Scrap DSTV Anyone?

[AndyD]

I didn't have any problem cancelling my DSTV account, I just phoned them and told them to do it immediately. The guy on the phone warned me it might be a bad idea because there would be a reconnection fee if I changed my mind, I just laughed and said that would just be one more reason they wouldn't hear from me again.

[irneb]

DSTV's obvious response: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadc...ltichoice.html

My view on this: Sure piracy should not be a comparison to DSTV's "service". Legitimate online viewing should, so "piracy" shouldn't even be a consideration from the concerns of customers, neither should DSTV even have to raise the point (certainly not focussing on it through most of their response). So disregarding the statements about illegal viewing let's focus on this statement instead (the only one which mentions legal online viewing):

“Whether consuming legal or illegal Internet sourced content, the size of the offering does not compare with the length and breadth of the DStv Premium offering, as is suggested,”

Appart from my mini-gag as I read it, here's what I've found personally to void that statement in its entirety:

1. Size: Most of these streaming sites use very well compressed video formats (like Theora / H265 instead of the 20 year old inefficient codecs used in DSTV's offering and on discs). Meaning instead of the normal ~25GB of a full HD 90min movie the actual download would be around 2 to 4GB at the same visual fidelity. In fact DSTV's own online video uses these same newer codecs to reduce bandwidth cost. That is if you look for full HD (1020P) content which DSTV doesn't even offer. Only a handfull of their channels offer 720p, the rest goes even as low as VHS quality - in these cases the movie is below 1GB (for 720p) and even around 500MB on DVD quality (480p), and for most around 200MB for VHS/old-TV quality. So the size isn't as great an issue as they're trying to make it out to be, especially not if they're referring to similar quality to their own broadcasts.
2. Size (alternative meaning) of offering: There is literally 100's of TIMES more variance in the programs / movies / shows available on these sites than ALL of DSTV's entire "breadth" of channels available. Even if disregarding the quality (note not visual but actual content) of the programs, DSTV's at best only showing a fraction of 1% of all that's available. So in this sense of the "size" concern DSTV doesn't have a leg to stand on.
3. If the actual quality of the content is added to this, then DSTV's offerings are even worse off. They constantly repeat shows from several years ago - meaning rehashed cheap unwanted programs make up the majority of their channels' content. Nearly all online streaming sites allow views outside of fixed program times, so people can view any one of their shows at any time of their choosing, as many times as they might wish to do so - AND ARE NOT FORCED to re-watch something which they've already seen. Also since online means you can pick-n-choose by show (or even by episode) they have a much clearer understanding of the real "rating" and can thus cancel something which hasn't had any views in the last month. DSTV (at best) needs to do surveys to even get an inkling of what people don't want to watch.
4. Lengh/breadth: does this refer to the number of channels they have? If so, they can throw away 95% of all their channels, I only see them when I skip between the channels with something watch-able on (if I don't remember to directly type in the ch# on the remote instead). Online is simply centuries ahead on this score, you can see it as having 1 channel for each show ever made in the history of television and movies. So that would be DSTV's 100's as compared to online's uncountable.
5. The "boxoffice" items from DSTV is probably the closest they come to the actual quality of online sites. Though even here they tend to be several months behind on the availability from what's available on the online sites. In general the online sites have a movie available between 1 and 2 months after the first cinema premier overseas, which means in a lot of the cases it's available during (if not before) NuMetro/SterKinekor shows the movie here - let alone DSTV.

Another issue:

The resulting quality of Internet-sourced content also isn’t comparable today in the SA market, MultiChoice said, due to poor Internet speeds and congestion.

Yes, I can say that they may have a point here ... that is if comparing Live TV streaming. In which case it's similar to when their dish doesn't make proper connection to the satellite (e.g. during thunderstorms) - you end up with frozen picture for a few moments and/or pixelation of the image. Though here (in JHB) I've found that even using my 3G cell phone I get these only very seldom, and apparently Telkom is in the process of rolling out at least 3G to all exchanges in lieu of fast ADSL cables.

