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Android Businesses Technology

MX Player, a Video App Used By More Than 175 Million Users, Debuts OTT Service. Android Enthusiasts Express Concern. (venturebeat.com) 54

MX Player, a video app which has been downloaded more than 500 million times across the globe, kickstarted its OTT (online video streaming) service in India, one of its largest markets, this week. MX Player, which is popular worldwide, has earned a loyal user base over the years for being the app that can run any video file you throw at it, even if your smartphone, tablet, or Android TV box doesn't have high-end specs or updated software. It was acquired by Times Internet, an India-based conglomerate this June, and now the big giant is beginning to show what it intends to do with the app. From a report: [...] All of these titles, including those produced by Times Internet, are now available to MX Player users in India at no charge, Karan Bedi, CEO of MX Player, told VentureBeat in an interview. Like most of Times Internet's properties, which include several TV channels and newspapers, MX Player will count on ads to generate revenue. Betting on ad-driven business model, a popular path in developing markets, could help MX Player quickly convince its existing user base to give the streaming offerings a try as it begins to compete in the Indian market. Star India's ad-supported service Hotstar, which offers about 80 percent of its catalog to customers for free, currently leads the video streaming market in the country.

Going forward, Bedi said, the company remains committed to making investments in what made MX Player so popular among customers: The ability to play a plethora of video files on low-end devices. The company won't be bringing its new streaming offerings to the paid version of the MX Player app, MX Pro, he said. Additionally, MX Player's streaming offerings are limited to India, one of its largest markets, for now, although Bedi said the company is working on the right content catalog for other regions.
Over at Android sub-reddit, where this story has been discussed, dozens of users expressed their concerns on the direction MX Player appears to be headed.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

MX Player, a Video App Used By More Than 175 Million Users, Debuts OTT Service. Android Enthusiasts Express Concern.

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    The IP in the player and its abilities are a big deal for Times Internet and probably why they bought them. Over half of R&D efforts are toward getting a consistent streaming experience across platforms (and working around Apple's insanely bad protocols you are forced to utilize).

  • WTF is OTT? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Sunday September 30, 2018 @12:56PM (#57399654)

    If you're going to use obscure acronyms, at least spell them out once. I get tired of articles where I have to make 10 trips to Google just to translate them to something resembling English. Even those of us who are tech savvy cant keep up with all the latest shorthand.

  • by slacka ( 713188 ) on Sunday September 30, 2018 @01:04PM (#57399674)

    With VLC, I've been able to play any video file you throw at it, even if your smartphone, tablet, or Android TV box doesn't have high-end specs or updated software. VLC is open source so i trust it and it doesn't display any ads.

    Has anyone here actually used MX? Sounds like a downgrade to me.

    • Before VLC for Android, MX was my main video app.

    • The last time I went to download VLC for Android, there was no Official App and tons of traffic cone ripoffs. How am I to tell which is which?
    • I'm still... evaluating, yeah, that's it... i'm evaluating the free version. It plays ads in between filenames when you're browsing files to play, which is insanely annoying - one slip of the finger and suddenly you're installing some stupid casino cash-vacuum-cleaner, which is why i only use it with wifi, bluetooth and mobile data turned off, inside a faraday cage. The ads don't show up then.

      It does play any media file I've thrown at it so far, and handles subtitles well; I'm wondering how badly it would r

    • I currently use both VLC and MX. It used to be that MX was the best way to play MPEG2 on Android. Then they removed support for that. I swear, licensing is the root of all evil.

      Anyway, VLC mostly supports MPEG2 now, but it still can't play 1080i MPEG2 on my Kindle Fire. However, as MX keeps getting worse - they've added noisy video ads recently - and VLC keeps getting better, I'll probably drop MX soon.

    • by Moskit ( 32486 )

      Have you actually used MX Player?
      While VLC has huge support for technical things (formats etc), MX Player has better handling (UI and "experience") on Android, it was also much earlier than VLC. Think of MX Player as "VLC for Android".
      Ads are displayed with free version, you can purchase an unlocked version that doesn't show them. It's one of the applications I find worth paying for (value for money).

      Change of direction is a valid concern.

    • I've used both and I'm a big fan of VLC and recommend it to people. That being said I use mpv on Linux and Windows because it's good and minimal which is similar to MXplayer. I seem to remember VLC playing certain videos badly and MXplayer played it smooth so I bought it with my free google play credit. MXplayer is minimal with no bullshit (yet) and easy to use. That being said, I haven't really used it in a year or two as I don't really watch videos on my phone anymore. I'm obviously not happy about this n

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday September 30, 2018 @01:06PM (#57399680) Journal
    Well if dozens of people on a blog are concerned, who am I not to be?
    • News at 11 ~ Reddit users are bitching about something again!

      • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )

        Hey stop type casting reddit users :) while some sub reddits are certainly not nice places to be for most people, others are actually quite helpful and informative. I guess it is the same as whith Slashdot or any other community,some bad users some good ones >90% neutral, I try not to be in the first group

  • I guess it really shows were /. is headed nowadays when the forum users are worse than some AOL group user in their ability to use the internet.
    OTT is a well established concept ever since netflix came along. And for all the others who hear this the first time, they can use google.
    The first entry I get in my localized google version is a special wikipedia link since basically google itself tells me the definition. However it's in pretty much any wikipedia version, including the international one: https://en [wikipedia.org]

  • I've been using VLC for years. It's never failed me.

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