24+2=24?

The centre of attraction at Trivandrum during the initial months of Asianet was the humongus Dish Antena at Edappazhanji, located near the service station of Mr. Pradeep. Even before he signed-up for franchisee, he had given the room above the service centre and its terrace at the disposal of Asianet. With a rack with few satellite recievers, TV and VCR's and 30 feet above MLL (Mean Land Level), it was the ideal place for our R&D.

The 24 feet dish was installed by Karthik, the well-known company in Madras (Now Chennai). Later, it was demolished and replaced by one supplied by Corwire. The Antenna was supposed to deliver 5 channels, such as Star Plus, Prime Sports, Star News, MTV and Mandarin (Chinese) channel. But even after posting one person on the antenna to fine tune the LNB, the MTV came out with sparkles. We cut all the coconut trees infront of the Dish. Even we tried to link LNB to the reciever using QR540 cable, still sparkles ate parts of  VJ Rubi's and VJ Sofia's body.

So came the new idea > expand the dish to 26 feet.

When the idea is from the think-tanks, it must be perfect. So corewire engineers brought mesh and ribs measuring 1 feet, and attached it over the outer rim and made it a perfect 26 feet dish. Some sceptics mumoured in silence, 24+2=24, not 26. Fools!!!.

 Although the think-tanks announced that the noice level has reduced by 3dB, it was not identifiable by the lay-man's naked eyes. So we decided not to transmit MTV live. Ramesh and team copied MTV at Vadakara SAS and couriered the VHS cassettes to Trivandrum everyday.

Customers blamed MTV and Manorama  for publishing wrong program charts in " Innathe Paripaadikal".