ITV

Tag: OTT

  • Streambox-US Video technology pioneer to enter India

    Streambox-US Video technology pioneer to enter India

    New Delhi : Streambox, the industry leading pioneer in delivering unique IP based video streaming solutions over low bandwidth connections, has announced the opening of a new sales office in Mumbai to address the vibrant post-production markets in India and southeast Asia.

    “We are truly excited to launch in India, one of the largest and most active markets in the post-production and television broadcast industries," said Streambox CEO and co-founder Bob Hildeman. "Streambox products are a perfect fit for India’s rapid growth in media production and associated activities, such as film, post production and broadcast.” 

    Streambox offers end-to-end solutions for remote collaboration across a wide range of workflows, including editorial reviews, colour grading reviews and audio. According to the company, the collaborators can view and hear a live, colour-accurate audio/video stream in their edit suites, at home on cloud-based workstations, or even using an iPad or iPhone. 

    The company has appointed Sanjeev Kr Sinha as the country sales manager for India and southeast Asia. Sinha brings more than 15 years of experience in sales and marketing in the broadcast, cable TV, OTT post-production, and education industries, said the company on Wednesday.

    "We are thrilled to have Sanjeev join our team and taking a leading role in our business expansion in southeast Asia" said Hildeman.

    Sinha added, “I am very excited to work for a global pioneer like Streambox. I see huge potential for Streambox products in the post-production and video market in India and southeast Asia, which is the hub of post-production, broadcasters and film production activity in this region.”

    Streambox has developed optimised technology that can pack functionality like HDR and 12 bit 4:4:4 RGB processing into pixels, and intelligent utilisation of available network paths to achieve higher rates of transport and playback based on its proprietary leading edge ACTL – Advanced Compression Technology Level 3/5 codec and state of the art Low Delay Multi-Path Protocol.

  • India is a ‘speculative’ investment: Netflix’s Reed Hastings

    India is a ‘speculative’ investment: Netflix’s Reed Hastings

    KOLKATA: It is not easy to win over Indian consumers given the diversity of the market – be it in terms of language, income or preferences. Since its foray into India, streaming giant Netflix has taken several measures from the dual point of view of content and pricing. While top executives remain bullish about the India market, there’s still a lot of work to be done by the streamer.

    Netflix has already seen huge success in some Asian markets like Japan, South Korea. The APAC region has contributed to a third of its subscriber growth in Q1 and has seen healthy revenue growth, including average revenue per member. However, it is “still figuring things out” in India, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings said in an earnings call.

    “Investment takes some guts and belief forward-looking. But the other investments you should think of, just like rich European countries, content exports really well and we are just getting a little better every month on it,” he added.

    While comparing India’s growth story to that of other Asian countries, Hastings averred that investing here still remains a "speculative" venture as they're still working out the kinks in their overall content strategy.

    “I would say we are still mostly focused on getting a content fit and getting broader content. So that’s why I would say that one is a more speculative investment than, say, Korea or Japan, which again, five years ago was very speculative. But we are over the hump on that,” he detailed.

    India is a tremendous opportunity for Netflix; moreover, the platform offers great scope for the creative community to connect with the enormous audiences, Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos said.

    “It’s just like all great opportunities. It’s a long journey, and it’s a challenge. And we think it’s worth it. And that’s why we’re investing early and trying to stay ahead of it. And I think we will be able to see those kinds of results that we’ve seen in other places in the world as we continue to learn more and more and more,” he stated.

    Of all its markets, India was the first one where Netflix launched its mobile only plan. Recently, it started testing Mobile+ plan at Rs 299 per month. Netflix COO Greg Peters said they would work more and more on such plans that have the right balance of features and pricing. The streaming platform is working on bringing in price points that are low enough for more and more of the world’s population to be able to access the service.

