To enjoy on Netflix TV, at least Rs 199 has to be paid every month.
If you like nostalgia, then you will remember the era of Doordarshan. How signals were caught by fixing its antenna. TVs with antennas almost disappeared, and then came the era of cable TV, followed by cable, direct-to-home (dish) and now OTT platforms. OTT apps like Netflix, Prime Video and Jio Cinema are now becoming people’s choice for entertainment. But have you ever calculated the budget of OTT platforms? Have you ever calculated how it has robbed your pocket.
Let’s start with cable, even today in all the small towns of India, people depend on cable connection for home entertainment. The number of subscribers taking service from the country’s top-15 cable operators is about 50 million, while if Direct-2-Home subscribers are also added to it, then about 120 million customers use cable or D2H.
Cable and Dish Cost
Generally, the cable operator in the market charges an average monthly subscription charge of Rs 300 to 400 for each setup box connection. On the other hand, the monthly subscription plan of D2H operators also comes up to Rs 400 per connection on an average. Thus, the monthly expenditure on home entertainment for the whole family from cable and D2H of a typical Indian market is a maximum of Rs.500 per month.
Thus, in both the cases, the annual home entertainment expenditure of a typical Indian family is Rs.6,000. Now let’s take a look at OTT platforms and their subscription plans as well.
OTT platform is an expensive deal
Let’s start with the most popular OTT platform Netflix. To enjoy Netflix on TV, you have to pay at least Rs 199 per month. According to this, your annual expenditure only on Netflix will come to around Rs.2400. Now let’s add the subscription of some more popular OTT platforms to this.
The annual subscription of Prive Video is Rs 1499, Disney+Hotstar Rs 1499, SonyLIV Rs 999 and Zee5 Rs 999. In this way, even if a person keeps another OTT subscription with Netflix, his expenditure will be Rs 4,000 in a year.
Cable more profitable or OTT
If you look at the simple calculation method, then cable will look more beneficial than OTT for entertainment. The reason for this is that on Cable TV or Dish TV, you will not only get serials or movies, but you will get bouquet of news, sports and regional channels at one place. Whereas for each type of content on OTT, you have to take separate subscriptions and generally people either take more than 2 OTT subscriptions themselves or share them with friends.
Source: www.tv9hindi.com”