8 Domectic Alternatives To Netflix

While the video streaming facility Netflix made a huge splash abroad, its time in India has made less of an impact than expected. It isn’t that the service is not popular, however the lack of local content means that many users have turned to Indian alternatives. Here are some streaming sites that have been rivaling Netflix.

BIGFlix

Launched by Reliance when Netflix first entered the Indian market, BIGFlix offers a range of Indian origin content from a variety of languages. Users of the app can watch clips to earn BIGFlix coins, which can be used to then watch movies of your choice. However the movie will only be available for 24 hours after you pay for it. Thus creating a bit of a BIGFix!

Spuul

Another such server, Spuul also offers content that is produced in India. Users can choose from not only Bollywood content but also regional language movies that are generally less than 60MB. Using PayPal or online credit and debit cards, you can use Spuul to watch a movie as it downloads in the background.

Hotstar

Created by Star TV, Hotstar currently offers only content that belongs to Star. With a wide selection of old and new movies, TV shows and even sports events, this service is a strong rival to Netflix. Those who subscribe to the premium version can even watch the latest of popular American shows and movies.

BoxTV

The BoxTV app is another source for users to download TV shows and movies from a variety of regional languages and English too. This service is accessible through email and must be linked to your Facebook account.

Wynk Movies

Wynk is a service that links a range of channels to stream from, including Sony LIV, Dailymotion, Eros Now, YouTube and HOOQ. You can now pick and choose your favourite movies from different sites and create your own playlist.

YuppTV

YuppTV is simply put, a way to access content from television channels in real time. Accessible from your smartphone, you can also choose to binge watch any TV shows that you may have missed in the last week. While it is not a great option for watching movies, TV soap addicts will love this app.

MyPlex

This is another way to watch live TV, however MyPlex also offers users the option of streaming local and international movies and other videos online. Users can create a schedule of their favourite show timings using this app.

Eros Now

Similar to Hotstar, Eros Now allows users to download and stream music videos and movies produced by Eros Now. You can choose from Bollywood and a wide variety of other regional content while using this service.

Ginebra survives Alaska to book semis ticket vs SMB

Barangay Ginebra is back in the PBA Final Four for the first time in three years.

With huge games from LA Tenorio and Justin Brownlee, Ginebra overcame Alaska Milk, 109-104, in an emotional, rollercoaster game to advance to the PBA Governors Cup semifinals at the Smart Araneta Coliseum Friday night.

Tenorio poured in a personal three-year high of 32 points while Brownlee came through with 28 including a huge three-pointer at the finish as the Gin Kings got past the Aces to arrange a best-of-five semis showdown with the San Miguel Beermen.

Sol Mercado and Japeth Aguilar had their own moments in the early goings of the game, helping the Kings nail a first semis appearance in eight conferences.

The Kings had never been into the semis since finishing third in the 2013-14 Philippine Cup.

“The guys had never got past the quarters in a long while. It’s a first big step for them,” said Ginebra coach Tim Cone.

“It’s great to be in the semis. It’s nice to be back. Our reward is we’ve got to play San Miguel Beer. We’re gonna enjoy tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll refocus and have to be ready,” Cone also said.

“With all due respect to TNT, I think SMB is still the team to beat in the semis. With June Mar (Fajardo) and all the weapons around him, it’s not a stretch to say they’re really tough. Fajardo is tough to handle especially without Greg (Slaughter),” Cone added.

Tenorio sizzled all night, leading decisive runs in the second and third periods and also having a hand as they fended off Alaska’s fourth-quarter chase.

The Ginebra playmaker was amazing but so were the Aces in their mighty fightback from 48-74 down to threaten at 104-105 with still 31 seconds to go.

Brownlee provided the Kings a huge relief in knocking in a trey off LaDontae Henton making it 108-104 with time down to 9.6 seconds.

Hastening Alaska’s downfall and exit in the season were three flubbed charities by Calvin Abueva with 8.3 seconds left.

Tenorio proved too hot to handle for Jvee Casio and RJ Jazul in the first three quarters, firing away 30 as the Gin Kings sat on a 53-41 cushion at the half then broke away with their 26-point bulge.

The Ginebra chief point guard went 4-of-4 from the field and added a charity to lead their 30-18 pounding of the Aces in the second quarter.

The scores:

 
GINEBRA 109 – Tenorio 32, Brownlee 29, Mercado 14, Aguilar 12, Marcelo 7, Devance 6, Caguioa 4, Thompson 3, Cruz 2, Mariano 0, Helterbrand 0.

ALASKA 104 – Henton 27, Abueva 17, Jazul 13, Hontiveros 12, Manuel 10, Casio 9, Thoss 9, Banchero 5, Racal 2, Baclao 0, Dela Rosa 0, Exciminiano 0.

