With Videos-On-Demand, Bollywood Meets Web 2.0

In many ways the films of Bollywood, South Asia's prolific film industry, are tailor-made for the Web: They're instantly digestible, they're lavishly eye-catching, and they come in an unending stream of around 1,000 movies a year. Plus, the huge expat Indian community of some 25 million worldwide offers a sizable potential market.

So it makes perfect sense that Bollywood.tv is using next-generation caching and content-delivery technology to bring its vast collection of South Asian spectacles to online subscribers around the world.

Based in London and owned by Australian investment firm Charter Pacific Corp., Bollywood.tv was founded in 2005. It has amassed a catalog of 1,900 contemporary and classic Bollywood movies in languages including Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, and Bengali. The site charges $3.99 and up to watch full-length movies and has a monthly subscription offering as well.

Along with third-party providers like Bollywood.tv, big Bollywood studios are getting into the online act as well. Last year two of the largest Indian film factories, Rajshri Group and Eros Entertainment, began making their movies available via download to fans across the Web. Several recent South Asian blockbusters have been released simultaneously in theaters and on the Web. Read More>>