In most cases it doesn't even matter as the viewing can be buffered. Think of it as similar to PVR: it downloads the program to a temporary storage on your viewing equipment and you can then play this back as a smooth running video without any glitches. This is impossible on DSTV, even their pay-per view box-office stuff suffer from the same glitches when their connection is compromised - no such buffering mechanism is built into their decoders, not even during the use of the PVR feature on the decoder.

[newBix]

This is one of those deals... Pay us get something to watch or don’t pay us and get nothing to watch. Internet in South Africa is slow and expensive by first world standards. But they rake in massive profits and don’t upgrade so not only do we have a poor infrastructure it is overpopulated with users each paying trough there ass to be connected.

I don’t consider internet as a good way to watch movies series and sport partly because it takes forever to get the content especially on sub 1mb lines and 3G being so crappy. I would rather buy A series and pay the R1000 for it then having to pay R700 a month and then get to watch 4 episodes and being bombarded with advertisement.

Getting movies for R49 is a lot cheaper then killing your cap that cost you R450 a month. Also you get high quality and if the movie sucked you get a shiny frisbee...

[ians]

You just need the right friends, with a server room and uncapped etc and 2 x 1 TB hard drives which you rotate.This way you get the latest series directly from the source.

[irneb]

I understand if you've got a slow and/or expensive ISP, but it's getting to the point where the cost of DSTV equals that of UN-capped 4MB/s ADSL with Telkom themselves, not even the special cheap deals from some others. That's why I started this thread.

Well, I checked yesterday through one of these ... the first such shown on a google search (from literally 1000000's). At home through my cell phone (on 3G - and I'm in JHB north) using my media centre (they've even go a connection for XBMC so I don't need to watch it through a web page) there were absolutely no glitches. Watched Arrow season 2 episode 15, first aired on 5th - Wednesday in USA: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3337658/?ref_=tt_ep_ep6

It was playing at 720p (same as DSTV's "HD" channels) without any issues. I checked my data on that, after the 42 minutes I've used only 300MB - so it was even less data than I at first thought.

What I did find is that it starts a bit slow - a loading... message displays for about 10 sec and then the thing just simply plays as if it was actually on my hard-drive. Next time I'll run a screen recorder and set it on YouTube so I can show you just how impressive it looks.

If you do this per episode, then the general cost is around US$3 for full HD 1020p (better than DSTV's best channel) or $2 for half HD. And this from Amazon, which is arguably not the cheapest. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...t-video&sr=1-1

They've also got deals where you get the full season (once it completes). E.g. the entite How I met Your Mother season 10 (last year's) for $40 full HD & $30 half HD: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...&redirect=true That would be about 1/2 of the cost you mention of R1000. And if you've got uncapped, then it means you're not paying any extra, no matter how many of these you get.

Obviously, if you're willing to go with piracy, that's your choice. Same as it would be your choice to shoplift. No-one's telling you you must do so. I try to keep as legit as I possibly can, and with most of these sites it's not much more than doing torrents in any case - you wont save that much and have lots of aggravation because the file might be in some format your player can't handle, or not as good as it should be (e.g. cam recordings from within a cinema), lots of extra steps you need to go through just so you can finally watch the damned thing. No, for me, I'll pay the subs fees and have something I can simply point my remote at, click once, and sit back to relax & watch - but never again through DSTV thank you very much.

[irneb]

And another gripe I have with DSTV's comeback:

“Piracy promotes a culture of fraud and corruption and one should always look at the bigger picture, rather than focusing purely on our individual needs, as your article seems to do,”

Nope, your crappy exorbitant "service" promotes this culture. Piracy is the symptom, NOT the cause you dimwits!

[newBix]

I am a collector, I like shiny limited addition DVDs. I love the idea of owning something nice and my growing DVD collection is doing just that. I like to watch all the extra bits that is only found on the DVDs.

I also don’t need that bluray stuff. The players are more expensive and really no player last longer then a year.

[Sadness]

I can get uncapped internet for less than R700 a month, my Andriod/Zaap box will do better than what they offer. I dont worry about local sport as I'm not a sport fan. on these boxes I can watch series through XBMC.

