The Delhi High Court today dismissed a petition by a lawyer’s organization, Justice For Rights, seeking censoring of online content such as Game of Thrones, Spartacus, Vikings and Sacred Games. The petition, filed late last year, claimed that such videos constituted “unregulated, uncertified, sexually explicit,...
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Can Netflix avoid going Apple’s way in India?
As Netflix inches closer to saturation point in its North American home market, it is desperately looking for growth abroad. India being the only billion plus market where it can operate with ease, it is no wonder that its push is aggressive here. However, as...
Jio Music no more, gets replaced by JioSaavn
Reliance Jio has pulled its enormously popular Jio Music app and replaced it with JioSaavn, a new app based largely on Saavn, a competitor that the company had acquired in March. Users who have enabled auto-updating of their apps will be upgraded to the new...
Zee5 added to NetRange Smart TV app store
Zee5, the content app from the Zee Group, has joined the NetRange, an app store found on televisions manufactured by global TV makers such as Philips, Grundig, HiSense, Thomson, Skyworth, Sharp and TCL. With this, the Zee5 app will become instantly available on lakhs of...
Dish TV boxes to get support for Internet apps by December
Dish TV, India’s largest direct-to-home satellite television service, said it will send out software upgrades to over 4 mln (40 lakh) of its users that will enable them to install apps to watch Internet content on their TV by December. “There are almost 4 million...
Zee Entertainment to spend heavily on ZEE5, add 4,100 films, 60 webseries
Zee Entertainment Enterprises, the largest Indian broadcasting company, said it plans to raise the number of exclusive movies on its entertainment app ZEE5 to 3,000 as it races to become the No.1 provider of digital content in India. The 3,000 exclusive movies would make the...
Star agrees to share cricket matches with Reliance’s JioTV
Star India has agreed to share the feed of cricket matches involving India with Reliance Jio’s live TV app JioTV. Till now, JioTV users had to install Star’s Hotstar app to watch any of the network’s sports channels. The sharing agreement is valid for five...
Airtel, Netflix sign content-sharing, billing agreement
Airtel and Netflix announced an expansion of their partnership in India through which the telecom operator will sell and promote Netflix content to its customers. Airtel TV, the video app from the operator, will have a dedicated row of Netflix content. It is not clear...
Bharti Airtel to be ‘careful’ about content investments, prefer tie-ups
Reliance Jio’s delays in ‘going pay’ with its content suite seems to be giving rivals like Bharti Airtel pause for thought as far as their content plans are concerned. Jio unveiled a large suite of content applications when it launched its telecom service two years...
ALTBalaji adding 25,000-30,000 paid users per day – CEO
ALTBalaji, the biggest Indian provider of original online content, is signing up paid users at the rate of 25,000-30,000 per day, said Nachiket Pantvaidya, the CEO of Balaji Telefilms, the company behind the app. “We expect to have paid users of 10 mln by the end...
Reliance Jio offers ‘play along’ features for TV broadcasters in India
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd said it has tied up with Israel-based Screenz to offer interactivity and ‘play along’ features for television programs in India. With the help of the offering, television channels can keep their viewers engaged on a realtime basis using smartphone apps. Jio...
JioTV adds multi-camera, multi-mic feature; VR coming soon
Reliance Jio, the 4G operator, said users of its JioTV streaming app can now choose any of the five camera angles while watching the ongoing Nidahas trophy as part of a new ‘interactive TV’ feature. Similarly, they can also choose to listen to different mics,...
Tata Sky takes on JioTV with free video streaming website for users
Tata Sky, the country’s largest distributor of television content, has taken decided to take on JioTV and other emerging content distributors with an online streaming website of its own. The DTH provider’s online video and TV service can be accessed at ‘watch.tatasky.com‘ and currently has...
Xiaomi’s new MiTV: Everything, except apps on this TV
When Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi entered the Indian market, few thought the brand would go from zero to No.1 in a matter of four years, leaving biggies such as Samsung, LG and Micromax in the dust. So total has been the disruption that even today,...
Star India’s Hotstar to share content with Airtel’s TV app
Star India’s digital business, Hotstar, will make content available via Bharti Airtel’s TV app. The companies did not clarify if all content on Hotstar will be available or not. Given that it costs Rs 199 per month to access all content on Hotstar, that is...
Balaji Telefilms ties up with Reliance Jio for content distribution
Balaji Telefilms, the television content producer header by Ekta Kapoor, said it has decided to make its digital content available on various content applications of Reliance Jio. So far, the most of the content was exclusive to Balaji Telefilm’s own app, ALTBalaji, which also competes...
Bharti Airtel invests in e-publishing platform Juggernaut
Bharti Airtel said it has acquired a strategic stake in Juggernaut Books, a popular digital epublishing platform. Telecom companies in India are busy building or buying content companies in an effort to offer their own content on their networks. “The investment is in line with...
Google Assistant launches support for third-party apps in India
Google has activated support for third-party apps in its Google Assistant product in India. Before this, it was not possible for third-party apps to be launched or accessed via Google Assistant in India. Google Assistant is the company’s artificial intelligence-based mobile phone search and assistance...
PVR introduces ‘movie on demand’ with VKAAO app
PVR, India’s largest movie chain, said viewers can now watch any movie they want — including oldies, small-time and independent flicks and documentaries — by voting for them on movie-on-demand app VKAAO from Bookmyshow. When a certain number of app users sign up for a...
Balaji Telefilms to share digital content with Vodafone
Balaji Telefilms will make its digital content available Vodafone’s Play multimedia app, the telecom operator said. Nachiket Pantvaidya, CEO – ALTBalaji said the aim of his company was to make the content more widely available. “Our content caters to the Indian language, urban mass audience...