Airtel Internet TV Review
Highlights
- Airtel Internet TV is built on top of the Android TV platform
- Netflix app and Chromecast support are built-in
- It is 4K ready and comes with Dolby Atmos support
The
Airtel Internet TV set-top box is noticeably wider than Airtel’s
‘regular’ boxes, and just a little bit shorter in height. The front has
LED indicators like you’d expect, but it’s devoid of any buttons, apart
from the power button, which means you have nothing to fall back upon in
case of a remote-related emergency. The smart card sticks out of the
right-hand side of the unit instead of the back as is usually the case,
which may bother a few people.
The remote that you get with the Airtel
Internet TV set-top box is pretty standard if you’ve used Airtel
Digital TV before. Pressing the red Airtel button brings up the main
navigation menu, which is also what you see when the device first boots
up.
This menu has 10 options: Home, TV Guide, Airtel Movies, Games, Apps, My Profile, Settings, Netflix,
Android Home, and Help. Home, as the name suggests, is pre-selected by
default and it shows you a list of Recent Channels and a selection of
movies and TV Shows that are on air right now - the latter is especially
handy for when you feel like watching something but don’t know where to
start.Why certain content is highlighted over other is not
exactly clear, and the picks certainly don’t seem to be customised
according to your viewing history - we’d rather not have another company
spying on our viewing habits in the name of customising the experience,
so we have no complaints with this. Scrolling down further on the Home
screen you see Top Rated TV Shows, Top Movies, Top Sports, and Trending,
all of which seem more random than the other.
TV Guide is nothing but a grouping of broadcast TV channels by genre,
with Netflix and a shortlist of your favourites thrown in for good
measure. Airtel Movies and Games offer you content and games from
Airtel’s subscriptions services, not linked in any way to broadcast television, Netflix, or games from Google Play store.
Apps section just shows Netflix, Airtel Games, and Airtel Movies. My
Profile lets you add multiple users and customise your list of favourite
channels, which doesn’t sound very useful given how many taps it takes
to switch from one user to the other. This menu also stores your
Recorded shows, Scheduled recordings, Reminders for shows you want to
watch, though they are stored at the system level, and not customised
for every user.The Netflix experience is pretty similar to what
you get on other platforms. The app uses its own on-screen keyboard for
typing in the search field, but you can also use the voice search or the
Airtel app (more on both later) for a more convenient experience.
The
Settings menu lets you control things like Parental Lock, Device
Resolution, and Aspect Ratio, while you can also tweak some Android
Settings from here like IP, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or deep down to Android
Settings to control even more stuff.
The Airtel Internet TV
set-top box remote comes with a dedicated voice search button that
performs differently based on the context. In Live TV mode, you can
press the button and speak to search for channels, programs, and
recordings. This is super handy if you want to, say, watch CNN but don’t
quite remember its channel number.Underneath everything, the Airtel Internet TV box is powered by
Android TV and you can access the Android interface at any time by
pressing the White Circle button towards the top. There’s a slight lag
before the Android interface launches, which is understandable and is
unlikely to bother most users. Once you are in the Android TV interface,
the top carousel shows content from YouTube, Google Play Music, and
Play Movies. You can use the voice (or, again, the on-screen keyboard)
search to look for content at this point, and be greeted with results
from the three sources mentioned above, with some results from broadcast
television’s program guide thrown in as well, though the latter,
especially, doesn’t seem particularly reliable.
The Android TV
interface has Airtel Apps right at the top - Airtel Digital TV, Airtel
Movies, and Netflix. The former is the broadcast TV interface that you
see when the box powers on, and its presence here underlines that it’s
just an Android TV app set to run on first boot. Below that we see
Android TV Apps: Google Play Movies & TV, YouTube, Google Play
Music, Google Play Store, and Google Play Games. The first three work
just like you would expect, and the latter two can be used install apps
and games just like you would on any Android device, though you will
only see ones that have been optimised for Android TV. You get roughly
5.3GB space free to install your apps and games on the Airtel Internet
TV set-top box.If you love your YouTube videos, you will be disappointed that
YouTube, along with other non-preloaded Android TV apps, is always a
couple of levels away - first, you need to launch the Android TV
experience, and then launch the app you are looking for.
