Bangalore to have 25 movie kiosks
BANGALORE, NOV. 2. Video libraries could become obsolete in Bangalore soon. By March next year, the city will have 25 kiosks from where you could download a hi-resolution MP4-quality movie, a cartoon animation film or even a cricket match for a stipulated number of views or days. Download your choice onto an SIM-enabled device and watch at leisure; this is the mantra of the unique concept.
A kiosk is on display at Bangalore IT.Com. It is packed with 1,000 movies from Hollywood and Bollywood and those in a host of Indian languages other than Hindi, music, mythological serials and sports events. But for the kiosk to be of use to you, you should have the iVu, a portable hard disk drive (HDD), video and MP3 player. You could connect the device to a television set, stereo, home theatre system or any other media device and watch the programme at leisure. The SIM-enabled device functions like your mobile phone, in a way. The downloading charge (about Rs. 135 to Rs. 150 a movie) will be deducted depending upon whether you have a pre-paid or post-paid card.
DVS Inc., the company behind the concept, is now trying to strike revenue-sharing deals with content providers, mainly movie producers. "The producers will get real-time information on the number of downloads from a particular kiosk, wherever the kiosk is located. It is a fully transparent process which will curb the problem of copying and video piracy," DVS Electronics vice-president, Alokeshwar Sen, told The Hindu .
The company has identified 25 residential and other locations across Bangalore to install the kiosks. "We are planning 25 kiosks each in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, 50 each in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata and 15 each in Ahmedabad, Pune, Kochi and Chandigarh," Mr. Sen said.
If you can afford a HDD device (the price, now Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 30,000, is expected to crash with rising volumes), kiosks will be the best way to avoid problems often related to VCD libraries: bad quality pirated VCDs, Chinese/Japanese subtitles covering a big portion of the screen, late-return charges and more. The device takes care of the piracy problem by supporting the Digital Rights Management (DRM) content.
Here are the other features of the portable storage HDD "iVu": it can play and store movies, music videos, MP3s, games, photos, recorded TV programmes or home videos; has a large high-resolution LCD screen; an internal 20 GB HDD that can be connected and mounted on a PC as an additional hard disk; supports the video formats of MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 and DivX, audio formats of MP3 and WAV and image formats of JPEG, BMP and GIF. The resolution? "Up to 720 X 480 (D1) @ 30 f/s."
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