These difficult times, the human race is facing currently is making some take ignorant, hasty actions, one being abandoning pets. No people, animals do not spread this virus nor are they harmful for us during the pandemic. They are your family member. Caring for them, playing with them, spending time with them will only make this quarantine time easy. And yes, they deserve love too.

Let’s take a look at a few popular or not-so-popular but definitely charming pets in the animated movie world :

The Secret Life of Pets as the name suggests has a whole lot of furry animals to adore. From Max, a Jack Russell Terrier; Duke, a large, brown, shaggy; Snowball, a white rabbit; Gidget, a white Pomeranian; Chloe, an obese grey tabby cat; Pops, an elderly Basset Hound; Buddy, a laid-back dachshund; Mel, a hyperactive pug; Sweetpea, a green and yellow budgie parakeet; Ozone, a Cockney-accented Sphynx cat; Norman, to a guinea pig; Tattoo, a slow-witted tattooed pig, all make for a bunch of love and only love.

Dug from Up:

Dug is a golden retriever who belongs to Charles Muntz. He is a fun-loving dog who speaks English via a special collar that translates his thoughts into speech. Dug runs into Carl and begins to idolise him and sees him as his master. This pure soul again is nothing but pure love.

Angus from Brave:

Angus is Merida’s powerful Shire horse and her most trusted confidant. He can be balky, stubborn or faint-hearted at times, but is ultimately very loyal to Merida. Their bond is strong and loving, as Merida can coax him into one adventure after another and allows no one in the castle but herself to see to his care. Angus is named after a kind of cattle found in Scotland that has, since medieval times, been bred for meat and milk production.

Sven from Frozen:

Sven is Kristoff’s reindeer and a close friend. The two were adopted and raised by the trolls. Sven is incredibly loyal to Kristoff and, along with helping him with his business ventures, serves as the ice harvester’s conscience. The reindeer is also extremely devoted to those he cares about and has keen awareness of his human companions.

Pascal from Tangled:

Rapunzel’s one true friend is her silent, color-changing sidekick, Pascal. Pascal may be just a small chameleon, but he plays a big role in Rapunzel’s life. Confidante, coach and cheerleader, Pascal is a driving force behind Rapunzel’s decision to leave her lonely tower. Pascal is constantly cheering her up, rooting her on, and refusing to allow her to take steps backwards.

Pua from Moana:

Pua is Moana’s loyal pet pig with puppy energy and an innocent puppy brain. He cares a great deal for Moana’s happiness, as well as her personal ambitions; specifically her yearning to sail the seas. In all cases, he happily joins Moana’s side to assist her in any way he can. Though he is willing to face new challenges, however, Pua will not hesitate to back away should said challenge prove to be too intense or life-threatening.

Bullseye from Toy Story 2:

In Toy Story, Andy receives Buster as a puppy for his Christmas present at the film’s resolution. Bullseye is Woody’s horse and one of the characters introduced in Toy Story 2. Despite the fact that he is a horse, the way he acts can be similar to that of a puppy. He is extremely affectionate towards Woody, Jessie and the other toys. 

Dante from Coco:

Dante is a major character from the 2017 Disney Pixar animated feature film, Coco. He is a stray,  Miguel adopted as his pet and friend. Dante has a weakness toward food, as it led Miguel to embarrassing situations. Although Dante is superficially goofy and simple-minded, he is smarter than he looks. While he is utmost loyal to his owner, Dante is very sensitive when people close to him hurt his feelings.

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Amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, there has been an unparalleled increase of internet usage with the complete lockdown in action in India and limited outdoor entertainment.

Being a responsible brand, MX Player has launched ‘Data Saver Mode’ as an initiative to reduce internet overload on infrastructure across the country. This mode is now set as the default setting on all mobile devices, and restricts its streaming on mobile devices to a lower resolution (480p instead of 1080p).

Internet traffic has accelerated with people adhering to the social-distancing guidelines during the Covid-19 pandemic. Video streaming is a major source of entertainment as well as a major hoarder of internet traffic alongside game downloads. Almost 90 per cent of India’s internet traffic is video with an average user consuming more than 11 GB per month.

MX Player has additionally taken steps to reduce bandwidth consumption without affecting user experience. It’s the first Indian OTT to support H.265 (HEVC) transcoding for Live TV and on-demand content. This single achievement has helped nearly half the bandwidth consumption as compared to the earlier used H.264 stream. Further, it has developed a proprietary advanced compression technique that leverages cutting edge Artificial Intelligence and object recognition to enhance compression.

Commenting on this development, MX Player COO Vivek Jain said, “Considering that majority offices have declared work from home, we understand the impact this will have on network infrastructure. Internet bandwidth is scarce. At such times, it is key that wheels of the economy keep running and all activities can be continued with sufficient bandwidth available. Especially at our scale (175 Million users), it is important that we play our part in preserving a smooth functioning of the internet during this crisis. As a result, we have decided to double down on our efforts to provide the best customer experience while conserving bandwidth. I am happy to share that collectively, all our advancements will reduce MX bandwidth consumption by over 70 per cent.”

