Business as usual for DSTV

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rpm

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Business as usual for DSTV

IPTV is all but here and new offerings beamed to your computer are a practical reality. As organisations like Telkom Media gear up to compete in the broadcasting arena, MyBroadband asked that stalwart of the industry DSTV quo vadis? The answers were a little surprising and clearly indicate that Multichoice is a company which is quite confident in its value proposition.
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My 2 cents

There has to be ONE and only ONE top box capable of integrating all providers services

My gripe with DSTV is that as a Premium customer (R500+ monthly subscription), I still have to dish out R3500 + to get the top box, which comes with no adequate support or upgrade plan, aside from being rather inferior in comparason to alternative producst avalible abroad.
Their expectation seems to be that on top of monthly subscription consumer still has to bare costs of development distribution and support their proprietary equipment which is in no way cross compatible with anything else.

Moral of the story, I will not buy anything form anyone unless is compatible with ALL the service providers.
 
Last edited:
DblD said:
My 2 cents

There has to be ONE and only ONE top box capable of integrating all providers services
...
Moral of the story, I will not buy anything form anyone unless is compatible with ALL the service providers.
Click to expand...

And what happens if the technologies are not compatible? E.g. DSTV == DVB-S (with CI/CAM), IPTV == Ethernet to whatever broadband (ADSL, etc), another may == DVB-T (with CI/CAM).

Are you suggesting that each provider should sell something that includes all of these technologies? Fat chance!

As a tech-savvy consumer, I'd love it if everything used standards-compliant tech, so that I can get my own decoder/PVR/whatever from wherever I choose, but the likelihood of that seems remote at best.

At this stage, there doesn't even seem to be any clarity on how the digital terrestrial broadcast will work, and that is supposed to be switched on some time this year! The trials have been pure DVB-T to the best of my knowledge, but SABC is also talking about Conditional Access, probably to force people to pay their TV licenses.
 
With the advent of IPTV, licensed broadcasters will change the very nature of the game as viewers will be able to choose what and when they want to see (and even on which device, from a cellphone to a giant HDTV plasma screen). Problem is, the critical link is an at-least 10-meg line into the home. Neotel, perhaps?
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I wouldn't hold my breath. By the time Neotel get this right the cellphone operators will probably have 100mbps 5G wireless or something...

100 days. All this is 100 days away :sick:
 
I think that the compatibility question was refering to the other satelite providers.
Yes they should all support one device.

I would rather have cable TV though... i'm sick of satelite
 
DblD said:
My 2 cents

There has to be ONE and only ONE top box capable of integrating all providers services

My gripe with DSTV is that as a Premium customer (R500+ monthly subscription), I still have to dish out R3500 + to get the top box, which comes with no adequate support or upgrade plan, aside from being rather inferior in comparason to alternative producst avalible abroad.
Their expectation seems to be that on top of monthly subscription consumer still has to bare costs of development distribution and support their proprietary equipment which is in no way cross compatible with anything else.

Moral of the story, I will not buy anything form anyone unless is compatible with ALL the service providers.
Click to expand...

Agreed, I have lost a lot of money to these suckers, first it was the MNet decoder, then the dual view, and then the pvr. Now we're talking high definition. This relationship is costing me. If they value our inputs, why don't they do something about this as well:confused:
 
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