Quarterscores: 23-23, 53-41, 86-66, 109-104

Mark Zuckerberg And His Wife Just Invested $3bn To Cure All Diseases

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have pledged more than $3 billion towards a plan to cure all diseases in the lifetime of their 10-month-old daughter.

The Facebook CEO and his wife, who pledged to give away 99 per cent of their wealth to good causes last year, said they will invest the $3 billion (2.3bn) into research on curing the world’s diseases through their philanthropy organization, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

At a press event in San Francisco on Wednesday, Priscilla Chan said: “By investing in science today, we hope to build a future in which all of our children can build long and rewarding lives.”

 Zuckerberg said The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is already ‘building a world-class engineering team’ to help scientists and experts research diseases.

The goal, which they are unlikely to see accomplished in their lifetime, is to ‘cure, prevent or manage all disease’ in the next 80 or so years, Business Insider reports.

Zuckerberg said in an interview with Associated Press:

So if you even just assume that we’ll be able to continue to make progress on that same trajectory, then that implies that by the end of this century we will have been able to solve most of these types of things.

Priscilla and I just shared our next major focus for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Can we help scientists to cure,…
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Zuckerberg emphasised ‘that this isn’t something where we just read a book and decided we’re going to do.’

He said: “We spend 50 times more on health care treating people who are sick than we spend on science research (to cure) diseases so that people don’t get sick in the first place.”

“Today, just four kinds of diseases cause the majority of deaths,” Zuckerberg added in a posting on his Facebook page, citing cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases and neurological diseases, adding: “We can make progress on all of them with the right technology.”

As part of the investment, a $600m research center in San Francisco called the Biohub will be built in partnership with Stanford, the University of California, and Berkeley.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: a marriage that started – and ended – on screen

The death of Edward Albee this week was an excuse to revisit one of the greatest semi-factual toxic marriages of cinema: the movie version of his Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were in a state of boozy, agonised meltdown, and those performances may well have been a catharsis for personal issues. 

Perhaps our generation has its own Woolf-anxiety couple in Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who today filed for divorce after being an item since 2005. They have only been married since 2014, which will give pause to all those who fear that getting legally hitched amplifies the existing problems in any long-term relationship.

 For outsiders to speculate about their private pain would be impertinent, especially considering the courage with which Jolie has faced her own health issues. But the fact is that the Jolie-Pitt alliance began with a movie about marriage – and now appears to have ended with one. 

They got together at the very beginning, after filming the action comedy Mr and Mrs Smith, playing supercool assassins: each of their professions is a secret from the other – and each of them finally gets an assignment to kill the other. 

It was, in a semi-intentional way, a brilliant parable for marriage and Hollywood career-partnership and the frenemy/spousenemy qualities inherent in a competitive working situation. 

Mr and Mrs Smith featured very droll scenes of them side-by-side together on the couch, in archly “civilian” mode, apparently attending couples therapy. (It also had a surreally random moment at the very end, in which Mrs Smith confesses out of the blue that she is Jewish.) There was a kind of meta-hilarity in all this, and it might even have given the start of their romance a screwball quality, were it not for the fact that Brad was already married to Jennifer Aniston. 

They worked together just twice more. Brad Pitt was the producer of A Mighty Heart (2007), directed by Michael Winterbottom, in which Jolie played Mariane Pearl, wife of missing journalist Daniel Pearl – a role in which she was controversially required to wear makeup to play a woman of partly Cuban descent. It was not a very successful film, though undoubtedly a seriously intended one, and clearly something to which both Pitt and Jolie were committed.

But their relationship appears to have ended on camera, too. The second film in which they acted together, By the Sea (2014), was an agonisingly detailed, 1960s-style portrait of a marriage which is set in the south of France, and which appeared indebted to Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road.

There are long scenes of moody, eloquent silence in their hotel room, in which Jolie retreats into depression and Pitt gets picturesquely drunk at a neighbourhood bar.

I felt it was a little absurd at the time – but actually, this is a movie which improves in retrospect. It is ambitious and heartfelt.

 Was By the Sea the last therapeutic gasp for Brangelina? The couple they portrayed on screen were working through their problems, and perhaps Brad and Angelina were working through their own problems too. Or perhaps they were doing the opposite: creating a massive delusional diversionary tactic, a fiction which looked equivalent to their own problems but wasn’t, a giant project with which they could wrest back creative control of their personal lives from the gossips.

Jolie’s character in that film had no children, but the actor herself has a large family of adopted and biological children – a source of tension that is not really touched on in the film.

Perhaps they will work together again, and Burton-Taylor nostalgists might even wonder about the possibility of their remarrying. By the Sea deserves another look. They are certainly a really potent on-screen partnership.