ALTBalaji, the video app from Indian film and television content producer Balaji Telefilms, has joined the Amazon Fire TV platform, joining around 5,200 apps already on the platform.
The e-retailer launched its video device in India two months ago at Rs 3,999 — slightly costlier than the competing product from Google, Chromecast.
Both these devices essentially micro-computers tailored for one purpose only — watching videos from the Internet on TV. Both connect to the TV using an HDMI port and output up to full-HD resolution video.
However, unlike Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV Stick has enough processing power and storage capacity to install some apps on the device itself, while the Chromecast runs only one app that plays back video from a variety of sources such as Netflix, Prime Video, Hotstar and others.
The Fire TV Stick, launched in India this year, comes with a 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. Chromecast comes with 512 MB of RAM and 256 MB of storage.
Most of the video apps on the Internet are already available for installation on the Amazon device. However, many of the Indian players are yet to join the platform. Hotstar, from Star India, for example, is not available for installation, while Netflix, Vimeo and Youtube are.
ALTBalaji offers a mix of free and paid content on its app.
The company said it hopes to reach a wider, global audience by going onboard the new platform.
“This helps expand the reach of Our Content to Smart TVs, which already Sees significant traction. This is in line with Our philosophy of providing Our Subscribers maximum options to catch our shows on the Screens of their preference,” said Nachiket Pantvaidya, CEO of ALT Digital Media Entertainment.
The production house, floated by director and producer Ekta Kapoor, claimed that the app has already crossed 3 million downloads.
The company is tapping into the phenomenon of ‘binge watching’, where the audience watches several episodes of a serial at one go, instead of watching one episode per day or week.
Most youngsters do not watch television serials one by one, but prefer to skip an entire season to watch all the episodes together over a single weekend.
The app claims to have 250 hours of original and exclusive content, including movies, kids and female-oriented shows.