Disney to shutdown Hotstar in US

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Disney Is Shutting Down This Streaming Service by the End of the Year

Switching from traditional cable to streaming services has revolutionized the way we consume TV and movies. The boom in viewership has even brought a wave of new services along with it that make it easier than ever to have access to the kind of content you're looking for. But just like...

news.yahoo.com

As I'm sure most here are familiar with, Disney has announced they are shutting Hotstar down by the end of this year. Hotstar is generally an Indian programming package streamed online in the US. It also has the streaming rights to the IPL (Indian Premier League... Cricket... that game with the flat bats and running between two 'bases'). The announcement indicated that the IPL will shift to ESPN+, which will join Cricket broadcasting of the Windies (West Indies... those islands in the Caribbean Sea) Test matches (maybe ODI and T20, I'm not going into it, as well).

IPL is a huge deal in the T20 cricket world, so that is a big plus for ESPN+, for thousands of American cricket fans. Presumably the finish of this season which was postponed during the Covid spike in the spring/summer in India, will still air on Hotstar.

 

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There is a screen when launching Willow that indicates the IPL will be streaming on Willow. I'm not certain what the deal is here. Willow has the broadcast TV rights to the IPL.

Saw that ESPN+ has the T20 World Cup, so I may just have to snag it.

 

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Man, ESPN+ just has such better video quality. The IPL on it (Dehli v Mumbai) looks impressive while Willow is very good but clearly not as good. Sometimes it is a little jagged but the detail is wow.