Watching television will no longer be the same again. Bad transmission quality, blackouts, disconnection of channels, high cable bills -- all these could soon be history.

With Conditional Access System , television viewers will have a good bouquet of channels to opt for. What's more, you need to pay for only those channels you would like to watch.

What is CAS?

CAS stands for conditional access system, which is a digital mode of transmitting TV channels trough a set-top box (STB). The transmission signals are encrypted and viewers need to buy a set-top box to receive and decrypt the signal. The STB is required to watch only pay channels, not free-to-air channels, like Doordarshan.

Advantages of CAS

For viewers: Under, CAS viewers can watch only what they would like to watch, than what the cable operator has on offer. Subscribers save money they now spend on unnecessary channels. They will get better transmission (because of the use of optic fibre instead of metal cables). The cable operators will no longer have any control over the pricing of channels.

For broadcasters: It benefits broadcasters as they always had to grapple with the issue of cable operators not declaring the actual number of subscribers, and hence suffering losses. With CAS, they can find out the exact number of subscribers with a cable operator.

For cable TV operators: They need to pay a part of the subscription fees to the broadcasters only for the actual number of end users who opt for the channel. This allows operators to price their channels according to their popularity.

For advertisers: It gives a far more accurate indicator of programme popularity with only the actual subscribers of each channel being accounted for.