Scrap DSTV Anyone?

[irneb]

I've just seen this: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadc...creases-2.html

To me, I'm starting to think DSTV isn't good enough and becoming way too expensive. I'm already only using it to see sports, the programming is always (at least) a year behind what I can get from streaming sites - and no, the cheapie options are not showing the sports I want to see (I've checked and been very irritated by them). And now the cost seems to equal my monthly internet anyway - so costwise it's starting to make sense to just discontinue my subscriptions. Can get most overseas sports through streaming sites, but local is a bit of a pain.

I'm starting to think it might be time to go watch sport at the local pub, they generally allow various channels on different areas. Except of course if there's a big game on - which I then want to check myself anyway. Perhaps the "cost" of going to the pub's going to eat into my budget though. Will have to think about it a bit I guess.

AFAICT "Single"Choice is going to see the same problems as many similar companies have already gone through overseas. If you can't compete against the price and quality of what's available on a web page, you're out of business pretty soon. Especially if the latest stuff in the news is going to happen - i.e. cheaper and faster ISP connections across SA. If I were them, I'd be going to court just as Vodacom/MTN is in order to try and stop the government from taking away their gravy train.

Anyone got any other ideas? Some way to get local sport through something cheaper than DSTV's offerings?

[newBix]

Nope DSTV is crazy expensive and there shows are so old it stinks. I myself buy cheap DVDs. As for sport? How well do you know your neighbours? I also like to collect boxsets when it comes to miniseries and you don’t get 30min worth of adverts. I also like sport but R700 a month? Hell no... News paper is much cheaper.

[irneb]

Meh - those increases are not exactly outrageous. R40 on Pemium = 6.4%

Yes, % isn't too great, but they were exorbitant to begin with. Especially if you look at the quality and timing of their programming.

I also like to collect boxsets when it comes to miniseries and you don’t get 30min worth of adverts.

Precisely! I can order a box set of nearly anything from somewhere like Amazon - and it would be seasons and/or episodes which haven't yet been aired on DSTV. Let alone ordering the electronic file from the same place, or subscribing to their online TV service.

Personally I prefer watching tv series this way. Get the entire season's episodes and then start watching it when you've got the time. It also does away with that itchy feeling when 2 episodes continue with a story - and you feel as if you simply can't wait! For local stuff this is presently the only option if not going through DSTV, but there's very few local series which even makes a blip on my interest scale. Although I don't always go this route - sometimes I just get the latest episode and be done with it.

Just look at the IMDB site to see what you might want to look for, I tend to use that site a lot to pick-n-choose only the very best - so I don't waste my time and bandwidth on some idiotic thing. They've even got links direct to online shops/online-TV "stations" from where you can then download/watch the movie/series. Tends to be at worst a day later than the original air date, but mostly it airs on these the very first time.

[irneb]

On the company's fibre line it's simply perfect. And I tried that site through my cell phone. Looks reasonable even on the 3G connection, so an ADSL might just be good enough. So yep - that means I don't even need to pay over and above the connection fee, which means to me at least DSTV is now a distant bad memory ... if I can cancel my sub of course!

[Dave A]

Meh - those increases are not exactly outrageous. R40 on Pemium = 6.4%
Bearing in mind the Rand slide, it could have been worse.

That said, your point on streaming content as an emerging competitor is certainly valid - at least if you've got the bandwidth to your door.

[Justloadit]

And what do they do with the exorbitant advert income they receive?
Over seas, if you pay cable TV, you have no adverts, that is why you pay.
If I was not paying a subscription, I would not mind the adverts, but paying subscription and still having to be bombarded with 5 to 7 minutes of adverts every 5 minutes of show, is being a bit over the edge.

[AndyD]

Agreed. I stopped just moaning about it and dumped DSTV about 5 years ago. The only reason I can see anyone paying the high subscription cost and suffering the adverts is if you're a big fan of local sports. I'm only a casual sport watcher so there wasn't enough value in it for me, I'd rather up my bandwidth package by a few hundred bucks and watch Netflix.

[irneb]

Agreed. I stopped just moaning about it and dumped DSTV about 5 years ago. The only reason I can see anyone paying the high subscription cost and suffering the adverts is if you're a big fan of local sports. I'm only a casual sport watcher so there wasn't enough value in it for me, I'd rather up my bandwidth package by a few hundred bucks and watch Netflix.

Just one query - did you have issues with them when you stopped. I know my brother had a problem when he moved. They wanted to charge him a second sub for the new house and not cancel the old one - while he had to fight for several months to explain that he's simply moving from one place to another, NOT getting a 2nd decoder even.

I'm just asking because I'm fearful they're just as bad as SABC who don't stop charging you even if you're dead.

[newBix]

Well I have a big decision to make because I am not planning on keeping my DSTV any longer. YES will miss my sport but for R700 “soon to be” a month HELL NO... as in HELL NO!!!

[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.