DigiVive Launches Live TV App nexGTv; How Good Is It

Gurgaon-based startup DigiVive has launched nexGTv, a mobile application that provides users with access to live TV channels and video-on-demand (VOD) service on their mobile phones. The free downloadable app is built for all primary mobile operating systems / platforms like Symbian, Android, Blackberry, iOS and it offers a range of national and regional channels that includes news, entertainment, devotional, music and movies.

The live TV channels available in the app include STAR TV bouquet, Aaj Tak, DD, India TV, CNEB, Fashion One, Aastha, NDTV 24X7, NDTV Profit, NDTV Goodtimes, among others while VOD offers BR Chopra's Mahabharat series, movies and short movies.

According to Rohit Sawhney, senior vice-president (Operations) at DigiVive, the app has already had close to a million downloads. "The product offers high quality Live TV and video viewing experience in both 2G and 3G networks. Some of its features include- consistent user experience across multiple device platforms, full screen viewing, On-Screen Controls, Picture in Picture mode and adaptive bit-rate streaming," added Sawhney.

The company was founded in 2010 and it provides technology and services in the managed value added services area covering mobile, digital and IPTV. The company's product offerings include nexGTv- Mobile TV; Vmotion- a video IVR solution; 3G Video Ad Call- a video Ad-RBT, 3G EYE- a video surveillance solution; Wapper- offers mobile Web and client application publishing and management solution to enterprises and media companies;  NUMEROvive- MSISDN Provisioning System; and Web & Mobile App Store Solutions.

Last we checked, the nexGTv app was offering a total of 55 channels plus a few specialised channels in genres like lifestyle, fashion, sports and devotional. Users can also choose to delete the channels they don't want to watch.

Other such apps and services offered on the mobile include YuppTV, Ditto TV, Airtel 3G Mobile TV, Reliance 3G Mobile TV and Tata DOCOMO's 3G Mobile TV, among others.

Although the app offers 'short movies', they are not actual short movies or documentaries for that matter(as we expected), rather they are condensed version of full length movies edited down to around 20-30 minutes. This makes sense as another format of watching a movie on the go but may not necessarily woo the movie buff looking for the whole package.

The app also has an integrated EPG TV guide that offers details of upcoming programs up to 7 days in advance (we checked today and program details till 19th of March were available). Users have the option of watching the channels in either normal or low quality, which means that users with low-speed Internet connections can switch to low quality and hence avoid buffering problems.

We also compared the nexGTv app with a normal TV and saw that there was a one minute delay in the broadcast of the channel (we tried it out with India TV, for no particular reason whatsoever) on the app in comparison to its TV broadcast.