On 3 April 2020, Disney+ made its debut in India, which is now available through the Hotstar app.
After multiple delays, the popular streaming platform finally decided to press the launch button and people in the country have started exploring the content on offer.
Speaking of which, the revamped app is now available for both Android and iOS in the country. We decided to see what’s new with the app and if people can expect anything different since it’s called Disney+ Hotstar now. Here’s everything from new prices, content and app design you would want to know about.
New Disney+ Hotstar Plans in India
- Rs 1,449 - Premium one year plan with access to Disney+ and Hotstar content
- Rs 399 - Hotstar VIP annual plan with access to select Disney+ content
- Free - Basic access to cricket live streaming and TV serials
The prices come into effect from 3 April and Hotstar has mentioned that existing premium users will be upgraded to the new plan without paying extra.
What You Get For the Price
Now let’s to go the business end of the app. As you can see below, the interface now carries the Disney+ Hotstar logo, and the side panel on the left gets some design changes, and the addition of the Kids Safe option. Using this feature you can hide the content which should not be accessible to the kids in your house.
There’s a new section on the main page of the app called Best of Disney+ which understandably gives you a detailed look at the popular content from the media house. This includes titles like Mickey Mouse, Lion King and Avatar among others.
You will also notice a Disney+ icon at the bottom of the screen, and by clicking it, you can head to the main library of content from Disney.
This page will show you a wide array of content, available through various Disney-owned platforms. This includes National Geographic, Pixar and Marvel among others.
While the content library, especially for the price is impressive. It was time to check out the quality of the streaming offered by the platform. After watching multiple titles (both from Hotstar and Disney’s library) it was clear the quality doesn’t go beyond the 1080 pixels resolution, which is delivered at an entry level bit rate of less of 5 MBits.
However, the app doesn’t show these figures to you, instead you get basic options like ‘low, medium, high and auto’. Interestingly, Disney offers 4K HDR in other countries, but Indian users are not getting that option, no matter what their internet speeds are.
For the general audience, these features are hardly going to be missed, and they’ll be just glad that Disney stuff is now available to them.
How it Compares With Rivals
You might say that Amazon is still charging Rs 999 per year for video, music and shopping combined, while Netflix now caters to a Rs 199 per month plan in the country for mobile. So how does Hotstar get away by charging its users Rs 500 more than its previous annual plan of Rs 999?
Well, the answer is simple. You get content from TV channels (thanks to Star), live streaming of huge array of sports events (including IPL) original curated content, bollywood movies, English originals and now add to that, you have Disney titles.
Hotstar is asking users to pay Rs 1,449 for 12 months, which is more than Amazon’’s offering, but significantly lower than Netflix HD plan worth Rs 650 per month. And by adding more content to its kitty, the new pricing still sounds like a good deal to us.
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