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GaramChai >> Movies
and Entertainment >> Indian Movies on the Web
Indian
entertainment, TV, Cable, Radio Station, theaters and
video and movie rentals are present in many states and
regions across the US, Canada and North America. Theaters
also regularly screen Indian movies.
With
the pervasiveness of Internet and access to broadband
and high-speed web access, desis in pardes, NRIs and
others interested in Bollywood movies, Tamil, Telugu,
Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and other regional movies.
On
this page, we feature many websites and providers that
allow download of movies and entertainment programs
for a small fee and some are free. |
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On
this page, we feature many websites and providers that allow
download of movies and entertainment programs for a small
fee and some are free.
Websites
that host their own content
Amazon.com’s
Unbox started
with Hollywood On-Demand movie download service. Amazon
realized that video downloads have become more front
and center in the minds of consumers as they consider
how to spend their entertainment dollars. The site also
has a Bollywood category, starting with popular titles
like Rang De Basanti and Bluffmaster. |
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BIGFlix.com Is a Reliance entertainment company. It is a 'Video on
Demand' website that offers a vast library of movies, TV sitcoms,
plays, kids programs and music videos in Indian languages.
The website allows download of movies from anywhere in the
world. Movie rental service is currently available in India.
Eros
Entertainment:Eros International plc is an established
global player in the fast-growing Indian media and entertainment
arena. The company operates in over 50 countries with worldwide
offices in India, UK, USA, Dubai, Australia, Fiji and Isle
of Man. It has built a successful business model around the
release of 30-40 new films every year and the exploitation
of a film library containing more than 1,300 titles, making
it one of the largest content owners in the business.
Jaman is a website for people to discover, enjoy and
review movies from around the world. Jaman's Internet community
is pioneering the social aspects of independent and international
media. Having curated and assembled one of the world's largest
online libraries of feature films and documentaries, Jaman
provides filmmakers and studios a secure way to distribute
and market films worldwide. Their collection includes bollywood
and art films from India
Rajshri.com: Website was launched in November 2006 and offers access to
the entire catalog of 75 Rajshri films, and more. Through
deals with content providers like the Zee Group, NDTV, Star,
UTV, Mukta Arts, and even some Indian government ministries,
visitors can also access other feature films, television shows,
music videos and documentaries. Much of the content from the
site be streamed onto your computer for free, or, in the case
of recent releases for a small fee. The website is ownend
by Rajshri. Their classic films include Dosti, Uphaar, Geet
Gaata Chal, Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye, Chitchor, Ankhiyon
Ke Jharokhon Se, Tapasya, Saaransh, Maine Pyar Kiya, Hum Aapke
Hain Koun..!, Hum Saath-Saath Hain and Main Prem Ki Diwani
Hoon.
Saavn:
(an acronym for South Asian Audio Visual Network), is making
Bollywood movies available to US consumers through cable television’s
video-on-demand (VOD) option, as well as online music clips
and ringtones for download.
The website states that Saavn is the world's largest digital
rightsholder of Bollywood movie and music content, with licenses
for more than 70% of all new Bollywood movie and music releases,
including over 200,000 audio tracks. Saavn packages exclusive,
timely, high-quality movies, music and television shows from
India for digital platforms including cable VOD, Internet
and mobile and mainly serves a steadily growing but underserved
North American audience of 30 million Bollywood fans.
Websites
that point to shared content [Not sure if content is original
or has copyright clearance]
ApnaView displays and indexes Indian movies. However, the website claims
that they do not publish or host the videos that are linked
or displayed on Apnaview and have no way of controlling the
publishers or the servers on which the videos are hosted.
On the website, they advice that if you want a piece of content
removed from circulation, the best way to do that is to contact
the website that hosts the video, not us. After you have seen
the low quality videos here, We highly ENCOURAGE you to buy
the DVD or cassettes from your local or online video store.
Watching clips on this website reqires download of Zango software.
Bharatmovies.com:
The website ddisplays a list of movies categorized into Hindi
movies, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali movies.
