streaming on S Anand

Rise of the Indian TV Series

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:25:25 +0800

If you look at the IMDb titles with a 9+ rating and 50K votes this decade, there are only 4 entries. Every single one of them is an Indian TV series.

Title	Votes	Rating
Aspirants	316,390	9.1
Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story	166,400	9.2
Sandeep Bhaiya	76,586	9.1
Sapne Vs Everyone	74,342	9.3

This is a new phenomenon. Last decade, there was only one Indian TV series in the same list: TVF Pitchers.

Title	Votes	Rating
Game of Thrones	2,464,912	9.2
Chernobyl	966,693	9.3
Attack on Titan	634,731	9.1
Planet Earth II	168,129	9.4
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey	135,242	9.2
TVF Pitchers	76,241	9.1
The Chosen	61,014	9.1
Our Planet	57,815	9.2
Blue Planet II	52,847	9.3

… and none ever before.

Four out of these five are by TFV: The Viral Fever, which seems to have cracked the code for high-quality TV series. They’re highly relatable to the digital natives, who are very IMDb rating-sensitive and the fans flock to rate them highly.

The growth of the Indian OTT market and high-speed Internet (the Jio effect) has also increased access dramatically. COVID lockdowns helped, too, I guess. Plus, these are available for free on YouTube - no HBO/Hotstar subscription required.

This is the decade of Indian TV series, clearly. (And I haven’t seen a single one!)

Streaming audio to iOS via VLC

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:50:59 +0000

You can play a song on your PC and listen to it on your iPhone / iPad – converting your PC into a radio station. As with most things VLC related, it’s tough to figure out but obvious in retrospect.

The first thing to do is set up the MIME type for the streaming. This is a bug that has been fixed, but might not have made it into your version of VLC.

Go to Tools – Preferences.

Click on “All” to see all the settings.

Under Stream output – Access output – HTTP, set Mime to audio/x-mpeg.

At this point, you should restart VLC.

As I mentioned earlier, you might not need to do this if you have new enough a version of VLC that auto-detects the content’s MIME type.

Re-open VLC, and go to the Media – Stream menu.

Click Add and choose the file you want to stream. Then click on Stream.

Click Next.

Select HTTP and click Add.

Select Audio – MP3 and click on Stream.

At this point, the audio is being streamed at port 8080 of your machine. You can change the port and path in the menu above. (To find your local IP address, open the Command Prompt and type ipconfig.)

Open Safari on your iPhone or iPad, and visit http://your-ip-address:8080/

I haven’t figured out the right codec and MIME type to do this for videos yet, but hopefully will figure it out soon.

Comments

Shibu 19 Sep 2014 10:12 am: You should try out any of the light weight DLNA servers….

Watch TV shows online

Thu, 04 May 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Watch TV shows online.

Download and burn songs on a CD

Fri, 02 Aug 2002 12:00:00 +0000

The music industry has taken a step away from the ridiculous. Now, on pressplay.com, you can download and burn songs on a CD for a fee. (The big deal is that, earlier, you could only stream and listen. For a fee.)

Hindi movies online

Sun, 02 Dec 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Watch Hindi movies online

Real Jukebox

Sun, 01 Jul 2001 12:00:00 +0000

I listen to radio on Real Jukebox’s Radio Tuner. They offer 2,500 channels, including business talk channels and western classical (my interests).