[Tata Play DTH Bug] Favorite Language Automatic Resets to English on HD Channels with DD/DD+ Audio

Today in this article, we are going to talk about a weird bug present in all Set Top Boxes (STB) of a popular Indian DTH service provider known as “Tata Sky“. If you are living in India, you must be knowing about Tata Sky which is one of the most popular and widely used DTH (Direct To Home) service providers in India. Tata Sky is best known for its premium hardware and services and of course its premium subscription plans.

Tata Sky provides various set top boxes such as normal SD box, HD box, HEVC HD box, 4K box and the premium HD+ box (previously known as Transfer box) which comes with built-in HDD (hard disk drive) and 3 tuners to support 3 channels recording simultaneously.

The set top boxes provided by Tata Sky are very good in quality and the software UI (known as Twilite UI) is just the icing on the cake. In my opinion, Tata Sky user interface is the best among all DTH service providers. It’s very clean, modern, fast and responsive.

You can visit following articles to learn more about Tata Sky and its set top boxes:

[Tata Sky and Dish TV Review] Comparison Between Two Major DTH Services in India

[Review] Comparison Between Airtel Digital TV (ADTV) and Tata Sky DTH Services in India

But there is a huge and very irritating bug present in this UI and this bug is present in all set top boxes provided by Tata Sky. It’s a software bug and since Tata Sky uses same software in all its set top boxes, all set top boxes contain this annoying bug.

The bug is related to favorite audio/language which can be set by the user for all channels. For example, many users set favorite language to Hindi to watch all channels programs in Hindi language. Some regional users set the favorite language to Tamil, Telugu, etc.

We can set favorite language by pressing the Blue button on Tata Sky remote and once we set our favorite language, all channels honor the selected language preference and show the programs in user selected favorite language if available.

The bug appears on HD channels which provide DD (Dolby Digital) or DD+ audio. No matter what favorite language you set on your set top box, all HD channels with DD/DD+ audio will always reset to English language.

So if you have selected Hindi as favorite language and switch to an HD channel which provides DD/DD+ audio, it’ll reset the language to English although it’s available in Hindi language and to watch the program in Hindi or other language, you need to press the Blue button again on your remote and select desired language. HD channels with DD/DD+ audio don’t save/store favorite language selection. They always forget the favorite language selected by the user and use English as default language.

Related: [Review] Which DTH Service Provides Maximum HD Channels in India?

Following are the steps to recreate the bug:

1. First of all switch to an SD channel such as Star Plus, Zee, Sony, Colors, any sports channel, news channel, cartoon channel, infotainment channel or any other channel. But it should be an SD channel not an HD channel.

Best way to recreate the bug is to switch to an infotainment channel as you get multiple language feeds on these channels such as Discovery channel.

2. Now press Blue button on your Tata Sky remote and select Hindi as favorite language and then press Select button to save the changes.

3. Now the final step to recreate the bug! Switch to any HD channel which comes with DD/DD+ audio and multiple language feeds. For example, switch to an infotainment HD channel as almost all infotainment HD channels come with multi-language feed.

For your convenience, we are listing some infotainment HD channels along with their channel numbers (LCN):

• 708 – National Geographic Channel HD
• 711 – Nat Geo Wild HD
• 713 – Discovery HD
• 716 – Animal Planet HD
• 720 – History TV18 HD
• 724 – Sony BBC Earth HD

And here comes the bug! You’ll be surprised to see that the HD channel resets the favorite language to English.

Again set the favorite language to Hindi using Blue button on remote and switch to any other channel such as next channel. Now again go back to previous HD channel and again the HD channel will reset favorite language to English.

So set favorite language to Hindi on an HD channel with DD/DD+ audio, switch to other channel, come back to previous HD channel and the bug occurs. The HD channel will always reset favorite language to English and you’ll need to set the favorite language to Hindi or other language again and again and again.

So basically the bug is all about favorite audio/language reset to English on all HD channels which provide DD/DD+ audio. This issue/problem doesn’t occur on SD channels. It only occurs on HD channels with DD/DD+ audio. In fact some HD channels such as Fox Life HD (LCN 753) and Travel XP HD (LCN 765) don’t provide DD/DD+ audio, so they don’t have this bug. They always use favorite language selected by the user.

Since English language feed contains DD/DD+ audio, HD channels give the preference to the DD/DD+ audio availability rather than the favorite language selected by the user. It’s an issue in STB software which forces HD channels to give priority to DD/DD+ audio availability over favorite language selected by the user. In my opinion, all HD channels should use favorite language as default audio. If I have selected Hindi as favorite language, I would like to watch all channels programs in Hindi. Why would I want to watch any program in English if it’s also available in my favorite language i.e. Hindi? Just because it comes in DD/DD+ audio? Silly.

In fact because of this bug many people even don’t know that many HD channels (mainly infotainment channels) are also available in Hindi language as whenever they switch to those HD channels, they use English language.

I know that Tata Sky knows about this bug but it seems the company is not in mood of fixing it.

Also Check:

• Revealing Hidden Secret Service Menu in Tata Sky DTH Set Top Box
• How to Program and Use Tata Sky Universal Remotes with your TV Set?
• [Fix] Can’t Change Volume Level on HD Channels in Tata Sky DTH