Netflix or DTH who grabs your family dinner time.

A Social Experiment at Home with DTH connection and Netflix
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This article is not about user stats , penetration or another key indices which would show how DTH is better than Netflix or vice versa . Its about this simple experiment which I did at home to check the behavioural changes my 4 yr old daughter and 9 yr old son , As in how would they respond to changes if DTH is discontinued and only Netflix is used for watching series during dinner time . I use DTH services to get my dose of news updates and couch travel the world however same service is used by my kids to watch peppa pig , pokemon , doraemon and any other Japanese / English cartoon translated in Hindi , also to add avenger and spider man series . My wife has a different taste and is primarily hooked on to Zee news 9 pm show DNA analysis , Sudhir Chaudhary . It's not that she's a news person , but then I am giving her benefit of doubt here .

So its always a point of conflict as in which channel should we watch while having our Dinner whether it would be travelXP , NDTV good times or cartoon network or Zee news . Tired of this discussion on daily basis I decided for 1 weeks time, I shall not recharge our DTH and shift to Netflix to get our dose of entertainment .

And so it begins On the day 1 we decided We would start with Sarfarosh ( saragrahi ) series based on 1890s where British Indian Army was dominating Northern and eastern Afghanistan . Daughter had to be incentivized with a cadbury eclair , Son was more excited tough . Series was nicely picturized and it actually gave a feeling of rugged terrain of Afghanistan

Following were the observations over a weeks time :

Kids started asking relevant questions and showing strong sense of inquisitiveness about the events taking place :

i) Questions like where is this place Papa , can you show us on google earth.

ii) But Punjab is in India Papa why are sikh soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and calling it as their mother land

iii) Why are all senior officers british

iv) Who are these yusufzais and why are they fighting with our Army

v) what is telegraph papa , why arent they using mobile phones to connect

vi) best of all the question which I liked personally : Punjabi pagdi kyu pehente hai aur Dadhi kyu hai Unko ( Why are sikhs wearing turban and why have they kept beard ) .

What really happened here was , children who were subjected to non logical or pure entertaining cartoon content have suddenly started asking questions related to Geography , History , Culture . Eventually these sessions become more informative and value adding for all . Where a simple topic was picked up every day and discussion , research was done on it using chrome cast , google earth and wikipedia . ( Eg : where is fort Lockart based )

Whys and Hows started getting answered , children became more curious about history and started showing deeper understanding between nations history and Geography. 20% of dinner time which was spent only in finalizing what needs to be seen is saved .

Due to lack of advertisements, continuity was maintained and everyone was hooked on , any clarification on concept was done by simply pausing the episode for few minutes and then resuming it . While Netflix has a niche consumption in India yet , I can clearly see the dept of content ecosystem it has and how dedicated Niches get attracted to it for different taste of content . Plus to add on to this social benefits it offers at family level of spending time together and watching a uninterrupted series , along with educational value .

Now it has become a part of daily routine and we have widened our scope to other series like Boss baby ( its seriously funny ) , Star trek , lost in universe and Buddha . While the cycle of learning and questioning continues with entertainment . #Netflix #Content #Saragrahi #Buddha #DTH .