A big scam in India is the Grand DTH Scam which is being run by almost all major DTH service providers openly, but many people are unaware of it.
- When India allowed direct-to-home broadcast through satellite and set-top boxes, all DTH service providers used to give DVD picture quality with normal set-top boxes. After they introduced HD services, all major service providers such as Tata Sky, Airtel DTH, Dish TV, Videocon, etc. downgraded the picture quality to sub-SD levels. Now you have to buy an HD-enabled set-top box by paying extra and also pay an annual HD-access fee, not to mention a subscription fee for every HD channel you subscribe to. Search YouTube for old advertisements of Indian DTH providers and verify the DVD quality picture claim for yourself.
- The set-top boxes bundled with DTH services in India are at least 10 times costlier for the customers than the price at which they are imported by DTH companies from China. These companies are taking full advantage of the lack of Government guidelines for keeping the service independent of the set-top box. Government can easily issue a guideline for customers to buy set-top boxes independently and use the SIM card provided by DTH providers (exactly the way it works for mobile phones), but something is preventing the Indian Government from doing this. So customers are forced to purchase DTH set-top boxes from their service providers at an escalated cost. Imagine if you were forced to buy your mobile phone from your service provider (like Airtel or Idea) at 10 times the actual cost.
- While bulk importing DTH set-top boxes, Indian DTH providers disable several advanced features in every set-top box through software customization. For example, most set-top boxes imported by these companies (as old as 7–8 years old boxes) had built-in recording/play support from USB drives, but this feature is disabled. Similarly, the Standard Definition boxes are very well capable of playing HD content, but that feature is deliberately disabled by DTH companies so that they can force customers to pay extra for an HD-enabled set-top box. This is similar to how Telecom companies in the U.S. disable features like WiFi tethering & Bluetooth file exchange to force customers to pay more for data.