DStv 4K will only be available on Explora Ultra and Streama

TelkomUseless said:
And after the world cup it would useless. No other 4k channels etc.

They do like to make their customers spend money on crap.
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Because watching the repeat of people selling the contents of abandoned storage lockers really requires 4K. You might miss a real gem in HD :)
 
My issue with their streaming - and yes I would never buy "their" streaming box, is the 30 second to 1 min delay on streamed sports feeds. Nothing is more frustrating than watching a match while travelling, only to have my mates group most of whom are watching on DSTV satellite feeds at home posting whoooo great goal or, arrrggh definitely penalty, before I have even seen the incident. This is normally while on a business fiber somewhere watching off my laptop in browser but I have experienced it on a 4k apple tv box (about the best, normally around 30 seconds), and on miboxes. Not to talk about the regular quality drops - something I never experience when I watching netflix directly after whatever game I am watching.
 
They come with all this new crap yet they can't sort out channel 101 not working on streaming on a smart tv.
 
Back in the day, I bought a DStv Dual View Decoder! It was selling for an arm and a leg! I regretted selling my arm and a leg ever since, coz they then started selling a PVR, that also cost an arm and a leg! Luckily I am not a sports fan. With regard to international news I know where to get Sky News, Al Jazeera, France 24, TRT World, Africans, NHK World, etc. Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video etc. YouTube. keep the family happy!
 
midasza said:
My issue with their streaming - and yes I would never buy "their" streaming box, is the 30 second to 1 min delay on streamed sports feeds. Nothing is more frustrating than watching a match while travelling, only to have my mates group most of whom are watching on DSTV satellite feeds at home posting whoooo great goal or, arrrggh definitely penalty, before I have even seen the incident. This is normally while on a business fiber somewhere watching off my laptop in browser but I have experienced it on a 4k apple tv box (about the best, normally around 30 seconds), and on miboxes. Not to talk about the regular quality drops - something I never experience when I watching netflix directly after whatever game I am watching.
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Streaming is always behind live TV. Not just a DStv issue.
 
Adenoid Hynkel said:
Streaming is always behind live TV. Not just a DStv issue.
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I am sorry thats just not true. Streamed F1 tv is exactly the same time or with in a few seconds of the Satellite feed, and this is a fairly easy one to check as race starts are one the hour precisely.
Also streamed signal should be much closer to the same time in South Africa as satellite feed. Let's assume this is a Premier League soccer match. Feed from the football ground is fed to Sky's offices via fiber feed. From there it is either streamed to multichoice via fiber or uploaded to multichoice via satellite feed. Lets guess worst case scenario - 30ms for the feed from ground to Sky, 500ms from Sky to Multichoice. Multichoice then encode the stream with their proprietary magic sauce (aka encryption), and upload it to their KU band satellite feed and I receive it on my dish, adding another 500ms time to delivery to my tv. Assuming there is some processing time inside the decoder and at Sky and at Multichoice lets be generous and say its 30ms plus 500ms, plus 500ms plus 1s for processing and 270ms for shits and giggles equals out at 3s from football ground to my TV. Amazing. Great. Lets to the maths for streaming. Lets say the delivery methodology to Multichoice is the exact same way so it take 530ms to get to their Randburg Office, as a 1080p digital stream. All they need to do is put their proprietary magic sauce (aka encryption) on it and pump out to my internet provider and into my TV. So lets to the maths. 30ms plus 500ms plus ?? processing time plus 30ms plus lets be generous and say 2s for my tv to decrypt the stream (that would be slow but ok). That still puts us at 3.530 seconds not including DSTV's encryption time. So why are we easily always 30seconds to a minute behind on streaming? Probably because DSTV can't encrypt the stream fast enough, doesn't have enough bandwidth to handle all the streams or some other cost saving exercise on their side.

I googled Sky streaming lag and got to this thread where people were complaining that the soccer is 30 seconds behind for them on streaming and its never been like that before and most of the rest of the people agreeing its normally 5 to 10 seconds max behind the TV.
https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Q/Streaming-lags-behind-live-tv/td-p/3984383

Now this a figure I can believe, 5s in a perfect world where all the devices have hardware decoding of the codecs, good internet, cabled or great wifi and 10s when its the cheapy box. And agreed its not a new problem. BT Sports in the UK - people are complaining about the same thing but as per this article.

www.bbc.co.uk

Reducing latency - video streaming without the delay

Streamed video is often seconds behind broadcast TV. Can we reduce the delay?
www.bbc.co.uk
BBC seem to have solutions for it for iplayer.

So it seems DSTV either wont spend on the newest kit, don't want to figure out if I have a fast or slow internet so assume everyone is streaming on a 512kb/s adsl line and there needs 30 seconds of buffer but it will be super interesting to see if their streama product where they can control almost everything from end to end (the box can do a speed and latency test and report back to the mothership.

But unlike the UK I don't have any legal solutions to watch PL matches other than DSTV in South Africa. I don't get to choose BT Sports, or ClubTV App or Sky Satellite or Sky Streaming. And before people shout Showmax Pro - that's still DSTV I assume the same delay exists there, and it doesn't have rugby or tennis or tour de fance or ...
 
It's coming online...
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Why don't they enable 1080p and 4k for website viewing? Why cap it at 720p?
 
cavedog said:
They use Akamai so it shouldn't be a problem. I think they are using it to rather push people to use their devices like decoders and the streama something device.
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Works on my LG TV app, 4k test channel not coming up on explora ultra yet (dunno about the app) Phone app has test channel but it says watch on tv if I try to watch there. Also no setting for 4k on mobile
 
Tector said:
Works on my LG TV app, 4k test channel not coming up on explora ultra yet (dunno about the app) Phone app has test channel but it says watch on tv if I try to watch there. Also no setting for 4k on mobile
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It's not showing on my phone or android tv app :-(
 
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