It’s official! The largest video streaming service in the world has finally launched in India this Wednesday much to the delight of movie buffs and TV show enthusiasts. Soon, gone will be the days when viewers will have to wait for the video streaming endlessly while watching movies, no more commercial disturbances, and the best part, you can watch whatever you want on the go. What’s more, everything from movies to video shows will be available at your convenient time.
This marks a new phase for young Indians who are always hooked onto gadgets and love to watch movies and shows online rather than on television. The move comes after months of speculation, though, but fans can rest happy, they can now watch original Netflix shows like House of Cards, Daredevil and so on.
So now that we have it in India, how do you get Netflix?
There are three Netflix packages for India for now.
- 500/month
- 650/month
- 800/month
You need to sign up for their services and give your card details and right away, you can avail their free month trial and try all plans before you are billed. Basically, here are some things you need to know before you subscribe to Netflix in India.
Bandwidth Issues
According to the Netflix site, adjusting the data usage settings for your account is the easiest way to reduce the amount of bandwidth used while watching Netflix. These are the data usage settings to choose from. Each estimate below is per stream:
- Low (0.3 GB per hour)
- Medium (SD: 0.7 GB per hour)
- High (Best video quality, up to 3 GB per hour for HD and 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD)
Now this is one area many users are worried about. Looks like you might need to shell out another huge amount for a high bandwidth internet connection but there are claims that Netflix would work fairly well with a minimum of 2 mbps connection. Waiting with fingers crossed on this one!
Watching on different devices:
Here’s how to watch Netflix in India. For streaming videos on TV, it would require a companion device such as an Xbox 360 or PS3. For other devices, including smartphones, tablets and laptops, it would stream directly using the web connection.
You can also use Chromecast as the Netflix app is supported by the streaming dongle. You can get Google Chromecast with coupons from flipkart here.coupons from flipkart here.
Access to limited shows
There are certain shows like Orange is the New Black, House of Cards which has already been acquired by TV broadcasters in India. You wouldn’t be able to watch such shows on Netflix. Also, a lot of local and international content which doesn’t fall under its production partnership can’t be viewed on Netflix.
However Netflix is trying to bring a lot of local content up for viewership. The best part is, many International movies which do not get to be launched on the big screen in India can be watched.
Payment Methods
For now you can pay only through debit or credit cards. Signing up the first time even for free service requires you to furnish card details which many are not comfortable with. Initial user reviews have been positive with all popular Bollywood movies like Piku available. A 1 mbps Wi-Fi connection allowed fairly decent streaming for users.
Wait and Watch
A lot of users with expensive UHD televisions and will finally have access to high-resolution content that put their TVs to full use. Watching a movie or a TV show will eat about 1 gigabyte of data an hour, 30% more than the current monthly average for Indian users. So for the rest of India,it’s a wait-and-watch policy to know if Netflix will succeed.