Dear DStv - technical faults thread

How do you rate the DStv service *technically* ?

  • 10 (Best)

    Votes: 4 1.6%

  • 9

    Votes: 6 2.4%

  • 8

    Votes: 6 2.4%

  • 7

    Votes: 8 3.2%

  • 6

    Votes: 10 4.0%

  • 5

    Votes: 15 6.0%

  • 4

    Votes: 18 7.2%

  • 3

    Votes: 32 12.9%

  • 2

    Votes: 17 6.8%

  • 1 (Worst)

    Votes: 133 53.4%
  • Total voters
    249
Captain Beer said:
Jirre the DStv forum is a blast from the past. I remember going on a tour there around 15 years ago courtesy of MC Phil. That type of interaction would never happen nowadays, how far corporate SA has fallen :confused:
I recently had to contact their call center due to an ongoing audio issue on 203, it was a complete dead end. The lady on the other end of the line had no idea why I was bothering her with this, when I asked her to escalate it I was told to call again the next day as the office was closed :rolleyes:
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Ah good old DSTv forum nostalgia. The SD PVR was already pretty obsolete and problematic in 2012 due to hardware limitations on memory I recall. Random reboots where a big issue.
Was an Amazing decoder back in 2005 when I was a young lad.

Even the 2 Tuner Pace HD PVR started to struggle around 2018.

They should have just had a more unified developer and software platform among decoder models and things would have been so much easier for them from a support perspective.

Everything installation wise was just always insanely complicated for no good reason that I just dont miss it at all! They basically made a support nightmare for themselves.
 
Brian_G said:
Explora 1 - Box Office listings & access is in 3 places; main BO section, Home page, and Catch Up Featured page.

How is it possible that the software is so badly coordinated that these sections ALL differ at times??
Like today, there's one less BO title reflected on the Home page, and it's missing at least 2 thumbnail posters.

Wow :unsure:
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What baffles me is why certain local Mnet/Kyknet shows have taken up to 6-7 days to appear on CU!! It defeats the purpose of CU.

The following week the same show is available within minutes after show airs?
 
LOts of service Auth errors today, E16 on all channels, channels dropping off the list mid-program, reboot not fixing it, broken XV link. ----- It is an absolute mess since about midday today.
 
Louis72 said:
Ah good old DSTv forum nostalgia. The SD PVR was already pretty obsolete and problematic in 2012 due to hardware limitations on memory I recall. Random reboots where a big issue.
Was an Amazing decoder back in 2005 when I was a young lad.
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There's quite a few fans of it on this forum too, some even helped test it. And believe it or not it's still in use... although too much of a struggle now without some good reason here, it's still popular in Rest Of Africa (ROA) though that's as a slightly different model which may mean better memory for them.
 
twr said:
Asking in behalf if my folks.thry have pvr maybe 5 years old. They are battling to change channels volume etc, so they went to get a new remote but still bot helping. Could it be the actual dstv box? Would it be the receiver side side or itsself? It changes the channels perfect when you do it manually on the box itself but battling with the remote?

Any ideas what to do
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Hi the best way to test if the remote is working is to use your cellphone camera in front of the remote while pushing the remote buttons the camera can see the light emited by the remote
 
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Hope you all have been keeping an eye on your 115 recordings. I had to rerecord every episode of Macgyver shown last week (manually) because there was about 5 min missing at the end of each episodes. The issue started on episode 9. I just got the endings to Walker and the week before that I had rerecord (manually) episodes of Macgyver, Walker and Station 19 because of what we call fake or ghost recording. (When the red recording light is on the explora, but in reality nothing or little has been recorded.)

DStv is really ending 115 in true Multichoice fashion. Can't wait to see the stuff up for ME.
 
Online seems to be luck of timing, I've been okay this week there. Except the often missing search facility on the older guide again, they don't seem to ever realise that it's the only way to search the second week..

(Try using the newer guide to search, it looks at their website instead of the guide info - idiots!)
 
115 Me channel info now available on the old online guide and my Exploda, not yet on the new online guide or my older decoders.

Edit: Besides Fri. movie continuing, now has a Sun. movie too.
 
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Does anyone know why showmax and CU content are displayed in letterbox format? I thought this was a thing of the past.

TV in question is a 4k display but DSTV decoders don't support that so it scaled down to 1080p.
 
Rickster said:
Does anyone know why showmax and CU content are displayed in letterbox format? I thought this was a thing of the past.

