This review of the Airtel digital TV (HD) is part of a shootout of all high-definition direct to home service providers in India. Find the final verdict there. Other players include:

• Sun Direct HD
• Dish TV TruHD
• Reliance Digital TV
• Tata Sky+ HD
• Videocon d2h

The user interface for this version is similar to previous ones, with white text on a black background and red colour highlighting the selected menu. The remote can broadly be divided into three sections viz.shortcuts, navigational pad and numberpad. Favourites allows you to have upto four profiles with about 15 channels in each profile just like Videocon d2h. Live button brings on the Airtel live services. We liked the ‘Whats on now’ option which brings up a list of genres, and on selecting a particular genre, it will enlist the programs in that genre which are playing currently. This is a unique feature offered only on Airtel.

Interactive services offered have a boring GUI which pixillates. iGoodlife has programming from NDTV Good Times which is divided into Health, Lifestyle, etc which is great for lifestyle TV enthusiasts. But we noticed that the audio starts playing while the screen is still loading for iGoodlife and iDarshan which is weird. There is no lagging between the audio and video though. Implementation of changing of audio languages is quite good.

It has some widgets, which frankly occupy considerable space on the TV and are not that good looking either. Games are also passable, nothing great there. It gives you a preview while channel surfing. We really liked ease of setting up Reminders and Favourites. You can get program information for up to a week from the moment you are watching, but electronic program guide is not impressive.

The remote control is quite well built with a range of shortcut buttons in the top half.

It offers upto three HD channels such as Nat Geo HD, Discovery HD World and Movies Now.

Click here to read our final verdict on the device, along with its test results...