Content raj has come to Indian TV market

08th August 2016
Content raj  has come to Indian TV market
Atul Jain, COO, Smart Electronics Business at Le Eco India unveils the company's TV range

 Phone makers  disrupt Indian  TV market with   compelling combo of content and   smart screen
By Anand Parthasarathy
New Delhi, August 6 2016: Yes, Godzilla got it right. Size does matter.  Indian TV buyers are telling us, bigger is better  - and think nothing of  exploiting seasonal discount sales  to snap up  the largest model they can afford on hire purchase. They  can barely achieve the  minimum safe viewing  distance, in cramped flats,  but who cares. Bada TV hai na!|
Interestingly,  the biggest innovations in television impacting the Indian  customer come from  companies  who are  also smart phone makers.   They have learnt  what sells  handsets -- not just specifications  which are more or less identical from  many makers, but  the content:   new user interfaces,  access to customized content, pre loaded entertainment apps...
|They have learnt their lessons - and are scaling up their screens, from a 6-inch phone to a 60-inch TV set  ( and often, both are Dolby DTS  sound and  full High Definition or even Ultra HD).
Last week  two China-based players  both  with  smart phone offerings in India entered the television arena here,  with products which  look set to disrupt the market with their aggressive pricing -- even before we begin to consider  what they bring to the technology.
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See accompanying story about TCL
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 Le Eco which in its earlier avatar, LeTV,  was one of the biggest content providers for television in China, has smartly  (pun intended), entered the TV market here  with a trio of sets  at the big -screen end of the  smart TV spectrum,  with a canny combo of  carefully curated  desi and international content thrown in --   live shows, movies, sports and music.   By tying up with  content biggies -- Hungama, Yupp TV , Eros  and the like -- they are able with little effort of their own to offer a platter of   2000 HD movies,  over 3 million songs and 100 satellite TV channels  as a package deal with  each TV  model.   If the first generation of television was all about one-side broadcasting and the second was a platform  for  offer multiple  channels, Generation 3.0 is  a big screen that is  Internet -connected to an entire ecosystem of  global infotainment  options. The Connected Smart TV is here. You can control the screen by voice or gesture. You can  change channels by waving  the  remote --or  using your mobile phone instead.  And you can store your favourite programming in your own 5 terabyte cloud , and share clips or music  much s you now do with Whatsapp. What I saw in Delhi three days ago at the LeEco showcase  was a seamless merger of  TV, mobile and Internet  where every viewer  in a family can create his or own   personalised version of TV content -- and control what do do with it.
Specwise, LeEco  has chosen to address the top end of the TV market: their three launches in India are:    the top of the line 65-inch 3D  UHD  TV,  the Super3 Max 65;  the  65 inch  ultra HD   Super 3 X65  and the 55inch  UHD Super 3 X55.. all three are so called '4k' displays, all are WiFi enabled  and Android 5.0 driven.  I   was tickled to see  TVs rated like PCs: " 3GB RAM, 16 GB  Flash storage".. this is PC-TV sangam  in action .  The Max 65 is priced at  Rs 1,49,790 which is about half what competing  65 inch 3D sets cost. The X 65 costs Rs 99, 790  and theX55 is Rs 55, 790,  all aggressively priced in their   categories.  Their  common USP is the access to all that content which is valued at around Rs 5000/ year  and comes free for two years. 
Content Raj   has come to Indian TVs.