Airtel Logo on Channels: Airtel is working hard to ruin IPTV experience

I'm not justifying anything or any action of Airtel here, but I don't see how this is a problem, its small, and translucent. The only problem I would have would be if I used this feed for DVR and ripped TV shows or movies from live TV.

its small and its transparent. but it is also useless and it also covers a part of the feed we get. we already have a channel logo on the screen. we get an additional logo during matches (IPL matches have the DLF logo). and then the streams we get at the bottom. on news channels it comes over the sensex etc data as shown in the images above. putting your logo on the stream is like getting popups on your internet connectivity. look you are using airtel, so here is a popup showcasing the airtel logo in case you forget that we are powering your internet connection. no government body requires them to put their own logo on the feed. it does not help in anti-piracy (they have a separate number floating on the screen for that). i believe all dth players did that just because zee dish tv had it on their stream for some reason. and i guess they did it to promote their services when DTH industry simply did not exist in india. now that DTH is common, the logo shown by all these players is simply results in a degraded service. that is my point of view. i pay what they charge, i have the right to ask them to stop putting their logos on my stream. the logo is on the set top box. the logo is on the remote control. i think we have enough advertising in our face. if as a consumer you believe it is not a big deal, well i feel sorry for you. 🙂

I understand that it covers space and is definitely wrong, but how do you rate the seriousness of such a problem? I see that you are shifting back to cable because of this logo. That is a pretty serious move. If I were using Airtel IPTV and I faced this, I would be pissed, but not pissed enough to terminate the service and shift to another provider/service. I would however not tolerate a bad quality feed with jagged/unclear picture quality or downtime. Those are the issues which really matter and are big enough to ditch a service for.

i also mentioned a couple of other reasons.

no new GEC channel. WB? nope. World Movies? nope.

user interface? it crawls like i am surfing on a dial up connection. and the occassional glitches which are hard to reproduce in case i call up airtel customer care to check it out. ( https://broadband.forum/airtel-iptv/57814-airtel-logo-channels-airtel-working-hard-ruin-iptv-experience/2/#post382606 ). it feels like shit when you are watching something and the feed starts crawling like in the video and then you have to jump from the bed and go to the other room and reboot the modem and router.

the only reason i moved to IPTV was a pathetic cable guy in my old sector.

now that i have moved to a society based apartment, the cable guy here is (hopefully) way better. all the channels. comparative pricing. and of course... no branding on channels. he has agreed to give me a free demo for 2-3 days to see what he has to offer.

the only thing i would miss is time shift. but then, espn star sports is not included in it. so i would have to watch the formula-1 races live anyways. and that is the only television programming i plan to watch in the near future.

IPL matches are all going to be available on YouTube (not that i would care to watch replays)... House seems to have disappeared from AXN. i have not watched TV in quite a while. 🙂

as i posted on my blog...

a hint for airtel.

why putting your logo on everything is not always a good idea.

just a symbolic idiocy.

Dear Customer,

This is to inform you that your concern has been noted and our team is eager to resolve it. In order to get to the resolution, we need to get in touch with you and gather more details about the concern. However, we are restricted by the absence of your contact details in your original complaint. Please do write to us at airtelpresence@airtel.in with your contact details (address and landline or mobile phone number).

We assure you that we are committed to resolving the issue to your satisfaction.


Regards,
Rakesh Kumar
Airtel Presence
Bharti Airtel LTD
Customer Service Team (NET)

Dear Rakesh,

Though its good to hear from you over this forum, I am assured that you can not do anything about the Airtel Logo and the speed that we want without your CEO or CMO(Chief Marketing Officer) being involved in this, as this is a big corporate issue. Whether you should give your logo on your feed is a conscious marketing decision. But it gives us a very bad viewing experience. If your people have ever seen feeds on US cable or DTH, then they can clearly see that the presented by Comcast/particular cable network/ Directv comes once at the beginning of the programme and then the channel logo keeps on coming. for this you can download any episode of lost/fringe/etc from any bittorent and show it at your end. We can not give personal information over public forums, so please stop asking for it. Also giving a better bandwidth is a general issue and you do not have to lodge a complaint from a particular customer. This is a general problem with you infrastrucutre and try to invest in the infrastructure instead of using our money to invest in Africa.

Regards

Arvind Kumar

😀righto. airtel shows their LOGO on their feed. it is a 'problem' faced by all of their customers. they do not require our details to help us out in it. it is a decision that has to be reverted by their management team. who are apparently clueless about the crappy services delivered by their IPTV platform...

Yesterday I have been getting a black opaque band on the lower portion of the screen....complete from one end to the other where the Airtel logo comes. Either it says "abc" or "ENG" on the upper left corner of this band. After this the STB does not switch off(Standby mode). After doing a manual reset (Power on and off) the problem gets resolved but comes back as soon as you put the STB on standby and then resume to watch something. Very irritating...All because Airtel is still experimenting with the Logo thing and determined to ruin our viewing experience by adding their stupid logo in the first place.

the new logo was much better on screen.



till today.



now i see this messy piece of shite:

Yesterday I have been getting a black opaque band on the lower portion of the screen....complete from one end to the other where the Airtel logo comes. Either it says "abc" or "ENG" on the upper left corner of this band. After this the STB does not switch off(Standby mode). After doing a manual reset (Power on and off) the problem gets resolved but comes back as soon as you put the STB on standby and then resume to watch something. Very irritating...All because Airtel is still experimenting with the Logo thing and determined to ruin our viewing experience by adding their stupid logo in the first place.
Press "#" on your remote a few times it changes from abc to ABC to 123 and so on and vanishes in the end.

heh yeah. earlier i had to restart the stb to get rid of that bar. took a while to realize that i can switch it off using #

Well yesterday during the day while going through these threads I shot a mail to Airtel complaining about the usual problems like sluggish user interface and each time we change the channel we get the info bar which further slows it down and it takes ages to change a channel and by the night the problem was GONE! Yes now i'm not getting the info bar at every channel change and NO its not because of my mail maybe they got many complaints for the same and changed it.Now its running good like before.