I think DSTV is a waste of money too. I just hope the new kid on the block OVHD can acquire a lot more channels/licences to compete with them. Maybe they can catch a wake up.

[Justloadit]

What even annoys me more is the amount of adverts inserted during prime time viewing. If I was not a subscriber, and getting free viewing, I would accept the adverts bring in income, but paying for the service and still having to go through the adverts is extremely annoying. They are making double money, 1 from the subscription, and secondly from the TV advert. I have never managed to get an answer out of them about this, but there was some comment about the fact that all the shows re only 40 minutes long, and there for the adverts are fillers to make it 1 hour. I have on a few occasions timed it, and 7 minutes of show and about 5 minutes of adverts, so go figure - BS.
Fortunately with PVR, I usually place it on pause at the beginning of the show, go and do something for 20 minutes, then come back and view and fast forward past the adverts.

[irneb]

Two more indication that MonoChoice's days are numbered:

http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134575:Vox-Telecom-gives-away-a-million-megs-of-free-data-to-all-Samsung-Smart-TV-buyers&catid=77

http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/57983/is-vodacom-talking-to-netflix/

[Justloadit]

The main problem is that our ADSL lines into homes can not carry the speed to watch streaming video. Whilst Vodacom may use HSPDA to connect o your point, they may have a problem handling the volume of data through their network. Take the experiment Vodacom did on mothers day where they gave each subscriber 1G free, heck you could not get any useful download speeds because the network was overloaded with everyone trying to download.

[tec0]

So what of DSTV? They are basically an entertainment base system but that’s not all. So let’s be clear they own particular broadcasting rights, they have an advertisement income AND they have a Investment structure.

But there main income is sport. Is it not true that the sport channels are only available on there “premium subscription”? As far as I know it is true. Unfortunately sport is now the subject of controversy and this can only escalate. Will this be negative? Will this be positive? Only time can tell.

As mentioned here you can buy DVD’s cheaply and really the 3D experience at your local 3D Cinema is worth the money. If you haven’t done it please do it is a experience. Especially if the creators of the movies took the time to do it right.

I loved the movie need for speed, I enjoyed the new Spiderman release it was a spectacle! And I am looking forward to the new Godzilla that I will go watch next week. So why on earth do I want to spend almost a thousand rand EVERY MONTH on entertainment and I don’t get to keep the DVD OR get something as nice as the 3D experience?

With that type of money one can buy a nice entertainment system with online gaming capability a host of games and interactive technology. Active on the minute news and so on.

Consider how much you have paid already for your DSTV over the years. I never won anything from them I get a little decoder with no HD capability just a few normal inputs and you have constantly correct the widescreen... for your money that is just pathetic.

[HR Solutions]

Is it not true that the sport channels are only available on there “premium subscription

No this is not the case. Mnet is the only channel that is only available on the highest one (Premium) You can get sport on the lower packages. In fact I can get sport on my drifta when I am in CT, which is free for me because I have a dstv package back home, but would cost R29 if I just wanted to use the 16 channels including sport on the drifta.

[Justloadit]

The situation here is that with all this income they are able to block any new player coming into the market. Simply because they have lots of money they simply buy their programs at a higher cost, and demand exclusivity barring the competition. No new station can even attempt to compete, look at Pay TV, they can not grow because they can not afford to break the monopoly.

[tec0]

No this is not the case. Mnet is the only channel that is only available on the highest one (Premium) You can get sport on the lower packages. In fact I can get sport on my drifta when I am in CT, which is free for me because I have a dstv package back home, but would cost R29 if I just wanted to use the 16 channels including sport on the drifta.

The so called drivter doesn’t work in our area.

Ok as for sport, Go to compare-packages Have a look. Supper Sport 1 and Supper Sport 2 is not available on any of the options accept for the Premium for R665 Per month.

Those are the two channels you want. Actually have a look for yourself what is available where. If you look at the "Coverage" map you will be shocked to see it hasn't changed much over the years a few new arias...