Most pages for the movies point to a movie sharing website:
zshare.net and this portal does not have an 'about us' or
copyright disclaimer.
BollyClips.com indexes videos from third party websites. Claims to provide
access to Free Bollywood Movies Online, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu
Movies Online
moovyshoovy.com Links to latest movies being streamed by other websites.
moviesquare.net It has a great collection of links to old & new hindi movies. All the movie links are regularly updated and with good quality.
desifun.co.uk
Interval.in is India's largest movie portal showing all the latest Bollywood
movies along with the Golden Oldies. Besides being able to
search for Bollywood movies, userscan also search by star
name as well as Year of release. With over 1000 movie titles
to search for as well as Bollywood TV shows, Cricket,
muft.tv is an online movie portal offering the best Bollywood movies
online for free. We currently offer over 800 movies including
the latest like U me aur Hum, Krazzy 4, Bhram, Shaurya, and
over 50,000 videos of interest to the Indian Community. Some
of our current categories include videos related to Bollywood
Music, Punjabi Music, Indian Documentaries, Indian Commercials,
Cricket, Bollywood Award and TV Shows.
On the website, the disclaimer states that "Desi Videos
Online is an online portal which index online desi videos
to watch online in an easier accessible manner. MuftTv does
not contain any content on its site, but is merely an index
of available links on the Internet. There is no adult or any
18+ related content on the website. All trademarks, trade
names, service marks, copyrighted work, logos referenced herein
belong to their respective owners/companies"
VideoDuniya: Has a disclaimer at the top: We don't host any of the videos
that are available on this website. We just link them from
popular sources on the internet like youtube and google videos
. These videos are uploaded to those sources by the community
at large and not by us. Please write to us through our "Contact
Us" page, if you feel that any video on this website
has objectionable content or violating your copyrights. Those
videos shall be promptly removed from our website.
Aritlce:
Soon at a Device Near You
This an
article I did that ran in the August 31, 2007 issue of India
Abroad. (Update: Saavn’s most recent promotion is Summer of
Love, running through the end of October. In it, they are
highlighting Umrao Jaan, Jaan-e-mann and Mixed Doubles. Meanwhile,
at Rajshri, their latest promotion is Manorama Six Feet Under.)
When a
large multiplex in North Bergen, New Jersey - long famous
in the area for offering several Hindi movies as well as the
latest Telugu and Tamil hits on its six screens - closed recently,
a victim of the highly competitive commercial real estate
market, a lot of movie fans were disappointed. The news led
to individual speculation about the impact illegal online
downloads and $2 pirated DVD rentals were having on the profits
anyone running a cinema could hope to make screening Bollywood
movies.
Now, thanks
to new initiatives by some people in the business, there may
be added competition for warm bodies in those theater seats,
though to talk to Rajjat Barjatya, he wouldn’t classify it
as competition per se, but rather, his way of meeting the
different needs of various consumers.
Barjatya
is the 32-year-old managing director at Rajshri Media, an
arm of Rajshri Films, responsible for such family-friendly
hits as Hum Aapke Hain Kaun? and Vivah. The Mumbai native
visited both coasts of the US at the end of July to promote
Rajshri.com, launched in November 2006.
The website
is a portal offering online access to the entire catalog of
75 Rajshri films, and more. Through deals with content providers
like the Zee Group, NDTV, Star, UTV, Mukta Arts, and even
some Indian government ministries, visitors can also access
other feature films, television shows, music videos and documentaries.
Much of
the content can be streamed onto your computer for free, or,
in the case of films like recent releases Bheja Fry or Bow
Barracks Forever! a download will cost $9.99 and you will
be able to watch it over a three-day period. The content is
protected, so you can’t burn a copy on DVD. Films can be streamed
with English subtitles, and are often available with other
language titles too.
As filmgoers
in America can attest, we only get a fraction of the releases
out any given week in India, and not all of us have the good
fortune of legal access to smaller, quirkier films like Bheja
Fry until the DVD is released. Even then, that can mean hoping
you get one of the few copies at your local DVD rental place
or hoping it is a movie Netflix has decided to buy.