    Along with sachet plans, partnerships with market leaders have also yielded good results for the platform. “Jio is a great example of a partner we’ve been working with there to really bring the service to a new demographic at a very, very low price associated with low-cost mobile plans that they are offering as well as home-based IPTV plans. And those have been successful for us as well,” Peters said.

  • Lionsgate Play marches into Indonesia market

    Lionsgate Play marches into Indonesia market

    KOLKATA: Global streaming platform Starz has launched its direct to consumer OTT app Lionsgate Play in Indonesia, expanding its presence in Asia following a successful launch in India.  With this, Lionsgate Play’s deep library of Hollywood blockbusters, film franchises and first-to-Indonesia original series and boxsets are immediately accessible to a wide Indonesian audience.

    Lionsgate Play Indonesia will bring blockbuster film franchises including The Hunger Games and Twilight Saga, the star-studded global box office hit Now You See Me, Academy Award-winning films from other studios like The Aviator and Babel, romantic drama Remember Me and acclaimed original television series Weeds, Power, Mad Men, and The Spanish Princess directly to Indonesian consumers.

    Starz president and CEO Jeffrey A Hirsch said: “Indonesia is an exciting market for us. The large and diverse population, increased data usage in urban and rural markets, and adoption of OTT across all demographics created an exciting opportunity for us to launch Lionsgate Play. We’re confident that our unique, exclusive and exceptionally curated content will generate a great response from Indonesian audiences.”

    The service has also launched with an attractive price point in Indonesia, making the app available as part of two subscription models, IDR 35 per month and IDR 179 for a year, price points that give Indonesian consumers the opportunity to enjoy the best of global entertainment affordably and at their convenience. Lionsgate Play content will also be made available through various bundle offerings with key partners such as Telkomsel and Telkom. The attractive price points and flexible availability give Indonesian viewers multiple convenient options to enjoy Lionsgate Play.

    Lionsgate Play Indonesia general manager Guntur Siboro believes that the combination of the OTT app launch and the previously-announced partnership with big players Telkomsel and Telkom will bring a seamless customer experience and easy access to Lionsgate Play content for their subscribers. “The partnership allows us to give more Indonesians the best entertainment experience. With a diverse audience reach, Lionsgate Play can be exposed to various levels of society. Everyone can enjoy Lionsgate Play content. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements,” he said.

  • Netflix adds 3.98 mn subs in Q1, to spend $17 bn on content this year

    Netflix adds 3.98 mn subs in Q1, to spend $17 bn on content this year

    KOLKATA: After a year of astounding growth, Netflix has missed the subscriber addition estimates in the first quarter of 2021. The company has added 3.98 million subscribers globally in contrast to its six million guidance. It has estimated even lower gains for the next quarter – one million with almost zero growth from US, Canada, Latin America.

    The Los Gatos-based streaming platform has cited the pull-forward growth in 2020, a lighter content slate due to delayed production as the reasons for slowdown in subscriber addition. “We don’t believe competitive intensity materially changed in the quarter or was a material factor in the variance as the over-forecast was across all of our regions,” it stated in a letter to shareholders.

    However, it has topped analysts’ expectations in terms of revenue and earnings per share. The entertainment giant has posted $7.16 billion revenue compared to $7.13 billion expectations and $3.75 earnings per share versus estimated $2.97.

    “We compete with many activities for consumers’ entertainment time, ranging from watching linear TV, video gaming, and viewing user generated content, just to name a few. Against this backdrop, the entertainment market is huge, giving us plenty of room to grow, if we can continue to improve our service. We believe we are less than 10 per cent of TV screen time in the US and even smaller in other regions and when including mobile devices,” it added.

    The streamer expects paid membership growth will re-accelerate in the second half of 2021 thanks to its strong slate with the return of big hits like Sex Education, The Witcher, La Casa de Papel (aka Money Heist), and You, as well as number of original films including the finale to The Kissing Booth trilogy, Red Notice, Don’t Look U. It also promises a comprehensive local language offering including Too Hot to Handle for Brazil and Mexico, Dhamaka for India along with others.

