The switch from Disney+ Hotstar to JioHotstar hasn’t been a smooth ride for many Indian users. Among the growing list of technical issues, a particularly disruptive glitch is affecting thousands: streams are randomly restarting every 20 minutes, often forcing viewers back to the beginning of a show, episode, or movie.
This is not just a minor inconvenience—it’s making it nearly impossible to enjoy long-form content like cricket matches, films, or web series without interruption.
What’s puzzling is that this glitch happens even on fast, stable Wi-Fi or mobile data connections, which rules out internet speed as the cause. Instead, it suggests an internal issue in JioHotstar’s app architecture, likely related to poor playback management or memory handling.
Many users describe the problem as a forced “reload,” where the app acts as if it’s refreshing the stream automatically. And since it seems to happen on a 20-minute cycle, it hints at either a session timeout issue or improper caching and session token handling.
The rebranding from Disney+ Hotstar to JioHotstar was expected to bring in new features and scale—but it looks like app stability has suffered in the process. This kind of recurring glitch suggests inadequate QA testing before rollout.
Given JioHotstar’s ambition to dominate the Indian OTT space, this level of instability is a serious red flag—especially at a time when user expectations are sky-high due to heavy investments in sports rights and premium shows.
As of now, there is no official acknowledgment or fix from JioHotstar addressing the 20-minute restart bug. Without a patch, long-form content remains essentially unwatchable for many.
Until resolved, JioHotstar risks losing viewer trust—something far harder to regain than fixing a bug.
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