This was first reported by Buzzpop but neither the local pop culture outfit nor its source has publicly revealed the method to trigger the interface. It took a while but we were eventually able to figure out how to obtain the Malaysian interface on the Disney+ Hotstar Android app.
So, let’s start from the top and do note that we have sideloaded version 11.4.3.978 of the app into our Android phone for this. By default, the Disney+ Hotstar app would show the Hotstar UK UI and contents if you open it in Malaysia. We then force stop the app and clear out both its cache as well as data through the Apps section of our phone’s setting.
We then connect to Indonesia through a VPN (in our case, we used NordVPN), so that the app will show the UI and contents for the Indonesian market. In case you are wondering, no, we were not able to play Indonesian Disney+ Hotstar contents as the app is able to detect that we are running on VPN.
The logic behind this move is to obtain some cache and data from the Indonesian Disney+ Hotstar server since the country happens to be one of the official markets for the streaming service. We tried connecting the app through India which is another official Disney+ Hotstar market but somehow nothing appeared on the app.
Moving on, we then force stop the app again, disconnected our VPN from Indonesia, and turn off our VPN app. But this time around, we left the app’s cache and data intact before we ran the Disney+ Hotstar app once again. The particular screen below would then appear which indicates that the app has noticed that the location of the phone has changed. Once this screen showed up, quickly press the Restart App button.
You would then either end up seeing the page that we featured at the top of this article or back at Hotstar UK’s UI once again. If you managed to get the RM 89.90 annual subscription page, click on the Continue button and you would then be asked for your Malaysian phone number. The service will then send an SMS that contains a 4-digit Disney+ Hotstar verification code that you need to enter into the subsequent screen. Once done, the next page would then ask for your name, age and gender.
If you somehow ended up at the home screen with a circle-like loading animation below, press the hamburger menu on the top left part of the screen and choose the Log In option. You will once again have to go through the Disney+ Hotstar SMS-based verification process but you should then be presented with detailed registration and the offline home screen that we showed earlier. After that, press the hamburger menu again and you can enter the My Account portion of the app by clicking on your name/phone number. You then should see the screen below:
Pressing the Subscribe Now will show you the annual subscription page once again. This time around though, you would end up at a screen that showed “404 Laman Tidak Dijumpai” when you pressed the “Continue” button which essentially means that Disney+ Hotstar is still not ready to accept Malaysian customers.
Meanwhile, you can choose to log out but if you choose the Log Out All Devices option, it will trigger yet another SMS authentication process. Once you entered the code, this notice would then appear which states that it may as much as 24 hours to log the user out of all devices:
Once again, do take note that what we have described above is our own attempt to invoke the Malaysian interface for the Disney+ Hotstar app and the results vary from time to time which is why it took us some time to dig them out. It is possible that you could do the same thing in a much simpler manner; so feel free to share with us the details through the comment section below if you find alternative methods to do this. As a comparison, the annual subscription fee for the Disney+ Hotstar Premium plan in India is currently INR 1,499 (~RM 84.92) while the same plan costs IDR 199,000 (~RM 56.94) in Indonesia. Both countries also offer a monthly Premium plan at INR 299 (~RM 16.94) and IDR 39,000 (~RM 11.16) respectively which is something that was somehow not listed in the Malaysian UI of the app.
However, we doubt that the RM 89.90 figure is the finalised annual subscription fee for our market as this is not the first time that we have heard about the pricing of Disney+ for Malaysia. Back in 2019, such information has also appeared on the Disney+ app for the U.S market and it was much higher at RM 294.99 per year. Nevertheless, we still hope that the pricing is real as it would definitely heat up the streaming market in Malaysia especially considering that the market leader, Netflix is currently charging local customers between RM 17 to RM 55 per month. Of course, Disney needs to launch Disney+ or Disney+ Hotstar in Malaysia first before we get too far ahead of ourselves.
