Sony Max (India)

This page is about the Indian TV channel that shows Hindi movies. For other uses, see Sony Max (South Africa) and Sony Max (Hungary).

Sony Max, also called SET Max or simply Max, is a Hindi movie channel in India. It was launched in 1999, and often showed cricket events (notably the Indian Premier League from 2008 to 2017). Since the early 2010s it has focused more on showing dubbed South Indian movies, much like its competitors Zee Cinema, Star Gold and Colors Cineplex. However, its international feed shows primarily Bollywood movies. It has used the slogan Deewana Bana De (Making You Crazy) since its inception.

An HD feed was launched on Christmas 2015, much later than Zee Cinema and Star Gold.

This page only shows primary logo variants. For other related logos and images, see: Other

1999-2002	2002–2011	2011–present (India, International), 2011–2017 (UK)	2017–present (UK only)

Sony Max

1999–2002

When the channel was launched in late 1999, it was more commonly referred to as SET Max, to show its affiliation with SET. While that name is sometimes used today, Sony Max and Max are more popular.

2002–2011

SET Max rebranded for the first time on 26 January 2002, the Indian Republic Day.

• Afaqs!

Logo with slogan, 2002–2011.

2011–present (India, International), 2011–2017 (UK)

When the now-defunct Sony Mix was launched on 1 September 2011, Sony TV, Sony Sab, Sony Max, Sony Pix and Sony Aath added the word Sony in a black rectangle on top of their logos, though the graphics were not changed.

Logo with slogan, 2011–present.

Sony Max has changed its graphics package three times since 2011, but not its logo (though the UK feed changed the logo in 2017). In the first two cases it was on the day after the final of that year’s edition of the Indian Premier League: on 28 May 2012 and on 25 May 2015. The third and latest rebrand was on 20 July 2019 to commemorate the channel’s twentieth anniversary.

2017–present (UK only)

When Sony Max HD was launched in the UK in 2017, the SD feed there introduced the black logo already used by the HD channel in India.

Sony Max HD

2015–2016

An HD feed was launched on 25 December 2015, much later than competitors Zee Cinema and Star Gold, which had launched HD feeds in 2011. (However, a pop-up channel called Sony Max HD had been launched for the 2011 and 2012 seasons of the Indian Premier League; in June 2012 it became the HD version of Sony Six, Sony Pictures Networks India’s first sports channel.)

• Press coverage of the HD channel launch (1, 2, 3 and 4)
• Newspaper advertisement

Logo with slogan, roughly meaning ‘Experience what you see’. This was used only for Sony Max HD, and retired after the 2019 rebrand.

In its first two years, Sony Max HD showed a mix of recent popular movies, niche and critically-acclaimed movies, and classic Hindi movies older than the 1990s (similar to Star Gold Select HD). However, since late 2017, these are aired much less frequently than South Indian movies dubbed into Hindi, as with the SD version.

2016–present

This logo was introduced on 25 December 2016, on the HD channel’s first anniversary. Sony Max HD was launched in the UK in August 2017, and the SD feed there adopted this dark logo and bronze graphics package.

In India, the logo colour is black only for the HD feed; the SD feed has the traditional white logo. Until the July 2019 rebrand, the graphics package was bronze-gold only for the HD feed; the SD feed had the blue-yellow-red graphics.

External links

• Sony Max and Sony Max HD