    Netflix will spend $17 billion cash on content this year compared to $11.8 billion last year. The company is also testing a crackdown on password sharing. It is working on making sure the people who are using a Netflix account are the ones who are authorised to do so, Netflix COO Greg Peters said.

    “We’ll test many things, but we’ll never roll something out that feels like turning the screws,” co-CEO Reed Hastings said.

  • Hungama Play bets big on regional language content

    Hungama Play bets big on regional language content

    KOLKATA: Hungama Digital Media’s VoD platform Hungama Play has unveiled plans to release more than 20 original shows in six Indian languages over the next 12 months.

    These languages include Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi and Bhojpuri, which together contribute to over 80 per cent of the consumption on the platform. Hungama Play’s first Telugu original show, Game, releases this week. The show will receive a multilingual showcase and will be available in Tamil and Kannada as well.

    In addition to their availability on Hungama Play, all original web series will benefit from Hungama’s wide distribution network. Most shows will be available to stream through Hungama Play on MX Player, Airtel Xstream, Vi Movies and TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Tata Sky Binge, Tata Sky Binge+, DishSMRT Stick, D2H Stream, DishSMRT Hub, Siti Playtop, ISPs like Meghbela Broadband, Alliance Broadband, ACT Fibernet and Netplus, and smart TVs like TCL, OnePlus TV, LG, Sony Bravia, CVTE, Toshiba and CloudWalker. Additionally, Hungama’s association with Xiaomi will enable consumers to watch the shows via Hungama Play on Mi TV.

    Hungama Digital Media founder & CEO Neeraj Roy said, “The multilingual and multi-genre approach that we have followed for building our content library has helped us increase consumption on our platform by over 3X in the last two years, with the six key languages serving as the primary drivers for this growth. We are committed to strengthening our original programming further by delivering local, relevant and entertaining narratives, now across several languages. We are certain that our programming coupled with our distribution network will help us increase our user-base by 2X over the next year.”

    Releasing on 21 April 2021, Game is a crime drama in Telugu (also available in Tamil and Kannada) that weaves in elements of mystery and thrill, and follows six different people, each involved in a murder conspiracy.  Their quest for the truth sets into motion a plan that throws their lives into chaos. The show stars popular actors from the Telugu entertainment industry – Noel Sean, Srikanth Iyyangar, Kona Sasitha, Vinay Varma and Abhinav Manikanta – in key roles. It is produced by Gangapatnam Sridhar and directed by Ganga Sanampudi.

  • Chingari partners with new OTT Biiggbang Amusement

    Chingari partners with new OTT Biiggbang Amusement

    KOLKATA: In a bid to strengthen its positioning among millennial consumers, short video app Chingari has partnered with newly-launched OTT platform Biiggbang Amusement. Since its inception, Chingari has always looked to disrupt the market through its consumer-centric approach, innovative features and strategic tie-ups and this is another significant step in this direction.

    With carefully curated content from award winning directors to fresh stories, Biiggbang Amusement has a prominent content library. The content hub features some of the most notable short films that have been screened at film festivals across the globe. This collaboration will enable the Chingari subscribers to enjoy the content exclusively.

    Biiggbang Amusement founder and CEO Sudip Mukherjee said, “At Biiggbang Amusement, our constant endeavour is to present stories that can teleport the audience to another world and satisfy their need of entertainment regardless of the time crunch. Curating and getting content from around the world to add it to the Indian milieu is what we thrive on and I firmly believe, this collaboration with Chingari aligns perfectly with what we are trying to achieve. Also, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce our tagline – ‘Jab Bhi Kare Mann, Entertainment Dan Dana Dan’, as this exclusive partnership will help us achieve exactly that.”

    Chingari App co-founder & CEO Sumit Ghosh believes the exclusive collaboration with Biiggbang Amusement will add greater value, attract new consumers and improve stickiness.