Barjatya
explains the corporate decision at Rajshri: “There are maybe
five audiovisual touchpoints in your life: cinema, television,
personal computer, mobile phone, and devices like the Wii/Xbox/PSP.
We want to be the company that creates, aggregates and distributes
content to all of those. Last year we formed Rajshri Media,
our digital entertainment arm, and our aim was to reach out
to those third, fourth and fifth screens in your life.”
He speaks
of how the company came to a pioneering decision about Vivah
last year. After meetings at Nokia in Finland, Barjatya met
members of the small Indian community there, and heard they
saw the latest movies the day after release, which Barjatya
recognized immediately as an example of piracy, as DVDs are
only available weeks later. He found himself wondering aloud
to the NRI friends he met with on his next stop in the US,
“What if we were to offer our next movie, Vivah, for download
the same day that it releases in theaters?” and responses
were positive.
Barjatya
says: “I came back to India and talked to the family. It took
me five minutes to convince them that we should release Vivah
on the Internet day-and-date of its theatrical release. The
logic was very simple: let us reach consumers legally before
someone else reaches them illegally.”
In spite of not doing much marketing to promote the Vivah
experiment, Rajshri sold over 6,500 downloads to audiences
across the globe, from over 60 countries, including Poland,
Estonia, Argentina, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan. One consumer
in particular caught Barjatya’s attention. “There is one download
I’m very proud of,” he explains, “from Togo. It proves Indian
cinema has an appeal worldwide and the distribution power
of the Internet can help us reach consumers across the globe
legally.”
So, what’s
in it for Star or ZEE? Why do they give their content to Rajshri’s
portal? Barjatya points to two gains: “First,” he says, ‘it’s
a new lease on life for that content because they are reaching
a new audience, through a new market, through a new distribution
platform. Second, additional revenue. Hum Aapke Hain Kaun?
has had 408,000 views.”
The portal
has caught the eye of India’s Ministry of Tourism, who Barjatya
says see the potential for reaching NRIs and non-Indians interested
in India, and are making the material from their Incredible
!ndia campaign available. India’s Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting has already provided a video of Jawarhalal
Nehru delivering his historical “Tryst with Destiny” speech.
August 15th, Rajshri launches its Tamil portal, with a film
by S. Thanu, perhaps best know as producer of the Rajiv Menon
hit Kandukondain Kandukondain. Other languages will follow.
While
Rajshri Media in India pursues computer and mobile device
consumers, one US-based firm, Saavn, (an acronym for South
Asian Audio Visual Network), is making Bollywood movies available
to US consumers through cable television’s video-on-demand
(VOD) option, as well as online music clips and ringtones
for download. Like Barjatya, Saavn’s co-founder and general
manager Vin Bhat heard two complaints from consumers: either
Hindi movies were only available in far-off theaters or rental
stores, or the cinemas were close by, but in very poor condition.
At the
same time, cable operators were coming to Saavn, saying that
while they weren’t going to launch a South Asian channel themselves,
they wanted someone to do a video on demand service on their
behalf. Bhat says he was also hearing from producers in India
who felt that their content could be better presented to a
larger market.
Bhat says
Bollywood content isn’t reaching its true potential, not only
among South Asians, but also in the secondary market (people
from the Middle East, Africa, East Asia) and tertiary market
(mass market Americans). Saavn was established with the main
goal of acquiring the rights to both movies and music, then
packaging the content and setting it up for distribution over
a digital media platform (cable video-on-demand, Internet
and mobile).
Their
catalog contains 600 movies, 200,000 audio tracks, 10,000
music videos, and 3000 ringtones, and is providing unbranded
to media companies. Though
today there are 11 million VOD-enabled homes at cable companies
Time Warner Cable, Cox, and Rogers (the two latter based in
Canada), the start in 2004 was a little bumpy. Bhat says:
“TimeWarner Cable knew they had to have a Bollywood offering,
but due to technical issues, we’d be up for about 2 months,
then down for 2 months, so it wasn’t until November 2006 that
you saw a permanent catalog of Bollywood offerings.”
