NFDC forays into online movie streaming with Cinemasofindia.com

National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) of India has ventured into the online movie streaming space with the launch of Cinemasofindia.com. The site offers films in three categories- free, videos on demand (on subscription basis) and pay-per-view (PPV) films.

The website currently offers only 50 movies and that too all dated titles that are almost a decade old (if not more). Some of the titles we found on the site were Godam, Ek Doctor Ki Maut, Ek Din Achanak, Stri, Kali Salwaar, and Diksha, among others. Users can filter movies by genre, language, awards & festivals, and director. In terms of paid subscriptions, there are a number of options available to the users that include $9 (Rs 587) for a week, $12 (Rs 783) for a month, and $19 (Rs 1,240) for a PPV package, etc.

The UX is pretty intuitive and works well on Wi-Fi. There is one interesting feature called 'lights off', which dims the background screen and lets the user watch the movie without distractions. Note that NFDC is a government cultural body that supports and promotes Indian films made in various regional languages on various platforms, so probably we can rule out availability of mainstream movies like Yeh Jawaani Hain Deewani, etc., on the platform going forward.

Other players that offer online movie streaming include BoxTV, ErosNow, BigFlix, Hungama, Spuul and Youtube. Recently, Bigflix.com rolled out a new feature that enables its subscribers to download movies and watch them offline at no additional cost. A similar service is offered by Eros Now as well. However, the movies currently offered by NFDC are not available on any of these sites.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)