About Hotstar

About Hotstar

Disney+ Hotstar is India’s largest online video streaming platform. It is an Indian subscription-based service owned by Novi Digital Entertainment Private Limited. Hotstar.com is operated by Star India Private Limited and now a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company India.

Star India launched Hotstar on 11th February 2015 at the time of Cricket World Cup 2015.
It was an ad-supported service that initially had over 35,000 hours of online content and sports, live streaming coverage. Until May 2018, it had over 75-100 million active users per month.

The company began to restructure itself for its ad-supported and premium services. They planned to increase its original premium content to compete with Amazon as well as Netflix.

By 2019, Hotstar acquired over 150 million users per month. As a part of the acquisition of their US parent company 21st Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company acquired Hotstar in 2019. It was relaunched in March 2020 as a part of the recently launched International streaming brand Disney+. The platform was merged with Disney+ on 3rd April 2020, officially.

About Hotstar Services

Disney+ Hotstar currently offers more than 100,000 hours of movies and TV content in about nine languages. It also covers the live coverage of sports and other events.

In India, Hotstar service is available as both a free ad-supported service and a subscription-based service. The subscription is available in 2 tiers, mainly VIP and premium. The free service offers limited access to shows and originals and can be accessed only on one screen per user.

Selected Indian films and Star series are available after their Television broadcast. But the free service offers Standard Definition (SD) quality with no access to Disney+ movies and other content.

The VIP subscription offers dubbed videos in languages such as Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, and Bengali. Users can view Unlimited live sports, new Indian movies, Hotstar specials, and star serials before TV. The user does not have the privilege to watch the content ad-free in this subscription, but High Definition (HD) quality is available for a single screen user. VIP plan is open for ₹399/year.

Hostar provides a premium subscription with the privilege to watch the content initially in English and dubbed languages. You can watch the original Disney +, Hotstar content, new Indian movies, unlimited live sports, web series, star serials before TV, and English shows along with ad-free entertainment in this plan.

The number of screens on which the user can access this plan is 2 with full High Definition Quality. The premium plan is available in 2 plans, mainly ₹299/month or ₹1499/year.

Benefits of Hotstar

Disney+ Hotstar is a highly evolved video streaming technology, and the users can feel excellent quality of experience across devices and other platforms. The main aim of Disney+ Hotstar is to make it the complete video destination for Over The Top(OTT) video customers. Let’s explore some of the Benefits of Hotstar:

1.   Seamless Video Playback: Disney+ Hotstar’s adaptive video streaming technology ensures that its users are provided with the best possible video playback quality. The automatically generated video quality, based on available bandwidth, provides a great video experience on mobile networks and Wi-Fi connections.
They aim to optimize the video at its best quality, even at metered network connections on the low end, without compromising video quality and streaming experience.
The available videos are offered in High Definition (HD) and Full High Definition ( FHD). Users also can select the streaming quality based on their internet connectivity and preferred choice. 

2.   Smart Search: Disney+ Hotstar has been continuously improving its search content by users. It has been seamlessly providing a variety of content searches based on user’s queries. They target fast, accurate, and autocomplete suggestions for user navigation with ease and minimal search efforts.

3.   User-Friendly interface: the best thing about Hotstar is its excellent user interface. It provides a great interface based on a thoughtful user experience approach.
Developers of Hotstar use strong design principles, ensuring that the user is never dissatisfied with its interface. Mixing and mastering various algorithms, it has been successfully generated its interaction patterns and user experience over time. 

4.   Content catalog: With more than eight languages support, spanning over 15 TV channels, Disney+ Hotstar offers the latest popular movies, TV shows, originals, and web series.
It is one of the famous and highest-rated content stages amongst all online streaming platforms. It is home to some of the biggest blockbusters from Bollywood and regional cinema across the country. 

5.   Originals: The originals from Hotstar take the streaming experience to its next level. Many animated and other movies are a part of its sources and enjoy great success every year. 

6.   Access: One of the most significant features about Hotstar is that the users can access Hotstar from any device, be it the Tablet, Smartphone, Laptop, or PC.
The app is available free of cost ln the Google Play store and the Apple App store for users. You can access the content on your desktop from www.hotstar.com. Recently, Hotstar has launched its Android Tv application and support for many android TVs. 

Currently, Hotstar has around 8 million paid subscribers. It has become India’s largest online streaming service, with over 300 million active users per month. Hotstar provides its content distributed over all available genres such as Drama, Family, Romance, Reality, Talk shows, Lifestyle, Crime, Mythology, Action, Award shows, Biopics, Science fiction, Travel, Horror, Thrill, Sports, Documentaries, Wildlife, Teen, Kids, Health and Fitness, Music, Standup comedy and Superheroes films. 

It took a lot of million dollars and many trained developers worldwide to build India’s one of the largest and successful platforms, known as Disney+ Hotstar. Many failures, obstacles, and diversions shaped the platform to be the best. They built a fantastic streaming service, which gained popularity among the entertainment industry very soon and now proved to be one of the greatest boons!