Hindi
Yash Raj Films ventures into full movie downloads
MUMBAI: Yash Raj Films (YRF) has ventured into digital download of full movies through tie-ups with two websites technologically equipped to offer VoD (video-on-demand) services – www.watchindia.tv and www.tinselvision.com.
Tinselvision primarily caters to the US market. For a fee, viewers across the world (except India) will be able to download a particular movie and watch it once. At a later stage, movies will also be made available on a download-to-own mode. While the movies are already available on watchindia.tv, they will be available on tinselvision.com by the end of this month.
Consequently Indian cinema will be available on these sites. The bouquet on watchindia.tv includes all time renowned movies like Kabhi Kabhie, Kaala Patthar and Chandni along with a mix of the contemporary and recent YRF hits like Hum Tum, Dhoom, Veer-Zaara, Bunty aur Babli and Dhoom:2, among others.
Tinselvision.com has titles like Darr, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hai, Mohabbatein, Silsila, Saathiya, Salaam Namaste and Fanaa, among others. As a strategy, the new releases will be available on these platforms after a window period of 3 months post theatrical release.
The pay-per-view price ranges from $4.99 (for the classics) to $7.99 (for the most recent releases.
With an objective of offering this service within India, YRF has also entered into an agreement with VSNL. A select bouquet of movies will be streamed through VSNL‘s broadband portal www.tataindicombroadband.in in a pay-per-view format.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
