Reliance announced Jio TV+ at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2020 on Wednesday. Jio TV+ is a content aggregator that brings Over the top (OTT) platforms, TV channels, various apps, and services together to its Jio set-top-box users.
During the event Reliance’s Aakash Ambani demonstrated the Jio TV+ User Interface (UI) brings together 12 leading global OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Hotstar, Sony LIV, and many more as the customers will be able to search for shows and movies easily.
One of the main features of Jio TV+ is that it requires a single login instead of logging in different apps separately. The voice search is much like Amazon Firestick’s Alexa. Jio mentioned that users can access various online apps from different genres from the Jio App Store on the set-top-box. “Through the Jio Developers program, any app developer can develop, launch, and monetize their apps.
Akash also talked about Jio TV+’s unique interactive features. One of the examples is that the users will be able to participate in a poll or vote for their favorite contestants in reality shows. Furthermore, the realtime comparison of the votes in favor and the percentage will be displayed on the screen.
Along with Jio TV+, Reliance also launched its latest innovation Jio Glass. “The Jio Glass is at the cutting edge of technology that provides best-in-class Mixed Reality services to give users a truly meaningful immersive experience,” Kiran Thomas at the event.
JioTV+ is Not the JioTV App We Know
While internet service providers Airtel and ACT Fibernet have partnered with OTT content providers to offer bundled broadband plans, Reliance Jio has taken a different approach. Airtel Xstream Fibre plans, for example, Amazon Prime membership and Zee5 premium membership with broadband plans starting at Rs 999.
Reliance JioFiber will allow customers to view the content directly from the STB via the JioTV+ app. It combines content from different apps to give access to varied content from several platforms. The JioTV+ application is similar to PatchWall UI on Xiaomi Smart TVs or Oxygen Play on the OnePlus TV Q1 series
Hotstar, ZEE5, and Other Platforms Offer Live TV Channels
The JioTV+ combines content from Hotstar, Voot, ZEE5, SonyLIV, and SunNXT apps. The Hotstar channels on the app include Star Utsav, Star Gold, Star Plus, Star Sports HD, Fox News, Sky News, ABP News, Aaj Tak HD, India Today among others. The JioTV+ exclusive VOOT channels include Comedy Central HD, History TV 18HD, Nick HD+, Colors HD, M TV HD Plus, MTV Beats HD, Colors Rishtey, CNBC TV18 Prime HD, CNBC TV18 SD and CNBC Awaaz (Hindi) (Full Screen). There is an exclusive Jio Bollywood Premium HD for the latest Indian cinema movies.
And the ZEE5, SunNXT, and SonyLIV apps also offer Live TV channels to the users, as we have seen it on our Jio 4K Set-Top Box. Our Jio STB is running on Android TV 7.0 platform which is dated right now, but the company is expected to roll out Android TV 9 Pie update very soon to the existing users.
Reliance also plans to announce new partnerships with OTT content service providers in the near future.