Star India's VOD platform 'hotstar' goes live with beta version

The formal launch is slated to coincide with the Cricket World Cup next month

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | January 12, 2014

Star Network is all set to launch its own Video on Demand (VOD) platform which is called 'hotstar'. Other than the website hotstar.com, it is available across all mobile devices which are on Android, iOS and Nokia ASHA platforms.

The beta version of 'hotstar.com' has gone live and it is slated for a formal launch coinciding with Cricket World Cup next month. BestMediaInfo.com had reported last month about Star Network's plan to launch its own ad supported VOD platform to monetize its video content across digital mediums.

Offered over-the-top on mobile, and the web, the hotstar platform has been designed to provide the best video experience for TV Shows, Movies and Live Sports all in a single destination.

The hotstar platform will have rich content catalogue backed by entire video content offering from Star Network in India. With around 20000 hours content spread across 7 languages, which include 120+ full length TV shows, 500+ movies and LIVE screening of popular sports like Cricket, Football, Tennis and Kabbadi, hotstar will cater to a very large and diverse audience.

hotstar's user friendly features include:

Video Playback Experience – Through video technology optimizations hotstar has enabled adaptive video streaming that adjusts itself to deliver the best possible video quality basis available bandwidth and player technology ensures that there is never any compromise on audio-video quality. Video is downward optimized to playback continuously in as little as 64Kbps (2G bandwidth) and can play HD quality video on the top end of bandwidth availability.

Download & Go - Given that mobile data networks are inconsistent, hotstar solves a major problem for those audiences who do enjoy the privilege of some consistent bandwidth – Downloads! The Aggregator enables users to download their favorite content to their devices so that they can watch it offline, or when they are in a situation where they cannot rely on their mobile networks.

Playlists - hotstar allows users to create their own Playlists with content they curate from the rest of the platform for at-leisure viewing. There are no restrictions to the type of content users can add to their Playlists – individual episodes, movies, full collections or even collections of movies.

Collections, Chapters & Curation – It can be overwhelming for hotstar users when they are able to choose from a catalogue as big as that of hotstar's. To address this problem, hotstar has come up with features that make content selection simple by organizing episodes of a show based on a theme and calls it a chapter. Keeping our viewer's interests in mind, we have also clubbed content to make collections of video clips, episodes of a show and similar movies. hotstar strives to learn its users preferences in order to provide content that they might like.

Also read: Star Network to launch own VOD platform

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com