After DTH it is time for HITS to hit the indian television.

Here in India, television is treated as one of the most popular media. In past few years DTH, a new technology used for distribution of different channels has proved a great success. DTH is an end to end distribution method in which an end user gets encrypted feeds of various channels through a small satellite reciever further a STB ( set top box ) decrypts those feeds with the decryption key provided by service provider, finally STB sends signal to tv set where end user can watch a desired channel. Considering rural citizens, and to improve educational & cultural qualities the information & broadcasting department of government of India has provided a lot of FTA ( free to channel ) which requires no encryption/decryption for watching them.
Though this whole system has a lot of merits but usually it also have some demerits. We know that technologies never remain same, the problem arrives with DTH whenever there is a change in broadcasting system, encryption/decryption method or encoding/decoding of media stream. In all above mentioned cases there is only one option i.e. Either upgrade or replace the STB. In such a situation the customer pays the money to service provider. There is one more threat i.e. all these old STBs become just junk boxes in such a situation which contribute to growth of e-waste. But since evolution is a key nature of technology, so it is time for HITS to come into the frame.
HITS stand for "head end in the sky". It is a hybrid of existing cable tv network and satellite television. Recently information & broadcasting ministry of India has announced for starting of HITS in India, another upgrade from existing MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 media encoding method in STBs is proposed. Even a few new & existing players of this field has started planning for HITS. Reliance ADAG group and Dish Tv from essel group are roaring to grab the opportunities in this field. In HITS a satellite sends encrypted feeds which are downloded by cable tv network operators ( local distributor ) through STBs, further STB decrypt the feed and refeed them to the STBs of end user through cable network. In this technology there is no need of a satellite reciever at the user front; since the main encoding/decoding and encryption/decryption is done by STB of cable network operator so in case of any future modification in technology only local distributor's STB will have to be changed. HITS can be benefittiary In cities where a cable tv network already exist. It will be really interesting to see how HITS hit the indian market.