Due to this improvement, users are now able to get better quality live streams even under poor network conditions with very low buffering and low latency. On an Android mobile, 1 GB on MX Player can stream or download up to six hours of video. Lower data consumption, buffer-free streaming and excellent user controls is what has constantly differentiated MX Player as a platform.

 Operating in India with an advertising led model for premium content, MX Player integrates its offline video playing capabilities with a wide library of streaming video content including originals, movies, web series, TV shows, news, music and games. It currently has more than 175M Monthly Active Users and 75M Daily Active Users (DAU) in the country.

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Netflix announced yesterday, 24 March, that it is lowering its traffic on network providers by 25 per cent in India for a period of 30 days. 

Netflix made this announcement after a similar decision was taken for the European market, in order to reduce the congestion on internet pipelines due to home quarantine of most people in the country as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Netflix Content Delivery VP Ken Florance said in an official statement,  “Given the crisis, we’ve developed a way to reduce Netflix’s traffic on telecommunications networks by 25 per cent, while also maintaining the quality of our service. So consumers should continue to get the quality that comes with their plan – whether it’s Ultra-HD, HD or SD. We believe that this will provide significant relief to congested networks and will be deploying it in India for the next 30 days.”

This also comes after COAI urged the video streaming platforms lately, to lower the streaming resolutions. Following its global contemporary, Amazon Prime Video too has started to lower the data consumption that streaming takes up on its platform. While local services like MX Player have already started it on its app, Hotstar and ZEE5 are also working to implement similar measures.

Meanwhile, this announcement from Netflix won’t affect most of its subscribers in India, as it maintains several different streams for a single title, and is removing the highest bandwidth streams as part of this move. 

The mobile-only plan (Rs.199) that Netflix introduced in India last year is its most popular tier in the country, a source said. Both mobile-only plan and the basic plan, the immediate advanced tier above it, limit streaming to standard definition (SD).

As per a report by Bank of America, last week internet service providers in India witnessed a 10 per cent surge in the volume of daily traffic and data consumption. 

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The coronavirus outbreak has left sports schedules in tatters. The NBA, Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, and many other sports leagues have been suspended.  Large sporting events like this summer’s Euro 2020 have also been called off. Even the fate of the Olympics in Tokyo at the end of the summer hangs in the balance.

Sports fans have been left with many questions, “will the season ever be finished?” “Will the current league leaders be crowned champions?” or “will this season just be scrapped and we will start again fresh?” We do not even know when the next cricket match, football or basketball games will take place. The number of questions is almost endless and that is before we even get into what will sports fans do instead of going to the game or watching it on TV each week. Even sports news now is almost non-existent.

So just what will you watch and talk about during the outbreak? Luckily, there is one sport that isn’t affected by the outbreak, Esports.

What’s Esports?

Very simply, Esports is competitive video gaming. Where either individuals or teams compete against each other in organised competitions. The games being played can vary from fantasy titles like Fortnite and League of Legends, first-person shooters like Call of Duty, all the to sports games like Madden and Fifa. In 2018 over 200 million people actively watched or took part in tournaments, 4 times more than in 2014. Making it one of the fastest-growing sports on the planet. In terms of viewers it is more popular than the NFL, and even packs out arenas with 50,000+ fans.

The Last Sport Standing

There was a brief time in which several sports were being played behind closed doors to reduce the spread of the virus, but as high profile sports stars such as NBA star Rudy Gobert (who went around touching reporters microphones before testing positive) came down with the virus, sports fixtures were first postponed and then suspended.

Even though Esports can take place in massive stadiums like football, basketball, and cricket. It is not necessary for the players or the audience. In fact, team members don’t even need to be in the same room to compete. All this means that it is the only sport that can carry on as normal despite the outbreak.

A Big Jump in Viewers

With many people across the globe not just working from home, but being asked to stay at home as much as possible by their governments. This has left a lot of people with a lot more free time at home, especially with no sports fixtures to watch. For this reason, the popular Football Manager game was made available to play for free for one week by its creators, to help people not just pass the time, but replace the real football that is now no longer taking place. 

And, it isn’t just game providers that are providing Esports to people, sports stars are too. Real Betis striker Borja Iglesias and Sevilla’s Sergio Reguilon streamed a match between their teams on Fifa 20 to an audience of more than 60,000 on streaming service Twitch. Other famous sportspeople are also playing their sports online too, including Max Verstappen and Lando Norris who took part in a virtual version of the now-cancelled Australian Grand Prix.

Amid the crisis sports players and viewers are turning to Esports in their droves. The sport has seen a huge growth in participants and viewers over the last few years. Can it capitalise on this time to cement itself as one of the world’s major sports? It has a chance, but only time will tell…

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