Tata Sky the leading DTH operator has just added 6 new HD channels to it's arsenal, bringing the total up to 44 HD channels including 3 Showcase HD channels (HD movies on demand) and 3 special HD channels (HBO Hits, HBO Defined, Star World Premier HD) which are not a part of any base pack.
The newly added HD channels include Movies Now HD on channel number 353, History TV18 HD on channel number 563, Epic HD on channel number 133, FX HD on channel number 203, Nat Geo Wild HD on channel number 555 and Zee Cafe HD on channel number 207. The HD channels which are a part of a base pack will be available only on paying of HD access fee, unless subscribed to Mega HD pack.
Tata Sky is actively migrating its services from the older MPEG-2 platform to the newer MPEG-4 platform with better compression standards, thus freeing up transponder capacity for broadcasting more number of channels. Tata Sky currently uses 12 Ku band transponders on Insat-4A and plans on shifting its operations to GSAT 10 in the future. Even GSAT 10 houses only 12 Ku band transponders thus the only way to add new channels is to upgrade to the newer compression standard since the number of transponders isn't going to increase. Tata sky shuffled the channel numbers of select channels on 16th September, the wi-fi remote feature of the Tata Sky app needs an update to adjust to the changed channel numbers.
