World cinema aficionados across India and the SAARC territories now have a chance to experience and enjoy true cinematic delights at their leisure! This October, NDTV Lumière goes ONLINE with India’s largest Indian entertainment portal, www.bigflix.com. Thirty titles from NDTV Lumiere’s extensive acquisition list will be available on the site on a yearly basis at a price of $1.99 per download to rent and $4.49 per download to own.

World cinema enthusiasts can now choose from a wide range of highly acclaimed films that NDTV Lumière will offer on BIGFlix.com. Viewers can choose to watch films through real-time internet streaming and can alternatively download movies on their personal computers and watch it as many times as they wish for a period of 7 days. This service will be made available across the SAARC Territories, which comprises India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Maldives.

Announcing the association with BIGFlix.com, Mr. Dhruvank Vaidya, Senior Vice President - New Ventures, NDTV Imagine, said “This initiative encompasses NDTV Lumière’s objective to take the 360 degree approach in order to ensure that the best of world cinema is accessible by audiences. After the launch of the channel and the ongoing success of theatrical releases and home videos, this association with Bigflix.com is another step in our journey to present these wonderful films to audiences not just in India but also across the SAARC region.”

Also commenting on this occasion, Mr. Murtuza Kagalwala, Business Head, Video-on-Demand (Movie Downloads), “We currently have access to 1500 titles and are looking at aggressively adding world class and rich content to our already existing world cinema titles. World cinema, today, is the one of the most popular movie category, and recently, has seen an upward trend in demand amongst diverse audience across the globe. Our partnership with NDTV Lumiere will allow us to offer our audience an access to critically acclaimed and crème de la crème titles across international languages at just a click away.”

The association with BIGFlix.com kicks off with the release of Mika Kaurismäki’s film library. Viewers can watch Mika Kaurismäki’s fast-paced comic thriller Helsinki Naples All Night Long and Kaurismaki’s first English movie Amazon released in the year 1990. The winner of the Best Fiction Award at the 1984 Tampere International Short Film Festival Jackpot 2, a shot sci-fi movie and the unconventional romance with its underlying dark and violent themes Rosso will now be available just a click away. The 2008 released Sonic Mirror stars jazz heavyweight Bill Cobham and confirms Mika Kaurismäki’s reputation as a universally compelling storyteller, whereas, the dysfunctional Zombie from Zombie And The Ghost Train was an instant success with the audiences and went on to add another feather in Kaurismäki’s hat. Finally, The Worthless was a movie dedicated to the Finnish people with an insider’s view into Finland. All these timeless classics earned Kaurismaki great success and critical acclaim, and won him several Jussi Awards (Finland’s most prestigious film award).

Movie buffs in the SAARC territories can now pick and choose superior quality world cinema from the NDTV Lumière titles available for online streaming and swift download. Log on to www.bigflix.com to access world cinema at the click of your mouse.

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BIGFlix.com - Digital Entertainment at your Convenience

With the concept of ‘the living room multiplex’ catching on in India, the home video market is all set to see a boom with more players entering this market segment to woo its consumers by making cinema accessible like never before. Besides offering innovative, convenient and cost-effective entertainment solutions to the Indian consumers, the key players are going the whole hog to tap the estimated 25 million strong non-resident Indian population and an equally large non-Indian audience consuming Indian movies, TV shows, music and more on a regular basis. With the home video segment accounting for nearly 50% of the filmed entertainment business in the developed markets like US, Canada and UK who constitute over 70% of total global online movie revenues, the digital entertainment business through its video-on-demand services is witnessing a new horizon in its growth path.

About Reliance ADA Group

Among India's top three private sector business houses, with a market capitalization of over Rs. 160,000 crore (US$ 40 billion), net worth to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore (US$ 10 billion), Turnover of about Rs. 30,000 crore (US 7.5 bn) and Net profit of Rs. 5,200 crore (US 1.3 bn).

The group has a customer base of over 50 million, the largest in India, and a shareholder base of over 8 million, among the largest in the world. Through its products and services, the Reliance - ADA Group touches the life of 1 in 10 Indians every single day. The business presence of the Group extends to over 6,000 towns and 300,000 villages in India, and 5 continents across the world. The interests of the Group range in Communications, Financial services & Insurance, Generation, Transmission and Distribution of power, Natural Resource & Energy, Media & Entertainment & Infrastructure Services.

