with a variety of other devices, and the sound quality too to some extent. Having said that Digitalframez offers a trendy portable 10 inch DVD player. With most movies getting over between 2-3 hours, this player has about 4 hours of playtime which is a good thing. You could always end up one whole movie without battery fuss! And whats more it even charges off your cigarette charger in the car, making it worthwhile a gadget to possess for those long drives.

One another important thing to consider with a portable DVD player is the type of file formats it is capable of playing. In that respect the Digitalframez portable dvd player also is equipped to play divx files, and thats a huge boon considering that most DVDs are on divx format these days. It also plays photos, mp3 and other files! Armed with a TV tuner it makes it possible for a dual use mode, to watch either TV shows or DVD discs. At $239 its a steal.

COBY FM + USB + SD + remote – awesome pastime for a good nights sleep in hot bengaluru

Finally I got some time to write about the COBY CX 266, a model perhaps thats already outdated in days in the USA which i nevertheless procured at $45 from there. I ve purchased a billion radios till date. But I must say there is no one single radio that is giving me as much comfort as the coby baby that i currently have. I was expecting a flimsy radio when I first purchased it. Only when my friend gave it to be after it traveled from USA miles to Bengaluru, did I start appreciating the radio for what it is. My need was simple, I wanted a decent sounding radio supporting FM and having a remote control to operate it with. But what i actually got with the coby was much more than what I asked for!

It has a USB slot and an SD/MMC slot to pull in all the music from the associated devices and play it on the radio. I have not tried this feature yet, but I appreciate that its there! The entire radio is done out of proper wood and the construction quality shows well when you look at it. It just looks so sweet! The six buttons on the radio itself are quite flimsy but who cares, I use the ones on the remote instead! And then there is the aerial antenna which is hooked somewhere to my window for better reception. The big volume knob in white at the middle also serves as a push button on-off power switch for the radio and to increase or decrease the volume but turning a full 360 degrees free flow. I always love radios that welcome me by saying HELLO when you switch them on and BYE when you switch them off. Pretty neat! During the nights the backlighting on the radio is quite clearly readable too. With this the radio has features to auto switch on at a given time, auto switch off after a certain amount of time lasting a maximum of 90 minutes. The latter is a feature that is most welcome especially when you have slept off and your radio intelligently switches itself off without disturbing you! How really nice!! And in case you are those zomibies who dont wake up when the alarm rings (this ones got a radio alarm by the way), you also got a snooze button at your service to keep snoozing until its night time again !

Here a few more pictures and the manual is attached too! For 45$ this is a treat.

So the only things I dont really like about this radio:

– no recording option

– no line in for recording as well

Special thanks to my friend Mahesh, whom we fondly call MASH for this gift. A good night’s sleep is now never really far away!

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Sun Direct DTH launches in Bengaluru

I had earlier written an article on the entry of Sun Direct DTH into the DTH space, when they started off in Tamil Nadu. In that article I had compared various players in the DTH space as well. You can find more details about the various DTH players here

Today Sun Direct DTH has started off their services in Karnataka, and particularly in Bengaluru, although they are now singing a different tune than the old “Free set top box + free installation” song! This time they are offering the service for Rs.1999/- (*****) with lots of “conditions apply” buzzword – the jargon meant to indicate everything is not what is indicated in there! If I am probably right, it would only mean an installation charge of Rs.999 extra putting the totals upto Rs.3000/- which is no different from the other existing players.

Interestingly earlier Tata Sky was offering their customers a million minutes free which they have now withdrawn. Instead now they are beginning to capitalize on the kids segment (a segment where the people involved wont take a “NO” from their parents) by saying kids of TATA Sky owners are more brilliant than others– becuase they do mathematical puzzles and play reasoning games on their set top boxes using ACTVE LEARNING.

For once I believe Tata must provide more channels in their boquet rather than all these games before customers assume Tata DTH is only for kids alone in the longer run. Coming back to the Sun Story, note however in the above AD that they still do not disclose the monthly charges which by foresight I assume to be much higher than Rs.150 atleast and not the erstwhile Rs.75 for 75 channels (which is ridiculous since it will eventually bring down their profits like hell).

As usual a call to any of the dealers mentioned in the AD only returns one of these

  1. The phone you have called is busy, call later

  2. This call is being diverted to a different number (which probably will never be answered!)

  3. The service reps are so busy assisting millions of customers that they dont care for another customer like you who will join that queue of never being answered technically speaking

  4. The worst part of the toll free number for Sun DTH service is that the IVR is in tamil as well making us all feel that we have dialled some Tamil Nadu number, which by coincidence is also true. Atleast Sun could’ve done better putting up that IVR in the respective local languages.

So another day of wasted phone calls to no avail, even to find out details. Perhaps the Sun scheme details are already there on their website, I would’nt care much just because I expect Sun to take atleast a month or more to seriously begin addressing the Karnataka market. Since this is all about pre booking, it means you pay up your hard earned money for equipment that you would get perhaps a month or even six down the line! If Sun has to make boxes for you, you pay up first, they get confirmed orders and perhaps approach a hardware vendor like Flextronics or the likes and place a volume order for those many pre booked number of boxes! From that day your wait starts until you get frustrated.

So its all a wait and watch to see what impact Sun Direct DTH makes in Karnataka, and in particular a cosmopolitan city like Bengaluru.

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BSNL launches 8Mbps broadband in Bengaluru

So its about time we had some decent net speeds, and BSNL seems to understand our requirements as well. Yesterday, they have launched an 8Mbps broadband scheme in Bengaluru. Now you can be assured of simply blistering speeds. I got a chance to experience 8Mbps while I was at London, and it was simply terrific.

They have three plans, 2000, 4000 and 15000. While the first starts from 256kbps upto 8mbps, the latter start from 1mbps minimum and go upto 8mbps. Whats also good is the download limits. Instead of skimpy 1Gigs they now have 27GB in the starter plan upto 125 GB !!! in the last plan.They even have a free modem (rental, and without monthly charges, returnable on disconnection) for the last two plans which makes this a scheme to lap up immediately if you got the dough!

For more details you can call a toll free number of BSNL – 1800 424 1600 and be rest assured your life might change forever with respect to the way you browse!

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Repair your PCs, laptops and networks in Bengaluru – 24/7, online support and more!

Some decent support for all your computers seems to be finally in the making! Yesterday a website called itsupportdesk.com was launched in Bengaluru. Operating out of rajajinagar area, for about Rs.899/- ($23) they offer you unlimited software downloads onto your PC/Laptop, live chat 24/7 and one year’s worth of warranty for your PC. Stealing the punchline off HP’s ad blitz about the computer being personal, they go on to add, ’the computer is personal, lets treat it personally’For this price you get 4 free carry in services if in case something is wrong with your PC. While the price seems a bit steep for just four services, atleast you have someone reliable (hopefully) and someone you can reach 24/7 online. This makes the price a bit attractive especially considering 24/7 work.

(image courtesy : times of india)

They have quarterly, annual, and pay per visit plans while they have managed to keep their online support free forever. They would perhaps be able to solve most of the problems by logging in remotely into your PC. A sister concern of Rooman Technologies, this company seems a bit promising for now. Other than PC support, they also offer support in network installations, security and offer helpdesk outsourcing options to customers. Their website is basic, static HTML content, with a login page for customers to login and view history of their activities with the company. This unique database management of customers would provide such companies with strong base to manage their ever growing base of people coming to them and put them into the bigger league of well managed companies.

Their customer service link though did not work on the website, which means something is still brokenSo what are you heading for? Have a problem late in the night in Bengaluru? log on to www.itsupportdesk.com and voice it out.

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