Streaming service 'Hooq' launched in India at Rs. 199/month

Do you think, Users will choose this Service over piracy?

  • Yeaaap!

    Votes: 21 50.0%
  • No yar, Torrents hai na!

    Votes: 21 50.0%

  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .

swatkats

Skilled
Hooq, a joint venture between Sony Pictures, Warner Bros Studios and Singtel, today announced its plans to launch its video service in India. The company claims to have a catalog of over 15,000 movies and TV shows, which will be available to subscribers to either stream or download. Hooq will be available to users in India sometime in June for a monthly subscription of Rs 199.

The company says it has over 5,000 Hollywood movies, TV series and shows from Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, Disney,Dreamworks and Miramax. For local content, the company has tied up with YRF, Sun TV, UTV Disney, Rajshri, Reliance,Shemaroo, Sri Balaji AP International, Whacked Out Media and over 50 other studios. In all, at the time of launch, Hooq would have over 10,000 videos including Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood movies along with TV shows.

“We are in talks with major Indian and Hollywood studios to bring more content to Hooq. We will keep updating our content catalog constantly,” Krishnan Rajagopalan, Chief Content and Distribution Officer, Hooq told BGR India.

Hooq will be available under beta for a few weeks before it reaches commercial availability next month. It will compete with Pritish Nandy backed Indian startup, Ogle, which BGR India had exclusively reported about. While Hooq’s major focus at the moment seems to be on movies, Ogle is focusing on international TV series and was also getting into live streaming of events. It was the exclusive live stream partner for NH7 music festival. Interestingly, Ogle is also expected to get out of beta next month.

Hooq users will be able to access their account on five devices at any given point of time and stream content on two devices simultaneously. One big USP of Hooq would be offline play. At any given time users will be able to download up to five videos for offline viewing. There seem to be no limits on the number of videos they can download in a month, till the time there are five files stored locally on the device.

“When we go out of beta, users will also be able to choose the resolution in which they can download the content. Users can Chromecast it to a TV,” Peter Bithos, CEO, Hooq told BGR India.

India will be the third market for Hooq, which is already available in Thailand and Philippines. The company is looking exclusively at emerging markets for its service and will soon come to other Asian countries.

One of the key concerns in India would be bandwidth consumption, especially considering Fair Usage Policy data caps carriers and ISPs put on users even in “unlimited” plans. For these, Hooq is already in talks with major ISPs and carriers in the country, Rajagopalan told BGR India.

Source: http://www.bgr.in/news/hooq-aims-to...launch-in-india-in-june-for-rs-199-per-month/
 
The pricing is really good.
I'm actually hoping for something like this to do well in India as it could lead to better plans from isp's.
 
Bandwidth will not be an issue, since the users opting for this service would be having 1mbps+ bandwidth, Enough for Streaming for SD content.
Also you can download up to 5 movies offline and watch it later. Unless and until, ISP's here send tokens like US Isp's for downloading piracy, Services like this wouldn't do well except with few masses.
 
QOS is also important, if they cant stream due to bad servers it wont fly. netflix is a beast when it comes to qos and high availability.
 
Data would be definitely streamed from Singapore because of costs but seriously data charges in India aren't really exorbitant now a days considering their big infrastructure setup.
Also, Don't know who will opt this but i am gonna buy it or at least give a try for few months. Who doesn't like Netflix like services? ;)
 
I am not interested in SD content, I am sure the majority of this segment will want HD content. I would definitely be interested, didnt Airtel have IPTV in NCR, wonder how that is doing.
 
In India, I wonder if you would have to be a first-hand ISP as well in order to offer a service like this. eg. Something along the lines of flipkart having to create their own delivery network to offer their ecommerce services.
 
didnt Airtel have IPTV in NCR, wonder how that is doing.

By one of my friends who work at airtel, it is doing same as chromecast. Just looks nice from outside but then people subscribe for couple of months and stops the subscription. This is for gurgaon circle.
 
Well, I pay now also for viewing movies in Youtube. My take is if it's affordable, I'll always go that way.

Hope bandwidth and QoS doesn't becomes an issue here.
 
By one of my friends who work at airtel, it is doing same as chromecast. Just looks nice from outside but then people subscribe for couple of months and stops the subscription. This is for gurgaon circle.

Yes, I believe it is available in that region, but what is the issue, why do people unsubscribe after a while?

PS- I wonder if chrome casting as I understand it is legal? It is akin to watching sporting event feeds online.

Well, I pay now also for viewing movies in Youtube. My take is if it's affordable, I'll always go that way.

Hope bandwidth and QoS doesn't becomes an issue here.

Really, and what would be your bandwidth sir?
 
Yes, I believe it is available in that region, but what is the issue, why do people unsubscribe after a while?

PS- I wonder if chrome casting as I understand it is legal? It is akin to watching sporting event feeds online.



Really, and what would be your bandwidth sir?

Currently I'm on 2Mbps with a backup plan of 1.5 Mbps :p
 
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