STAR India has launched a rather interesting service at indya.com – they’ve put up broadband content on sale at http://broadband.indya.com. Available for purchase are ‘season packs’ for the Great Indian Laughter challenge ($19.99) and Koffee with Karan ($29.00), as well as weekly packs like those for the soap ‘Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii’ ($1.99) etc. This download to own service is powerered by Direct2Drive, and according to the release, the purchased content can be played on up to two Windows Media compatible devices. The service seems to be targeting the global south asian community. Episodes will be put up the same week as they are aired on TV. STAR intends to put up 2000 hours of content within six months and there are deals with other content providers in the works. They also intend to do a prepaid subscription system within the next three months.
A few observations: Firstly, there is differential pricing, so I’m wondering what kind of research Star has done to price content. Secondly, now that they’re selling their own TV content online, are they planning to do something about the copyrighted content on video sites like YouTube? Here’s a sample of a full episode. I think the service looks fairly priced for quality content, but not when compared to content that is FREE, albeit illegal. Also, I don’t quite like the idea of limiting the content to just two Windows Media devices – if it’s ‘download to own’, then it should be ‘download to burn and play the content whereever I want to play it’ too.
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