India’s largest Direct to Home television services operator, Dish TV has launched an over-the-top (OTT) streaming application DishOnline for Android and iOS. The company claims that it will also launch an application on desktop PCs, however, it has not revealed more information on this. Dish TV has partnered with Zee’s online streaming portal Ditto TV for the same.
DishOnline provides TV content in four forms – Live TV, Movies, TV shows and videos. It claims that it includes more than 1000 Hollywood and Bollywood movies. Channels such as Zee TV, Sony, Sab, Zee Cinema, Zee Studio, Zee Cafe, Ten Action, Ten Cricket, Zee News, Aaj Tak, BBC, Sony Mix, Masti, Zee Marathi, Zee Tamil and Zee Telugu are included in the package.
As for pricing, there are two packs available — JUMBO pack at Rs 129 which includes all live TV channels, all movies, all shows, all videos and a STARTER pack at Rs 49 which includes all movies, shows, and videos. However, at the time of writing this article, it offers these packages at Rs 69 and Rs 29 respectively as an introductory offer.
It appears that Dish TV is looking at different channels to add subscribers, considering how its subscriber growth rate has plateaued over the last two quarters. In July, it added only 0.2 million subscribers in each quarter, which was the company’s lowest subscriber addition in the past 23 quarters.
Competitors
DishOnline competes with Times Internet’s online video streaming service BoxTV and Multi Screen Media’s Sony LIV. There’s also online video streaming service Spuul.com and mobile value added services company DigiVive.
In 2011, DTH player Tata Sky had launched its Video on Demand service which includes Catch Up TV and VoD Movie Library. Airtel Digital TV, the DTH arm of Airtel, had also launched Video On Demand service that will allow customers to connect their set top boxes (STB) to their broadband connection and download TV content from an on-demand video library.
