Worldspace
Monday, December 01, 2008
Sometime in June 08, An offer from SBI cards prompted me to buy a Worldspace Satellite Radio reciever . I bought a subscription and got the cabling done along with the Asiastar orientation of the pedal linear antenna .After keying in the subscription keys, I tuned into WorldSpace and boy , was I blown away or what !!!
The sound clarity is phenomenally awesome . The BPL Celeste MK II's reciever's built in 70watt speakers hardly does justice to worldspace ! I rigged up the reciever to the 5.1 sound system , turned up the volume and ...... aaah .. Bliss.
The subscription costs Rs.1800/- for a year . The only initial costs involved is the cost of the reciever. Though the recievers are not great enough to write home about , their primary objective is to unscramble the encrypted digital signals.
The Worldspace signals are broadcast via three Geo-stationary satellites : Asiastar , Afristar and Ameristar. India is covered by the Asiastar satellite , which has three beams which can carry 40 channels each , totalling 120 channels in all .India lies at an Azimuth-128 and Elevation-52 to the Asiastar satellite. India has a total of 36 audio channels at the moment.
If you are sick and tired of all the FM channels playing the same crap day in and day out , this is exactly what you need to go in for . Crystal clear audio , 24 hours a day and most importantly , No Ads !!!
If you are really inspired , here is some gyaan on the history of worldspace : http://worldspace.in/worldspace/overview-history.php
Cheers,
posted by abhinav at 1:29 AM | Permalink
2 Comments:
At December 01, 2008 12:42 PM, 
abhinav
@Briant : True Worldspace Inc has filed section 11 bankuptcy in Delaware Bankruptcy Court.
However , Worldspace India , a wholly owned subsidary and independent business unit has not filed for Bankruptcy. India has a customer base of over 171,000 subscribers and is a revenue generating unit for Worldspace.
As far as quality goes , I'm not too sure of the Afristar signal; The Asiastar signal is absolutely clear and I dont have any qualms about it !
Perhaps you haven't heard that WorldSpace went bankrupt over a month ago, and they've shut down their UK offices.
The sound quality on WorldSpace is crap, at least on the Afristar South beam, but I rely on it to listen to NPR Worldwide.