Reliance Big TV is now offering free set-top box and HD channels for a year

Direct-to-home (DTH) player, Reliance Big TV has announced that it is now offering its customers free access to an extensive range of HD channels for one year and up to 500 free-to-air channels for five years across the country. Further, the company will also be providing a free of cost HD HEVC set-top box for which pre-booking is already open but for a limited period depending on the stock availability.

"Reliance Big TV is going to mark the beginning of a new dawn in the way Indians have been accessing entertainment on their TV sets. Starting from today, entertainment comes effectively free of cost, with the latest offer," Reliance Big TV Director Vijender Singh said.

However, interested consumers will have to pay a pre-booking amount of Rs. 499. Customers can log in on the Reliance Digital TV's official website (reliancedigitaltv.com) and pre-book the set-top box. The consumers will also have to pay additional Rs. 1,500 which is payable on receipt of the set-top box and outdoor unit. New customers will have to further pay Rs. 250 for installation. However, the company has stated that it will be giving Rs. 1,999 as cashback after two years of paid subscription.

Talking about the cashback program, once the free access is over subscribers will need to recharge monthly with Rs. 300 and on completion of subscription of pay channels continuously for next two years with Reliance Big TV, subscribers will get back Rs. 1,999 in form of recharge, the statement said. So it will take around three years to get the cashback which is quite a long period.

Currently, Reliance Big TV is providing 250 channels to its subscribers. And going by statistics, the company holds just 2 percent market share in the DTH TV market. Now with this aggressive offering, it looks like Reliance Big Tv is planning to attract more users and simultaneously expand its presence across the country. It will be interesting to see how the DTH subscribers in India will respond across India and how this will impact other players in the market. Besides, the company could roll out more offers in future.