Google is showing all kinds of love to India these days. After bringing e-Books and Nexus 7 to Google Play for the Indian market, Google has now brought Movie rentals and downloads to the country.
The feature, which went live earlier today, allows Indian Android users to rent English as well as Hindi movies via Google Play. They can also purchase select movies directly from the store for which the discs have been released in the retail market.
The collection seems decent for the English movies, but we could not find many Hindi movies and just spotted a few from YashRaj. We hope Google India is in active talks with Indian production houses to get the required rights to make more Hindi movies available in Google Play.
With the launch of both e-Books and Movies in Google Play; only Music, Magazines and TV shows are now left to arrive. We are not sure if Google will indeed be bringing TV Shows to India, but at the current pace, we surely expect Music to hit Google Play India soon.
Google had suddenly changed the whole content ecosystem for Android users in India. Earlier, Android users in the country had access to apps only and now they can both download e-Books and Movies and consume them across the devices.
How is the pricing?
There are several local video and movie streaming services currently operating in the country, but we think only Apple iTunes will be the real competitor to Google Play content as both are directly integrated in mobile devices. We checked the prices for select movies on both Google Play Movies and Apple iTunes Movies and pricing is very similar in both stores.
For movie renting, you will need to pay starting INR 75 for SD quality and starting INR 120 for HD.
For movie purchases, the pricing has no clear trend, but the lowest prices seem to be around INR 180 for SD and INR 490 for HD.
To get movies on your Android devices, you will first need to download Google Play Movies app from Google Play and then normally buy or rent movies from Google Play and they will immediately appear on your Android phone or tablet.
Movies on Google Play| Thanks Anuj, Ajay, Punit, Dinesh and everyone else who sent this in
all these services wont work out here in India.
its highly stupid to even think abt all this.
i hope google not judge indian consumers on basis of this !!
What do you mean by “they will immediately appear on your Android phone or tablet.”? Doesn’t the whole file have to be downloaded? Even over a 3G connection, the whole process will be so slow.
@Mahesh Unless you pin a movie, Google does not download the whole movie file to your tablet/ phone.
This is for rented movies, but in case of bought movies, I guess it will download the full file first..
Gaurav,
Only if you want it. Otherwise you can stream the movie without downloading it to your local device.
@Venu
Yes, I know..
I wanted all the services before, but now I am not sure whether i can make use of them. take movies for example, am I not sure how many us in India can afford to buy a movie for around 450 INR (going to theatre is still cheaper) plus even if you buy then I am not sure we have such affordable 3G data plans to download and watch them..