    Biiggbang Amusement marketing and brand head Rinku Sukumar Biswas shared, ‘The young’uns of India want snackable, yet complete and fulfilling content that they can consume at any time of the day. Short format content addresses this need gap.”

    Chingari app COO Deepak Salvi said the two brands saw tremendous synergies in terms of target audience. “Chingari has always been an app that is extremely popular with millennial and gen Z and, which is also a target market for Biiggbang Amusement. We believe that together with Biiggbang Amusement we will be able to offer a value add to our customers and scale greater heights in the times to come,” he added.

  • NXTDigital’s broadband subsidiary OneOTT surpasses 600K subscribers

    NXTDigital’s broadband subsidiary OneOTT surpasses 600K subscribers

    KOLKATA: NXTDigital’s broadband subsidiary OneOTT intertainment Ltd (OIL) has surpassed 100,000 home broadband subscriber additions in the fourth quarter of the financial year 2020-21.

    According to a press statement issued by the company, OIL has attained a momentum of more than 1,000 subscribers-a-day on its way to crossing the 600,000+ mark, to retain its position in the top five private ISPs in India.

    OIL CEO Yugal Kishore Sharma believes that the dependence on internet has never been so high. “Internet use cases have moved beyond browsing and social networking to work-from-home (WFH), on-line education, OTT entertainment and gaming, online-shopping, online-health, e-governance and others. This requires broadband connections to deliver real ‘high speed’ to support multiple users, devices and sessions with consistency and near 100 per cent availability.”

     OIL has implemented unique business models to facilitate its rapid growth. The concept of “DST” or direct sales team has now evolved into digital sales teams, where the company is supplementing the traditional ‘push’ method of sales with digital mediums.

    On strategy for growth, Sharma shares, “We have imbibed learnings from the evolution of the telecom sector, not just in India, but globally – and we’ve applied a lot of those learnings to our own business model to ensure robustness and sustainability.” OIL has in fact achieved 42X growth over the last five years – with commensurate growth in revenues.

    Additionally, the broadband provider has adapted to the surge in consumption by doubling its internet capacity on the supply side without passing the additional cost to its customers to maintain customer experience.

    NXTDigital MD & CEO Vynsley Fernandes remarked, “Team ONE has redefined the business of broadband in India through innovative modelling, getting in the right skillsets and developing a performance centric organisation culture. The results of a focused strategy of OIL as demonstrated is visible in OIL’s consistently raising the bar on Q/Q basis.”

    OIL has also been steadily leveraging the cable television and HITS (Headend-In-The-Sky) subscriber base of NXTDigital – by expanding its footprint across the country.

  • ZeeL’s Vibha Chopra joins Amazon Prime Video

    ZeeL’s Vibha Chopra joins Amazon Prime Video

    KOLKATA: Media professional Vibha Chopra has moved on from Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZeeL) to join Amazon Prime Video. She will be looking at content acquisition in her new role.

    “It’s been an exciting journey at Zee, where I got to learn , grow and work on exciting projects and with amazing people. I owe my rich experience to the wonderful teams across the globe with whom I had a chance to work. The achievements by my team at Zee Studios International of building it from scratch to the No.1 international distributor of Indian films across the world will always be cherished,” she wrote on professional networking platform LinkedIn.

    “ I am thankful to my seniors Amit Goenka and Punit Goenka who trusted me enough to give me different portfolios, latest being the opportunity to launch TVoD. There comes a time when you want to reinvent yourself. And with that in mind, I’m thrilled to announce that I have joined Amazon Prime Video, India. I’m super excited for this new chapter in my life and looking forward to an exciting journey with this global organization,” she added further.

    At ZeeL, Chopra was leading global syndication and international film distribution. She was associated with ZeeL in various capacities since 2006.

