DStv HD capacity, channels, and plans

Pathetic, these guys are the #1 satelitte provider in Africa and they are making a boat load of cash because of lack of competitors...thats why NASPERS(owners) are buying internet firms in china and russia because of the excess cash from DStv yet the channels we receive here in Africa are syndicated/fake copies of the originals airing in europe/US/japan/china/S.Korea/Singapore/S.America/Canada etc...

In the developed countries you literally pay half of what DSTV charges plus at least 10+ HD channels(minimum!) these guys have millions of customers, tons of funds yet they give us BULL****, we dont even have HBO...no ShOWTIME? WHY? Because the fat cats dont want to pay license fees even though they have more than enough money to do.

Fuk...Africans, we have to stand up and say NO!
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I don't know if I agree with that. I go to visit family in Norway about once a year. The one thing they do have is a triple play service where they get 50mb/s internet, digital cable and unlimited land-line for a little more than the DSTV subscription here.

However, the quality is, IMHO, worse than DSTV. The local channels show the same shows DSTV channels show (though mostly in HD), there are no direct feeds of US channels (HBO, Showtime, etc.) and the sports and movies are way inferior. You can pay like R300/month extra for 3 movie channels, and you can choose bouquets for speciality stuff (foreign language, porn, kids stuff, etc) for even more money, which is nice for the choice, but the general quality of the offering is not as good.
 
Dyl106 said:
Imagine how many subscribers TT could get before 2 half of 2012 if they started launching HD channels ... though I'm not up to speed with whether or not they have bandwidth problems if HD were to be introduced??
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I did some digging few weeks ago about TopTV sat vs DStv sat. And in the long run TopTV has a chance of taking over especially when they launch HD.

One of TopTv shareholders is Ses Astra (formelly known as Sirius), so they are likely to look after there own investment.
TopTv uses MPEG4 encryption which compared to DStv's MPEG2, TTV can put up to x2.5-3 more channels if they where limited to DStv current bandwidth issue.
TopTv current satelite Astra 4 (formelly known as Sirius 4) is quite new, if I recall it was launched in 2007, which brings me to say: though Astra4 is new it's already going to be replaced with Sirius5/Astra4B in the third quarter of 2011.
 
I cant believe the next HD channel is ANOTHER Sports channel when they could have rather introduced a new genre like Animal Planet HD or National Geograhic HD!

xrapidx said:
Why?
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If I had to guess, Id say its so that the government can force you to pay your TV licence, because now you cant say that you only watch DSTV, because now DSTV includes SABC 1, 2, 3 and eTV
 
Arion said:
I cant believe the next HD channel is ANOTHER Sports channel when they could have rather introduced a new genre like Animal Planet HD or National Geograhic HD!



If I had to guess, Id say its so that the government can force you to pay your TV licence, because now you cant say that you only watch DSTV, because now DSTV includes SABC 1, 2, 3 and eTV
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I think your guess is wrong - you're not paying for the right to watch those channels.
 
mmmig said:
Why don't they change their broadcasting codecs?
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The decoder is made to the broadcasting codecs requirements. Only the HD pvr's are made to handle the new MPEG4 which is backward compatible with the old MPEG2. Changing the type of encryption would require replacing every single decoder dstv have sold (except for the HD PVR).

Edit: I see Toilet_Duck has already brought this forward.
 
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And the channel is going to be a 24hr Football channel. Soccer is not played 24/7 around the work and SS only has English Premier and I think German is back national leagues. Of course that have internationals as well but why must I watch the Stromers Super14 Semi final in SD whilst the FA Cup is being rebroadcast on HD and MNETHD is broadcasting Road to the WC or something. Sure the channels should cover the LIVE stuff and stop this dedicated channel of repeats. Maybe they want to include the Football HD in the compact bouquet as the HD SS3 other than that there is no sense in it.
 
