From Putlocker to Netflix: when Team Damon meant waiting, not bingeing

A retrospective on pre-Netflix India, marking how the OTT streaming giant killed the agony of the buffering bar 10 years ago.

It was the era before Netflix, but high schoolers in Mumbai were no different then than they are now. The colours of our uniforms may have divided us into different houses, but we were truly divided by the teams that we shipped.

My entire high school could be divided into factions. While some were Beliebers and others Directioners, true rivalry only showed its fangs when the distinction was made between fans of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and Lisa Jane Smith’s The Vampire Diaries (TVD). Blood-sucking monsters were very popular with teenage girls in the 2000s. 

While the Twilight books were actually enjoyable to the teenage mind, I personally couldn’t care for the pale, glittery and expressionless vampires of the Twilight universe on screen. I was more inclined towards the tall, dark and handsome Salvatore brother from TVD; I was Team Damon. 

Team Damon, Team Stefan, Team Edward, Team Jacob, and later even Team Elijah and Team Klaus commanded loyalty, almost like an invisible badge of membership. But how did teenagers who grew up in households that echoed the Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Bahi Thi jingle get introduced to a world of vampires, werewolves and sometimes even hybrids?

Netflix did not exist then, not for Indian teenagers at least. While English-language TV channels were available as an add-on by local cable operators, desi families were not keen subscribers, lest their children become too Westernised. Besides, I doubt they’d be Team Damon. 

Putlocker, Daily Motion and 123movies were ‘Netflix’ before Netflix for those who did not have the internet (or mental) bandwidth to engage with torrents. 

Make no mistake, the streaming experience was very different for late Millennials and early Gen Z. You couldn’t just sign in, pick a title, and binge-watch your way to glory. 

You had to wait your turn for the family desktop/laptop (streaming on mobile phones was unthinkable with 2G mobile data) and then hope that the show/movie you were willing to stream hadn’t been removed, citing copyright issues.

Then the true test of your patience began; you may have been waiting to find out who comes back from the dead for the umpteenth time, but you really had to hope and pray that the internet gods were in your favour. 

More often than not, the excruciatingly slow buffering symbol plagued your viewing experience. The only solution? You paused the show, did life and came back hoping for an uninterrupted 40 minutes. Did the pausing help get rid of the buffering? We liked to think it did. 

While streaming platforms like Zee’s Ditto TV, Sony’s Sony Liv and Hotstar were coded into existence in 2012, 2013 and 2015, respectively, the former two only served as catch-up streaming for shows on their TV channel. If you missed an episode of a show from Zee or Sony, you could watch/rewatch it online (a revolutionary thought then). The latter focused on sports streaming. 

Streaming as we know it became a concept only 10 years ago when Netflix made its India debut on January 6, 2016, after mailing DVDs for rent for 18 years in the USA. 

Netflix launched as the world’s first online DVD rental store with only 30 employees and 925 titles in 1998. A year later, it abandoned the ‘pay-per-rental’ revenue model and introduced a subscription of $15.95/month. 

In 2007, Netflix launched its streaming feature as a small add-on to its mail business. By the time it reached Indian shores, Netflix had evolved from a logistics company into a tech and content powerhouse.

It’s been ten years since we traded the agonising hope of a buffering bar for the instant gratification of a world with unlimited titles. Alas, spoilt for choice, we simply don’t know what to watch anymore.