Available in English Owner Times Internet Ltd. Industry Streaming | Headquarters New Delhi, NCT, India CEO Satyan Gajwani | |
Area served India, Singapore, UAE, United Kingdom and United States | ||
BoxTV.com, also referred to simply as BoxTV, is a website and over-the-top (OTT) subscription service offering on-demand video streaming. The service is available in India, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States and is aimed at Indian users and the Indian diaspora in those countries. The service is operated by Times BoxTV Media Pte Ltd., which is owned by Times Internet Ltd. (TIL), a subsidiary of The Times Group. The Times of India, which is also owned by The Times Group, described the service as "conceptually similar to Hulu and Netflix that are available in the US".
Contents
BoxTV offers some free content supported by advertising, and the remainder is offered via monthly subscription. Monthly subscription charges are currently ₹199 (US$3.00) in India, £4.99 in the United Kingdom and $4.99 in the United States. The service is accessible via web browsers, iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, Kindle Fire, and TV-connected platforms such as EvoTV, Roku and Woxi SmartPod.
History
An invite-register page was posted online in February 2012 by BoxTV, with invitations available via a request on Facebook. An invite-only alpha preview of the website was launched in August 2012. According to Times Internet, the service accrued more than 50,000 invite requests by August 2012. The service was made available to the public on 22 February 2013. At the time of launch, BoxTV had 12 content partners, including Lehren, Rajshri Productions, Sony Pictures Television, Shemaroo Entertainment, UTV Motion Pictures, and Zoom.
Content
The company announced agreements with Celestial Entertainment, Disney UTV and Sony Pictures Television to provide Hollywood content; and Everymedia Technologies, Shemaroo Entertainment, Rajshri Productions and UTV Motion Pictures to provide India-focused programming. BoxTV offered live streaming of the 2013 Indian Premier League.
Users must register on BoxTV to watch any content. Unregistered user can browse the website, but are required to sign in to play back any content. Newly released movies are typically not available on BoxTV for a few months.
Video can be viewed as normal, wide and fullscreen. An auto-bandwidth optimizer attempts to allow the video to run smoothly on low or inconsistent bandwidths.