  • ‘Cruising Legends’ rides again on MX Player, top brands hop on

    ‘Cruising Legends’ rides again on MX Player, top brands hop on

    KOLKATA: MX Player is bringing back an award-winning travel show for another ride – Cruising Legends: Dawn Patrol will see four biking legends quench their thirst for wanderlust and undertake a journey to the easternmost part of India, Arunachal Pradesh, to witness the country’s first break of dawn. Top notch brands like BMW, Gopro, and Castrol 1 Ultimate have already come onboards as sponsors.

    Produced by The Vibe Studio, all four episodes of this travel series are now available to binge on MX Player.

    “In 2020, TheVibe had embarked on expanding its original IP catalogue which was AVoD-based into a SVoD play, and with this an interesting opportunity presented itself from MXPlayer to reboot Cruising Legends, a branded content series produced in 2017 under TheVibe Originals for AVoD, to be converted into a long-format episodic narrative as an MX Original Series. We felt that the property could grow. MX Player’s intervention has scaled up the project and turned it around as a multi proposition, ” TheVibe co-founder Kartik Rao said.

    The thing that makes this series special is that all of the chosen riders have distinct personalities and motivations; their reasons for travelling vary, how they travel and what they do while they travel vary. With each episode, a different rider takes the lead and sets the agenda of that leg of the journey.

    The four riders include Helmet Stories co-founder Harsh Man Rai, biker Candida Louis who’s on a mission to educate the world about the importance of travel, adventurer/biker Ouseph Chacko, and Vir Nakai, who is known all over the globe as the face of Indian motorcycling.

    “We are delighted to be a part of this series,” said BMW Motorrad India director Shivapada Ray. “The BMW G 310 GS is the perfect companion for such an escapade. The bike takes the excitement a step further into the typical GS territory that stands for robust adventures on two wheels.”

    GoPro India head of marketing Mayuri Pitale added, “Cruising Legends raises the bar of unique travel and adventure content in India and there were no better cameras to capture this incredible trip than the GoPro Hero9 Black and Hero8 Black. GoPro cameras are rugged, waterproof and built to withstand dirt, dust, bumps and spills – perfect for the incredible action content in MX Player’s adventure-fueled series. We are proud and excited to have GoPro Advocate, Vir Nakai, participate in the series and amazed by the exotic and treacherous terrain Arunachal Pradesh has to offer.”

  • Hero Group forays into edtech with ‘Hero Vired’

    Hero Group forays into edtech with ‘Hero Vired’

    New Delhi: Tapping into the booming ed-tech market, the Hero Group has launched a new ed-tech company – Hero Vired – to adequately train and empower the workforce of the future. The launch accompanied the release of its new brand campaign, Be Made for BIG Things, which went live on social media and OTT platforms.

    National award-winning actor Ashish Vidyarthi has lent his voice to the brand campaign, which attempts to showcase the importance of an end-to-end learning ecosystem for today’s workforce. It talks about how individuals have plans for their future that are larger than life, pushing them to try newer frontiers. “It is often this drive that sets them apart from the crowd. This is where Hero Vired will help individuals, learners and professionals to achieve them. The concept for this campaign was born from the fact that life is more than just another job,” stated the company during the launch.

    Hero Vired head of programs & marketing Sushma Bharath said, “We believe that there’s more to life than just another job, increment or a degree. We want to bridge the gap between learning and employability by ensuring our efforts result in the real transformation of life and ambitions. Be Made For BIG Things is a campaign that will inspire people to look beyond the subjects and see the possibilities of tomorrow.”

    AVDS founder and chief creative officer Arun Verma said, “Today's generation is not fixated on just another job title, salary or designation. They are looking for a larger purpose and a reason for being. Show them a dream that adds a purpose to their life, beyond just a career or organisational growth and they will be all in, committed to your vision. That is what Hero Vired creates – youngsters who want to be made for the human race, not the rat race.”

    The film will be promoted across OTT platforms Disney+ Hotstar and Zee5 and social media platforms. It went live on YouTube on Tuesday evening.