We installed Plex, DS Video, and Crossy Road
from the respective stores, and the experience was what we expected.
You can use the four-way navigation keypad in the middle of the remote
to move your character in Crossy Road and other games. This, of course,
is the same set of keys that you use to browse for content on other
channels without actually switching to them in the live TV mode.
Interestingly, in an ‘improvement’ over the remote that you get with
the regular Airtel Digital TV set-top box, this area also comes with a
trackpad of sorts. This means you can slide your thumb left and right to
go from one channel to the other, or up and down to move back/ forward
in time. This takes some getting used to, but, for the most part, it
works well when you are browsing channels. And while you can also use it
to, say, move the chicken across the road in Crossy Road, it isn’t as
responsive as using the physical keys, and the experience might get even
worse as dust inevitably accumulates underneath the controls.
Airtel has launched the Gamepad app for Android and iOS,
and as the name suggests, it can be used as a virtual Gamepad to play
games on the Internet TV box. The app also doubles up as a virtual
remote for the set-top box in TV/ Android mode, including for typing
on-screen, and even invoking the voice search mode.The on-screen UI that you see when switching between channels has also
got an upgrade of sorts on this box. Not only do you see a description
of the show currently on air when you go from one channel to the other,
you also see a vertical carousel of what’s coming up next on the
right-hand side of the screen. Some channels even show ‘covert art’ for
movies/ TV shows that are coming up next, which is particularly handy.
Our only complaint with this view is that the clock showing the current
time is now on the top left corner of the screen, so it’s not always in
your line of sight when you are trying to see how long the current
program has been on, or if you want to figure out how much time until
the next show starts. It sounds like a trivial thing, but even after a
few weeks with the box, it annoyed us more than it probably should have.
Another minor concern was a slight lag when switching in between
channels, just a tad more than what we experienced with our ‘regular’
Airtel Digital TV box.
Verdict The Airtel Internet TV set-top box
promises to bring Netflix and other apps to your non-smart TV, and for
the most part, it delivers on that promise. The Chromecast feature works
as advertised (apart from the volume problem), and you can extend your
TV’s functionality with third-party Android TV apps. The UI has some
really useful features, though it’s not without a few quirks - most
people will be happy with the overall experience though.
The
Airtel Internet TV set-top box can be a good option for those who don’t
have a smart TV and want to experience YouTube, Netflix, and other
Android TV apps on the big screen without involving a smartphone. The
Chromecast support is handy for when you want to cast something from
your phone to the big screen, but if that’s going to be your main use
case, we can’t help but think that you are better off getting a
standalone Chromecast instead.
If you already have a set-top box,
you can get a Chromecast for around Rs. 3,300 (often available as low as
Rs. 2,500 during online sales), which is less than what the Airtel
Internet TV (starting at Rs. 4,999) would cost. The best part is that
this would in no way be dependent on Airtel, since potentially the
biggest downside of the Airtel box is that if you decide to discontinue
your Airtel Digital TV for whatever reason, your box is rendered
completely useless. Of course if you are a happy Airtel customer and
don’t see any reason to switch over the next couple of years, this will
not bother you, but it may be a bigger concern for others.
The
other stumbling block could be pricing. While Airtel is offering the
Internet TV with one-year subscription to all SD and HD channels at Rs.
7,999 for new customers, which is a very sweet deal, Airtel’s website is
not advertising any offers for existing Airtel Digital TV customers
looking to upgrade their experience to a smarter box (other than asking
people to call for ‘exciting offers’). Expecting existing customers
who’ve already shelled out money for a box once (or more) to pay full
price for another one doesn’t seem like a great strategy. It’s worth
pointing out that a ‘regular’ Airtel set-top box is available at Rs.
1,449, so you if you don’t like an integrated solution, you could get
that and buy a Chromecast separately and still have some money left.
Of
course, if you are out in the market for your first set-top box to go
with your non-smart TV and don’t mind being locked into the Airtel
ecosystem for the next couple of years until you get your money’s worth,
then the Airtel Internet TV is definitely worth considering. We’ll hold
onto our rant on the lack of interoperability between DTH smart cards
and the absence of MNP-like transfers between providers for another day.
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