Airtel DTH ad misleading: Tata Sky complains to ASCI

The campaign 'Dil Titli', starring Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan, was launched in August 2009 by Bharti Airtel's DTH arm and the ad claimed that the service provided superior picture quality because of MPEG4 and DVBS2 technologies.

"We are trying to convince the media and the public at large that the claim that MPEG4 technology provides superior picture quality is false. It is just a compression technology and makes no difference to the picture quality," Tata Sky Chief Marketing Officer Vikram Mehra said.

The ASCI in a reply to Tata Sky's complaint said, "As per their (Consumer Complaints Council - CCC) decision, the complaint has been upheld as the advertisement contravened Chapter 1.4 of the ASCI code. The CCC concluded that the advertisement is misleading, as the viewer of the TV commercial is led to believe that Airtel Digital TV has superior picture quality because of MPEG4 or DVBS2."

When contacted, Airtel Digital spokesperson said, "We did receive some correspondence from ASCI and we have responded to that. Our stand is that MPEG4 and DVBS2 are some of the many features that we offer, that helps us offer superior picture quality in comparison to ordinary technology."

ASCI is a self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry and deals with consumer and industry complaints against advertisements.

DTH operators in the country use different compression technologies ranging from MPEG2 to MPEG4 to provide digital television signals to consumers through satellite.

Compression technologies determine a service provider's number of channels to consumers, but have no impact on video quality.
Airtel Digital, which was launched in October 2008, now has pan-Indian operations.