Altron gives up on the Altech Node

[Kevin Lancaster]

Altron gives up on the Altech Node

Altron is selling its Altech Node business due to a “poor uptake by retail customers”.

 

[Ecco]

Not good to see, guess Multichoice are smiling.

 

[MickeyD]

Bryn called it last year...

The Node is going to tank eventually. Our market isn't big enough for such a device.

I wouldn't say that. We don't have the broadband infrastructure for everyone to stream just yet, but something satellite based like this would work 100s.

It's just that cost barrier to entry...

 

[Bryn]

Bryn called it last year...

Brings me no joy, but it was the reality of the situation.

 

[Nerfherder]

Brings me no joy, but it was the reality of the situation.

Sucks but its probably ahead of its time.

Cost way too much and wasn't viable as a DSTV replacement because : No Sport

 

[Lawnchairman]

Not good to see, guess Multichoice are smiling.

The pundits on mybb called it. This is what happens when you don't do proper market research. Can E-tv or Starsat acquire them to rollout "proper services"

 

[Nerfherder]

ehhhh?

The only people I have heard say that works for Altech. The device is a pure piece of ****. All the components just plug into the motherboard, so now the device is useless, everyone that bought one, now has a HDD, 3G dongle and Wifi dongle. Woohoo!

Yes, I have experience with the things. I've played around with them. And they absolutely suck.

OK, was commenting on the concept not the hardware. I have no experience with the hardware. Anyway... It was an overpriced device, comment stands.

 

[Sm00thSm0k3]

I also saw this coming eventually....

Yes they didn't offer sport and yes the device was way too expensive compared to even Multichoice's "premium" Explora but the Node's biggest downfall was CONTENT...or the lack thereof.

The reality is, offering "new release" movies that are actually more than a year old and TV shows that are either completely unknown or are 5+ years old or 4+ seasons behind was never going to cut it. At the price they were selling the Node they should have offered the latest and greatest shows.

Simple case of over-spending on R&D (home automation and integration? WTF for?) of the device and under-spending on content.

 

[JStrike]

I know dozens of people with the Apple TV. Not a single one with this horrible offering from Altech

 

[Chris.Geerdts]

I agree.

In Nov I also had a comment on mybb

If the 66 000 Netflix user in SA estimate in SA is correct (vs the estimated 150 Altech Node users) it also highlights how behind both the operators and the regulator are in their grip of reality.

It's frustrating, because with a few product management principles brought to bear in the design, they could have really produced a winner.

 

[Bighit]

Does anyone own one?

 

[The_Ogre]

Called it as well:

I have DSTV Premium, Netflix and Hulu+, but I'll admit If I had the money, I'd have bought it. Not for the content. but for automation stuff...and because I'm a gadget freak.

That being said, R3500 is an enormous amount of money for what this device is; a set-top box. They'll need to half that price (at least) to generate interest. What they should have done is sell this thing at a loss (like DSTV is doing with their new decoder) to get consumers to "bite".

Once the consumer got used to the Node underneath his TV, hopefully it'll be too inconvenient to cancel - although, knowing Altech they'll probably give people a Cancellation Telephone Number which doesn't exist

But in all seriousness, they need to re look at their business model. They have (had?) the opportunity to redeem themselves and, as is the norm with them, they're messing it up.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

"Cost barrier to entry" sums it all up.

I had a look at it, figured out what it was, and decided to pass due to the high data costs.

 

[grok]

Knew this was going to happen all along, dat price for dat content? Don't think so.

 

[Sonic2k]

Does anyone own one?

Had one, sold it... piece of crap!

 

[Lazy]

I realize that I'm sitting on the sideline and throwing peanuts but really, what did they expect given what they offered?

I had the very same thing with DSTv this week, where my wife wanted to watch an episode of something, but only episodes 1 and 3 were available, 2 wasn't available. So I was told that it's available online, to which I replied, great, Netflix, Hulu, Project Free TV, Torrents, etc are my real options, thanks. Useless offerings really aren't offerings at all and consumers will figure it out sooner rather than later.

So in this way, I never saw Altech as being a serious contender, rather, they were hopping on to the bandwagon and it didn't work. Bleh. I expect more of this kind of thing with quite a few other offerings not just related to TV...

 

[kamikazi]

Being stuck on slow internet and not having much success with streaming, we looked into the Node for a while. The high device acquisition costs coupled with the uncertainty on whether the platform was going to be a success and how little information and sales people knew about it gave me cold feet.

It was a great idea for a transition platform e.g. satellite users to streaming service, but the execution and content was very poor. Ultimately we need faster internet, now on 10Mbps ADSL and streaming works much much better.

 

[ThinkCentre]

Price to buy and to run way too unrealistic and does not work with Apple else would buy one now!

 

[diabolus]

I have one, i still enjoy it though. I mostly use the movie-rental service, since my internet streaming (i'm with afrihost) are not able to stream HD movies on-demand when i want to. So a satellite based service that pre-downloads all the blockbuster movies in advance definitely worked out great for my movie fix.

That said, the tv series part (which is a subscription based service) i felt is overpriced for what you get, the series are ancient. I did get a kick out of watching A-Team / Magnum PI / Stargate and the older seasons of The Office / Mad Men / Breaking Bad , but i could see they were being cheap on the options going forward. At this point their "series" is alot of these sport/documentary type of stuff and primarily series that came out before 2012.

The whole home automation part of the node, i think they spend way too much energy/money on this "feature" , i could never use it as you need to buy specific equipment and in the end it's most likely just too complicated for the average joe to utilize.

The decoder itself is totally overpriced as a result of all these extra features, even the built in 3G-modem probably added another R500+ to the price . I suppose the 3G is necessary for all the home automation (ability to send/receive SMS) and to authenticate purchases and such, but they probably should have considered splitting this into a separate box.

Overall, i still think there's a big gap in the market with regards to satellite movie/series content that are on-par with DSTV boxoffice/MNet Series . I did enjoy not having any adverts on the node, you can binge watch the series on-demand , which was pretty great (if you do find a series you enjoy). This setup can still work if it's cheaper and the content handled differently , i.e. either it's newer content or it needs to be alot cheaper.

I definitely still intend to use my Node for the Movie rentals (works exactly like DSTV Box Office, you pay per rental). However it's highly debatable whether the subscription content (tv series and very old movies) is worth it.

Another nice feature is, my Xbox One are able to treat my node as "TV" content, and such i can use the TV App to watch the content while actually being on my Xbox One (this implies you can put up your tv content on a side panel on the tv, while browsing the web/playing games etc etc).

 

[ThinkCentre]

The movies etc. look a bit dated on the website. It seems that, even with the monthly subscription of R299, allow you to watch the "latest" stuff either!