Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani at the the 45th Annual General Meeting said that digital is a core and fast-growing theme for the company's media business as it prepares to embrace the 5G revolution. "Our partnership with Bodhi Tree, James Murdoch, Uday Shankar and Paramount Global will help Viacom18 with additional talent bandwidth and enable us to create a world-class Media & Entertainment business," he said.
The group's entertainment arm Viacom18 is looking to aggressively invest in movie rights and original content for its OTT platform. He said Viacom18 has made a high-decibel entry into sports by bagging the digital rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the next five years.
IPL telecast to get a digital makeover
It may be recalled that last June, Viacom18 snapped the IPL streaming rights in an intense auction. Viacom18 walked away with the digital rights for Rs 20,500 crore.
And Viacom18 wants to make a major splash in the telecast in its debut season through streaming that will be distinctly different from typical broadcast experience. Akash Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm gave details of how the roll out of 5G services will make the IPL broadcast interactive.
IPL telecast on OTT in the coming season will have multiple video streams and viewers can choose which camera angle they want to watch the match. Streaming will be done in 4K or ultra-high-definition. So far, sports broadcasting and streaming have been done on Standard Definition and High-Definition.
"The big difference you can see is that because of Giga-bit speeds of JioAirFiber, we can now deliver not just one video stream, but multiple video streams, showing multiple camera angles at the same time, and that too in ultra-high denition," Akash Ambani said. This means viewers can dynamically choose which camera angle they want to focus on, while still having a preview of other video streams. "This makes every game truly immersive, even better than the real-match experience, as well as personalised to suit preferences of each and every viewer." JioAirFiber is the company's wireless, single-device Wi-Fi 5G hotspot in a home.
And that's not all. Akash added: "You can even have a watch party with your friends through live video calls, no matter where they are in India, almost as if you are watching a match sitting together in a stadium. With JioAirFiber's ultra-low latency, things like multi-player and cloud gaming work even better on large-screens in your home."
