Multichoice. Where is my DStv series recording?

Multichoice takes a lot of flack, for the endless repeats, for the high cost, for the electronic programme guide (EPG) that is about as accurate as a long-range weather forecast.

OK maybe I am being a little harsh about the EPG, although it really needs a bit more reliability. The number of times when programs change and the EPG is not updated to reflect it and you end up watching Poena is Koning instead of Transformers, is enough to drive a grown man to tears.

The introduction of the PVR, however, created an expectation of services that were to come but the problem with MultiChoice is that it seems unable or unwilling to deliver services on a schedule.

The biggest gripe is the lack of series recording on the PVR or the HD PVR. Despite this feature being available in multiple international locations through services such as Tivo and decoders provided by other pay-tv providers. In case we forget this was in 2005, four and a half years ago. For those who don’t know what series recording is, it is the option to tell your PVR to record all episodes in a specific series, thus saving you the task of having to set it to record CSI every week.

In between now and then the company has been working on bringing series recording to the PVR, but for some reason it has never made it out of the test phase and into the hands of ordinary subscribers.

On the one hand I recognise that MultiChoice does not want to release a product that does not work properly, this would only create a lot of unhappy subscribers and in turn a lot of unhappy call centre agents as they have to field complaints.

On the other hand, how long does it take to deliver a single piece of technology onto a controlled platform. There are only 2 PVR platforms out there at the moment and MultiChoice has complete control over the code that resides on those devices. We are not asking them to do something that has never been done before, but rather just take a concept that has been executed in numerous devices overseas and make it work here. Surely a properly funded team of developers would be able to do that in, let’s say, 12 months. So why has it taken over four years to get us something that many other parts of the world take for granted.

This is my theory.

One: there are various parts of the MultiChoice platform that the PVR developers do not have control over, most specifically the EPG and so they had to dance the corporate dance to get changes made over there.

Two: They didn’t have enough developers or the right set of skills to get the job done and this created delays.

Three: They pulled a whole lot of developers off work on the SD PVR to work on the HD PVR (which was buggy as hell when it launched anyway).

Any one of these could have resulted in significant delays and contributed to or caused the non-arrival of series recording.

I hear that the developers at MultiChoice have not abandoned the quest for a series recording function on our PVRs and it might form part of some future update. However, given the unreliability of any time frames ever given by the organisation I can’t help wondering if this will only ever see the light of day when someone else starts to steal subscribers from MultiChoice.

So in another four years maybe, or when we see Duke Nukem Forever released.

MultiChoice DSTV series recording - comments and views