Quantum Theory said:
Only HD's support DVB-S2, which is 8PSK modulation with MPEG4 compression. They will probably release a DVB-S2 capable single decoder soon, wait a few years till it's the norm, then change their broadcasting standards. That would be the right way to do it...
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The HD Decoder is what I am talking about. If it supports MPEG 4 already, H264 is a version of MPEG4.
 
tsume said:
I did some digging few weeks ago about TopTV sat vs DStv sat. And in the long run TopTV has a chance of taking over especially when they launch HD.

One of TopTv shareholders is Ses Astra (formelly known as Sirius), so they are likely to look after there own investment.
TopTv uses MPEG4 encryption which compared to DStv's MPEG2, TTV can put up to x2.5-3 more channels if they where limited to DStv current bandwidth issue.
TopTv current satelite Astra 4 (formelly known as Sirius 4) is quite new, if I recall it was launched in 2007, which brings me to say: though Astra4 is new it's already going to be replaced with Sirius5/Astra4B in the third quarter of 2011.
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You might wanna double check all that "digging".
 
durbandave said:
The HD Decoder is what I am talking about. If it supports MPEG 4 already, H264 is a version of MPEG4.
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But they are broadcasting the HD channels in MPEG4, though they are still using QPSK modulation. Rumour was that all the HD channels was going to be on 8PSK transponders, which never happened. They are currently spread over 3 different QPSK transponders. They had an 8PSK test transponder up on 11090 H, which then turned back to QPSK and is now turned off. Don't know what they are planning, but I know that they still have options left to expand a little before 2012.
 
Wake up Monochoice and plan ahead.

Kilgore_Trout_Redux said:
The problem is that most of the content on DSTV is ancient repeats of programs 5-10 years old. Of course they are having issues finding HD content.

Multichoice has obviously made the choice of going for quantity rather than quality.
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Monochoice are using MPEG4-AVC/h264/DVB-S2 for HD.
This requires about the same bandwidth as SD which uses MPEG2/DVB-S1!

There is no shortage of HD content - even from 5-10 years ago.
BluRay disks are all HD, mostly 1080p
Have you seen the list of BluRay disks available - lots of movies more than 5-10years old, the 2006 Football World Cup was HD.

Monochoice has to be more forward thinking.
They don't have a plan/product to cost efficiently migrate exiting customers to HD.
They are stuck broadcasting both HD and SD content - because they have lots of customers who can't afford the the full HD-PVR experience.
They should have launched a basic HD decoder (1110-HD - no PVR) that can receive MPEG4-AVC/h264/DVB-S2, that costs R500 to replaces the 1110.
This should have been launched in Oct 2008 with the HD-PVR.
They should stop selling the 1110 and offer an incentive to existing customers to upgrade to the 1110-HD.
This would allow DSTV to migrate existing customers that can't afford the LCD/Plasma/5.1 setup,
and ultimately save on dual broadcasts.

WS is just as important as HD, Monochoice should be broadcasting SD content in WS and not letterbox.
The decoder should the adjust the output to WS/Letterbox based on the customers TV.
The aspect ratio should be done in the decoder - not in the transmission!

Since Oct 2008, DSTV have launched 3 (now 4) HD channels and in the same time they have launched more than 15 SD - and guess what they are all legacy 4x3 NON WS - even though the content is available as WS - eg. BBC-K, IGNTN, Discovery-W, VUZE, UniCH, Mzansi, etc.

There is no excuse to promote legacy technology in 2010.

We are paying premium prices and getting basic product.
I was in Portugal in Apr, and there you get can get 10HD + 30SD + ADSL + Internet 30G + Local Calls for the same price as DSTV.

Wake up Monochoice and plan ahead and cut out the BS - not all your customers are stupid.
 
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What an astonishing showcase of intelligence in this thread.

I guess google is no ones friend anymore.
 
I guess the wait shouldn't be too hectic. I doubt more than half of DStv's subscriber base have HD Ready let alone Full HD screens. IMHO I think when they eventually launch the new satellite the majority of subscribers will been drooling over their Full HD screens.
 
This was just posted on the DStv forums ...

Please note that the article written by My Broadband was not checked through us and therefore contains several factual inaccuracies.
As you know, MultiChoice continually looks for ways to add more value for our subscribers, which includes introducing new channels on an ongoing basis.
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