Reliance Jio has already caused disruption in the telecom market and aided the internet penetration of India with the country becoming the largest in terms of mobile data consumption. The company has also been actively rolling out Jio Fiber, and in most cases, letting people have a free run with it just by paying a refundable security amount. Now, the company intends to capture even more entertainment media with the release of Jio TV+, which is aimed to combine the goodness of DTH alongwith internet streaming service and provide them in a single box.
Jio has tie-ups with the likes of Den and Hathaway, and are open to integrating with other services like Airtel and Tata Sky to provide their DTH service via the Jio TV+ set-top box. But that might not happen since Airtel has rolled out a similar Xstream set-top box that streams online content as well as their own DTH.
Jio TV+ boasts of 4K content which streams via the JioFiber net, though — as seen during the live demo — it isn’t as seamless as the company will have you believe as the loading times for any given content type isn’t actually quick. It can take several seconds for a video to load on the screen — but that will change with better internet connection speeds.
The Jio TV+ is currently being tested with a closed group and according to their spokesperson the company is planning to release the set-top box in the next two months before the year ends.
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Since Jio TV+ operates via the JioFiber internet connection, the company has integrated the two — so you get both for the price of one — and also Jio TV+ requires an active internet connection until you’re streaming DTH channels.
While the JioFiber plans start at INR 699 per month, inclusive access to OTT apps such as Netflix, Hotstart or Prime Videos, among others, will only be available to subscribers of 849 or higher plans. Jio will be providing the 4K set-top box as well as Jio home gateway alongwith the monthly plans.
So, basically what Jio wants to achieve here is to bring DTH customers closer to what the internet has to offer and eventually turn them into online streamers exclusively.
This, in no way, is aimed at saving money for the customers. Rather, if you switch to online streaming and that too in 4K, you’re going to be consuming a lot of internet data and that’s going to cost you.
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