Upcoming JioHomeTV streaming-service to offer HD channel at Rs. 400
As reported by TelecomTalk, Reliance Jio is working on a streaming service called JioHomeTV. Under this, the company will offer SD channels at Rs. 200 and SD+HD channels at Rs. 400. JioHomeTV will work on Jio LTE-Broadcast devices and users won't have to have an active internet connection to avail it. The service has completed its test run and is expected to launch in a few weeks.
Earlier, Reliance Jio had a mobile application called JioBroadcast on the Google Play Store, which offered HD-quality streaming on Jio LTE-Broadcast test devices. According to reports, the company is now rebranding the same in the form of JioHomeTV and making it live for all users. Notably, the JioBroadcast app has since been taken down from the Google Play Store.
Earlier Reliance Jio was in talks to venture into the DTH set-top boxes and wired network services. The service was also in the phase of being planned so it shouldn't be confused with the JioHomeTV. There is no news of Jio DTH launching anytime soon.
Reliance Jio has been most probably testing this service on the eMBMS (Enhanced Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) broadcast stream across India over the last few years. eMBMS is a hybrid technology which combines the one-to-many broadcasting architecture of TV channels and FM radios with the one-to-one broadcasting architecture of telecom service providers. This improves the scalability of the two spectrums.
With one-way communication, TV and radio channels can cater to lakhs of users at once, but with two-way communication, telecom towers are able to take up only 100-200 users on the spectrum at any given time. With eMBMS, this gap in scalability can be bridged.