Movies
cost $3.95 and can be viewed (but not recorded) for 24 hours.
Current offerings on Time Warner Cable include Krrish, Jaan-e-mann,
Anthony Kaun Hai, Mixed Doubles, Umrao Jaan, and Bombay to
Goa and Khel Khel Mein.
According
to Bhat, TimeWarner Cable has told him “we are the second
best performing ethnic category behind Hispanic market, which
is 50 million people. The South Asian market (not just Indians,
but Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc) is about 3 million people,
an audience that is 1/17th the size of the Spanish-speaking
market.”
Currently,
Saavn is in 45 different markets, such as New York/New Jersey,
Los Angeles, Austin, Raleigh, San Diego and Fairfax, as well
as smaller cities like Buffalo, Albany, parts of Minnesota,
and Hawaii. As one might suspect, New York/New Jersey is the
biggest market, served by three major cable operators: TimeWarner
Cable, Cablevision (Saavn expects to launch service with them
this Fall), and Comcast (still to come).
If you
are not in one of those cities who can receive this video-on-demand,
Amazon.com’s Unbox will soon have a Bollywood category, starting
with some 30 titles like Rang De Basanti and Bluffmaster.
Bhat reports that at Unbox, some movies will be $9.99 to download
to own, while some can be rented for $3.95 or $4.95. He estimates
this service should be ready in the next two months.
How are
Saavn and the Indian content suppliers making money? According
to Bhat: “We make it available to the consumer at a certain
price and then there’s a revenue split. For example, let’s
say Amazon gets 50% of that and we get 50%. For the people
who made Rang De Basanti, we’ll pay them a licensing fee of
so many thousands for the rights to be able to use their film
for VOD and Internet distribution. Depending on what they
prefer, we’ll do it on a revenue share basis, we will give
a percentage of revenue we get, while others may prefer fixed
payments.”
Bhat claims
that Yash Raj Films, Adlabs, and Venus are among the companies
that have demonstrated interest in working with Saavn.
And just
as Naseeruddin Shah may act in Krrish so that he can also
afford to act in Parzania, Bhat says that his company is putting
together the Saavn Arts VOD package that will include Satyajit
Ray, Guru Dutt and South Asian diaspora films. “We started
with Bollywood because it has a wider reach and will give
the cable companies the opportunity to believe in us,” Bhat
says, “so we can then try something new and different, like
the art house package, with the Bollywood revenue to support
it, as it might not generate as much revenue.”
Aside
from providing access to movies on your television screen
or PC, Saavn also makes music videos available for free on
its website Saavn.com, and digital music tracks for download
at 99 cents each at iTunes. Bhat says there are approximately
10,000 tracks available right now and by September a full
200,000 should be there for download. In addition to iTunes,
Saavn is also providing content to other music services like
Napster and Real Network’s Rhapsody.
For many
movie fans, beyond the experience of watching the films themselves
and the prolonged pleasure of listening to the movie’s songs
before and after seeing the film, another progression in the
movie experience for many is to have the latest songs as ringtones.
Rajjat Barjatya confirms this is another offering Rajshri
plans to make in the future.
Meanwhile,
through Saavn, Bollywood fans in America can download ringtones
from its website. For Verizon subscribers, the company has
just signed a deal with Saavn to offer a menu of Bollywood
ringtones on a scrollable menu right on your phone itself
- a first for any cell phone carrier in this country.
And just
as with Rajshri, Bhat says that Saavn was going after the
larger content first, and will expand to other offerings,
such as Tamil and Telugu, by early 2008.
As Rajjat
Barjatya admitted, nothing can replace the cinema-going experience,
but these variety of other options, do allow us, devotees
of Hindi cinema, to access more of them than before, and in
different ways.
As someone
based in New York who has seen how spotty cinema releases
of the newest movies can be even here, I’m glad to know these
choices are available.
Published
on the Filmiholic
Blog
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