Service providers are fighting piracy with new business models that cater to consumer preferences with latest blockbusters at reasonable rates
With the rising numbers of Indian consumers, like Roy, preferring to download pirated movies and digital content online, service providers believe offering the right services would help curb the menace.
For example, Bharti Airtel has launched Airtel Movies that gives customers high-quality digital movies at a fixed price. “We are giving unlimited viewing of 500 film titles and over 100 TV shows for Rs 229 a month,” says Girish Mehta, chief marketing officer of Telemedia services at Bharti Airtel.
Mehta says there’s more to it. “One who subscribes to this plan, can be assured that bandwidth consumed to view Airtel Movies will not be added to the quota of his broadband consumption.”
Content owners remain hopeful too. “Watching online content for free is an obviously more preferable choice. But the newly emerging paid models have some premium value attached to it. Over time, they will become acceptable models,” says Hiren Gada, director, Shemaroo Entertainment.
ComScore Video Metrics suggests that 23.5 million viewers watched 785 million videos on Google sites, with consumers averaging 1.7 viewing hours during January. Youtube has accounted for 780.7 million videos, representing 44.5 per cent of all videos viewed in India. It has launched a service – Youtube BoxOffice – that offers online streaming of Hindi movies. While consumers can stream these movies for free, the site hopes to make money from advertisers. Last month, the site featured Dabbang and clocked over 1.3 million views.
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YouTube has also partnered with Yash Raj films and will soon be screening yet another recent blockbuster – Band Baaja Baaraat – online. YouTube’s catalogue of movies comprises over 1,500 titles, including regional language films. “With over 48 hours of content being uploaded on YouTube every minute, this is our attempt to curate premium and exclusive content that our users enjoy,” says Gautam Anand, director (Content Partnerships), YouTube Japan-APAC.
Google admits that lower bandwidths have been a problem for seamless video streaming services. “We have optimised our platform in a way such that video buffering is minimum. There are video viewing options where consumers can choose between 240 pixels and HD quality depending on the speed of his Internet connection.”
A month ago, Shemaroo released Dil to Baccha hai ji and Aakrosh on the company’s YouTube channel. Almost 20 titles have been selected from Shemaroo’s collection, including Dhamaal, Anwar and Fool-n-Final, to all time classics like Anand, Mili, Golmaal, Teesri Kasam and The Great Gambler. These movies are available on the on-demand platform for free.
Industry experts feel video streaming may take off as and when premium content is added to the catalogs. Kedar Gavane, director of Comscore says: “With the availability of higher bandwidths, downloading movies will be preferred as it allows to choose the time and place to watch as compared to streaming movies. I also believe the choice for an audience to download movies, pirated or non-pirated, is much more diverse compared to streaming options.”
Since the consumers’ preferences are critical for popularising legal online video streaming, service providers are addressing value-added features like high-definition content where users can rewind and pause at will. Companies like Airtel are also planning to offer similar services on Wi-Fi networks to power multiple devices like tablet PCs and mobile phones. YouTube is streaming its content in High Definition (HD) on big-screen TVs to woo users.
Google’s Anand adds: “Long form premium content like movies is emerging as a big category on YouTube and we’re committed to bringing movies across all genres to our users.”
Gada of Shemaroo believes that online streaming of movies and videos are seeing traction on mobile handsets after the launch of 3G services. “Since mobile handsets have limited memory space for saving downloaded content, online streaming is expected to see increased usage.”
Industry experts, however, feel there will always be a section of movie buffs who will continue to download pirated versions of movies from the Internet. Arnab Roy, an IT professional from Bangalore, justifies: “When I can download a movie, and watch it anytime why should I opt for paid services.” However, content owners are fast aligning themselves to change user preferences.