About bigflix.com

To garner the opportunity galore in the digital entertainment space, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, (ADA Group) has launched yet another ambitious venture – bigflix.com – offering the biggest, widest library of films, music and Indian entertainment content ranging from Hindi, English to Vernacular that will be available through its broadband services at attractive prices by providing premium quality entertainment at par with international standard benchmarks.

With the aim to reach out to Indians of all age groups the world over, as the one entertainment hub to provide cutting-edge, world class digital content from the world of movies, TV serials and music, bigflix.com will provide a legitimate access to biggest range of Indian entertainment spanning across languages and genres available for download to own and streaming at affordable price points.

BIGFlix is India’s largest online and offline movie rental service, offering access to over 15000 titles in its rental division (www.rentals.bigflicks.com) and more than 1000 titles in its broadband division (www.broadband.bigflix.com). The company is adding content aggressively and plans to have an addition of another 1000 titles in its broadband division soon. BIGFlix offers the biggest range of premium quality Indian entertainment spanning across 15 languages in India. BIGFlix currently has 50 state-of-art stores in 10 cities namely, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Indore, Kolkata and Chennai. The company expects the store tally to touch 200 by end of this fiscal with RWorld stores bringing in the support with 75- 100 BIGFlix stores in shop-in-shop format and franchise route in minimum 10 cities across the country.

Highlights of BIGFlix

· One membership works all over India, so one can use the membership online at www.bigflix.com and across all BIGFlix stores in India

· Watch unlimited movies

· Access to vast Indian and international content

· Order movies from our BIGFlix store, at our website and via phone

· Free delivery and pick up of movies at your doorstep

· No due dates

· No late fees

· Get unlimited movies throughout the month of your subscription plan

· Upgrade or downgrade the plan as per your needs

· Pause and resume membership anytime

Genres @ bigflix.com

- Besides Hindi and English, the website will be one-of-its kind to offer a variety of regional content in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi across multiple movie genres of all eras – from old to the latest

- Downloads of TV content and music

International technological alliances @ bigflix.com

- To maximize the users’ experience and save on their time and bandwidth, bigflix.com has partnered with Entriq, a company which provides content protection service through Digital Rights Management (DRM), issues end licenses on downloadable content and provides access control to prevent misuse of content. The content serving platform of Entriq is a download manager platform which allows the user to download movies from the bigflix.com. The innovative progressive downloading feature of this application allows users to download and watch movies at the same time. 10 minutes into the downloading process, a user can start watching movies while the download progresses.

- Appointed Limelight Networks, the world’s leading content delivery network for digital media, as the exclusive provider of streaming content delivery services for bigflix.com that will enable the site to deliver its vast library of full length Indian movies, music videos, TV shows, documentaries, and other premium video content via the Internet to a global audience

Distribution @ bigflix.com

Three modes of distribution:

o The online movie download service for the NRI and PIO market enabling users to download or stream Indian entertainment content via the internet

o The online mail order service for the Indian market, providing users with the ability to enjoy the conveniences of premium quality movie entertainment from the comfort of their homes

o Physical presence of the brand in the form of its retail stores to enable users to experience and access movie entertainment of their choice.

- Two models of online movie downloads:

o In the streaming model, the content (including films/songs) is available for free viewing. A user with a fast broadband connection can view them instantly

o The other is download to own model where downloads are available for a fee of anywhere between $2and $10

Differentiating Features @ bigflix.com

- The quality of titles downloaded from or streamed on bigflix.com is of a much superior quality and higher definition to ensure complete customer satisfaction of the product delivered

o Download at bit rates of 1500 kbps, which is higher than even most of the international benchmark sites as well and

o Offers free streaming content at a speed of 800 kbps as compared to its closest Indian competitors who offer streaming at just 512 kbps

- Buy and rent video legally allowed on three PCs

o Users can watch a movie on one PC and make copies on three other PCs , Burn movies to DVD and one can also with the right equipment may connect your PC to your TV.

- Despite the high cost of offering downloads at 1.5 mbps, Bigflix.com still prices its titles for as low as $2 up to $10

- Very soon the downloaded content could be transferred into mobile or an iPod besides offering premium quality DVD content without the retailer and wholesaler margins at a competitive price

- Bigflix.com downloadable content can be viewed in as soon as 10 minutes. The file to be downloaded can be chosen and watched at one’s convenience, on a device best suited to his/her purpose

Bigflix.com seeks to expand its business beyond the Indian diaspora by offering its subscribers, especially in North America, UK, Canada, Middle East, South East Asia, Europe, and Australia, with a vast, ever-expanding library of quality video entertainment content with the aim to become the ultimate destination for every entertainment-yearning Indian across the world.