What is JioHotstar?

Early today, JioStar, the new joint venture between Viacom18 and Star India, announced the launch of its latest streaming platform – JioHotstar. The merger will bring JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar together and aims to extend ‘premium’ entertainment content to the Indian audience. Here’s everything this means, including what’s coming to the platform and subscription plans.

JioHotstar: What's the buzz about?

Both Jio and Hotstar, individually, were known for hosting a wide range of content. This included everything from entertainment and sports to live events. The company mentions how JioHotstar will now offer up to three lakh hours of content across Bollywood and Hollywood blockbusters, exclusive originals, live sporting events, and anime genres.

Apart from this, the brand mentions how it plans to cater to over 1.4 million Indian users in over 10 languages. And if that’s not all, the merger is also said to bring in international content from Disney, NBCUniversal’s Peacock, Warner Bros., Discovery, HBO, as well as Paramount.

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The company goes on to state how the platform will also host an initiative known as ‘Sparks’, which will showcase India’s biggest digital creators and host popular cricket tournaments, such as IPL, WPL and ICC. Additionally, users will also be able to tune in to watch Premier League, Wimbledon and domestic leagues like Pro Kabaddi and ISL.

Lastly, the brand plans to bring in features such as AI-powered insights, real-time stats overlays, multi-angle viewing as well as ‘special interest’ feeds for users.

Subscription plans: What's new and what happens to your existing plan?

The Disney+ Hotstar app has transitioned to JioHotstar for both Android and iOS users. The interface, for now, remains the same. However, this may end up changing gradually in the future.

According to Kiran Mani, chief executive officer-digital, JioHotstar, users with a JioCinema or Disney+ Hotstar subscription will automatically be upgraded to premium access on JioHotstar.

For anyone else, the company states how users will be able to set up their JioHotstar subscriptions after logging in for the first time. The platform has further announced the following plans – mobile (Rs 149), Super (Rs 299), and Premium (Ad-Free) (Rs 349) for three months.