The rise of cloud computing has taken the world’s technology scene by storm. When pretty much everybody is shifting to the cloud these days, why should one of the major players in Indian television, Star India, be behind? In this race, Satellite Television for the Asian Region (STAR) has decided to blaze a trail and air – or, rather, stream – all its programmes through the cloud.
Star plans to digitize its entire catalog of programming by September, according to the Deccan Chronicle today. That’ll allow users to access all of their favorite programmes – whether it’s music, serials, movies, news, sports – on any computer with just a few clicks. All you require is an Internet connection with a browser. That’s far more economical than the pricey package deals for satellite television – and it’ll work out cheaper for the networks as well as ordinary consumers.
Star India won’t be handling all that data by itself, as one powerful option in cloud technology is that your content can be hosted on, and streamed from, third-party providers like Amazon, Rackspace, or India’s own Netmagic.
As Balvinder Singh, the VP of IT at Star India, explained to SearchDataCenter.in:
Cloud computing is a very concrete solution that you can select when you want to make IT infrastructure available on-demand without any management headaches. It is the most efficient technology in handling the demand immediately at low-cost.
What is cloud TV? How is it different from regular TV?
Regular TV technology utilises a satellite to send signals to antennae placed in homes. Then, the TV signal undergoes processing in a DTH set-top box and can then be watched on your television set. This process requires the TV channel to own or lease satellites, and therefore is expensive. So customers are often charged a fee when they subscribe to a particular channel.
Using cloud TV, a user can watch archived TV shows or simply stream live shows for free. The ability to watch in a browser is a major plus, since you won’t require any additional hardware like a satellite receiver or a set-top box – or not even a television!. And there won’t be any restrictions on the number of channels you can stream. If every channel uses the cloud to stream shows, then we’d be able to watch more than 2000+ channels from across the world. Yes, this is the power of Internet, or rather, the power of the cloud to be precise.
Will cloud TV be effective in India?
In India, unlike some other Asian countries, even a YouTube video takes time to buffer. Sub-standard internet speeds in India are certainly going to be a huge deterrent for to success of anything cloud-based. But on the other hand, the increasing number of mobile subscribers in India and the launch of new mobile tablets could help bring more Star India subscribers.
In any case, Star India has chosen to blaze a trail upon which other television channels will follow soon. All this could very well lead to the advent of cloud TV in India on a nationwide level.
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