Updated at April 3, 2020:
Disney has officially launched Disney+ Hotstar in India with Disney+ Originals and other exclusive movies, TV Shows and documentaries.
Updated at March 21, 2020:
Disney has paused the rollout of its premium streaming service Disney+ Hotstar in India. The reason, well the company want to launch the full-fledged service in India along with Indian Premier League cricket 2020 season. But due to the coronavirus outbreak, IPL 2020 has been postponed, thus the streaming service launch to getting postponed.
“We recently announced that Disney+ would launch in India through the Hotstar service in conjunction with the beginning of the Indian Premier League cricket season. Given the delay of the season, we have decided to briefly pause the roll-out of Disney+ and will announce a new revised premiere date for the service soon,” said Uday Shankar, President of The Walt Disney Company APAC and Chairman of Star & Disney India, in a statement.
Disney has yet to announce a revised launch date for it’s streaming service in India. We could expect an official launch date would be nearer to the announcement of IPL 2020.
Our original story from Thursday, April 2, 2020, follows:
Your wait to get hands-on the super exclusive collection of TV Shows, Movies and documentaries from Disney end today. Disney+ the on-demand video streaming service has finally launched in India. You would be happy to know that the Indian launch is a week ahead of its original schedule of March 29th. The company has revamped Hotstar to Disney+ Hotstar and included with it is the Disney+ original catalogue.
If you’re confused, Disney owns Star India and all of its properties including Hotstar, which it acquired from Fox last year. Hotstar App (both Android and iOS) and website have been updated to reflect the new title Disney+ Hotstar. If you’ve recently updated the app, you could see the difference by the new logo and colour scheme. There is now a new section in the app which bundles all Disney+ original catalogue.
All most entire collection of Disney+ original catalogue is available on Hotstar. This includes The Mandalorian, Disney Family Sundays, High School Musical, Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings, Encore, Marvel’s Hero Project and much more. Additionally, you also get access to the entire collection from Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic documentaries. Don’t forget the massive collection of Disney cartoons like DuckTales, Mickey Mouse, Hercules, Lion King, Tarzan etc.
How much it cost?
Ready to watch? Disney+ originals are currently available at no additional charge to all existing Hotstar Premium subscribers. So, if you’re new to Hotstar, then Premium subscription would cost Rs 999 for the entire year. This plan also includes the latest American TV shows (like Game of Thrones), Hollywood/Indian movies and live sports.
There is also a Hotstar VIP paid subscription plan priced at Rs 395 and mainly focused on live sports (IPL cricket and other sports). This membership also includes a few of Disney+ original catalogue like the Lion King, Jungle Book and most of the Marvel Movies.
Do note that currently, you could only stream most of this videos in full-HD (1080P) resolution. Hotstar is yet to add support for native 4K (UHD) resolution videos in its App.