TV in question is a 4k display but DSTV decoders don't support that so it scaled down to 1080p.
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Not sure what you mean, SM and CU on Exploras are in the aspect ratio of your choice like broadcast content as well, and that adjusted in the menus. Letterbox will be with us for ages still, but you'll want to adjust to Pillarbox if not on that and that should have been the default setting.

If you mean some actual content being "letterboxed", that will be due to source. Not all older content has been adjusted. Sometimes mistakes are made as well, typically done by some smaller channels and MC still mess that up occasionally.

BTW, presuming your TV is 50" or bigger the recommended setting for decoder-DStv is 1080i , smaller TV's work best with 720p.
Edit: Based on the satellite feeds, can't comment on new streaming-only Exploras but presume they may offer 1080p or plan to.
 
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Nice new discovery re middle-of-the-night recording issues - I've now seen a few times that MC are making some channels E18 for 1 minute at 02:00. There's no definite days they do this and which channels it's done to follows no pattern, but the time is consistent.

E18 will cut the live TV feed but it doesn't seem to affect recordings themselves as E16 would, or isn't supposed to. Only seen on older decoders, but clearly has some effect on all.

Another fiddle sometimes happens at 06:00 or close to that, and in this case I think it is a short period of E16 but haven't monitored it.
 
Rickster said:
Does anyone know why showmax and CU content are displayed in letterbox format? I thought this was a thing of the past.

TV in question is a 4k display but DSTV decoders don't support that so it scaled down to 1080p.
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Can you give us some examples of the content you are referring to? Some movies and even series are filmed in an aspect ratio even wider than 16:9 and if those are shown in their original aspect ration on a 16:9 TV there will be (relatively small) black bars at the top & bottom.
 
This is a handy guide for setting the correct aspect ratio on a 16:9 (Widescreen TV) to watch content recorded in differing aspect ratios with the correct proportions - so people don't appear 'squashed' or 'stretched'...

Top image - conventional 16:9 content (most modern 21st century TV shows)
Picture fills the screen without any distortion of the image

Bottom left image - Older 4:3 Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV content (mostly found on pre-21st century TV shows)
Picture displays with wide vertical black bars on each side (Pillarbox format) so that the image is not 'stretched horizontally' and people look like dwarves with Halloween pumpkin shapes for their bodies & heads... ;)

Bottom right image - Cinemascope (21:9) movie format content (utilised for most classic & modern movies)
Picture displays with thin black bars at the top & bottom of the image (Letterbox format) and people are displayed with their correct proportions and not 'stretched vertically' with impossibly tall & thin 'alien' bodies & heads... ;)

e77785b0677311e88b57a32f0362b437.png
 
I noticed three new issues this morning on DSTVNow...

1. When you try and select any live TV channel, it now seems to throw up the 'Unable to Play This Content' error message TWICE, before it eventually begins to actually stream the content.

2. It appears that, even if you have set the Quality to LOW (up to 360p), once you have closed your browser & then re-load a new DSTVNow session, it now automatically defaults back to HIGH (up to 1080p) & you have to then reset it manually back to LOW again.

3. This morning's episode of 'Father Brown' on BBC Brit (Ch.120) - and the preceding programme as well - 'Tipping Point' - both have a vertical scroll bar visible on the right side of the screen, even when you select the 'maximised' (full screen) setting, and the programme title STILL displays as UNKNOWN.

1635910044288.png
 
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Ivan Leon said:
Looks like the DSTVNow server has lost the Programme Title captioning from the Discovery Channel feed (Ch.121) - this is what currently appears for 'Baggage Battles'...

View attachment 1180160
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Last night also saw that about half a dozen channels didn't have a name or even a proper containment box.

Ivan Leon said:
I noticed three new issues this morning on DSTVNow...

1. When you try and select any live TV channel, it now seems to throw up the 'Unable to Play This Content' error message TWICE, before it eventually begins to actually stream the content.
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In my case it played it on second attempt.

Also seen while on a non-Premium login - Premium content again (happened before) although you can't actually play the extra channels, and does then reset itself correctly.



This thread has been going for nearly 6 months now, yet there's still newer issues to report every couple of days. Hope MC are proud of that.......
 
Changed a contact detail with MC yesterday, 24 hours later it still doesn't reflect on their website. Now trying to use Instant Chat for that, 15 minutes later and not a word yet.
 
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