DStv On Demand avaialble on more ISPs

What I still don't get is how they don't simply offer the service hosted online, requiring a username/password, allowing only one concurrent connection per account...

Why only on certain ISPs?
...and don't tell me licensing blablabla... because how does Hulu do it?

I work in China quite regularly, and would love to be able to catch up on sports from there by simply logging into my Premium account onto their servers.

Multichoice is always so keen to jump on new technologies, but they do that before they've even perfected their standard offerings. Do it properly, or rather just leave it!
 
jacauc said:
What I still don't get is how they don't simply offer the service hosted online, requiring a username/password, allowing only one concurrent connection per account...

Why only on certain ISPs?
...and don't tell me licensing blablabla... because how does Hulu do it?

I work in China quite regularly, and would love to be able to catch up on sports from there by simply logging into my Premium account onto their servers.

Multichoice is always so keen to jump on new technologies, but they do that before they've even perfected their standard offerings. Do it properly, or rather just leave it!
Click to expand...
They are using this to help them get peering up with other ISPs. You will notice that the list of ISPs in this news article are probably already peering with M-Web at JINX or will soon, and maybe later at CINX. The idea is, they don't want to buy transit for this service, peering is usually free and as such that is probably the requirement. I remember reading this or something suggesting this in a earlier article.

However, once you have signed up for this you can potentially use it on any network, unless they actually firewall it off and only allow the ISPs that peer with them.
 
Tinuva said:
However, once you have signed up for this you can potentially use it on any network, unless they actually firewall it off and only allow the ISPs that peer with them.
Click to expand...

Yep, firewalled...guess they just check the IP range.
"This service is only available within South Africa. If you feel that you received this message in error please ...."

:(

I am an authenticated, legal, premium paying, smartcard holding, legal south african. How many more checks do they need?
 
jacauc said:
What I still don't get is how they don't simply offer the service hosted online, requiring a username/password, allowing only one concurrent connection per account...

Why only on certain ISPs?
...and don't tell me licensing blablabla... because how does Hulu do it?

I work in China quite regularly, and would love to be able to catch up on sports from there by simply logging into my Premium account onto their servers.

Multichoice is always so keen to jump on new technologies, but they do that before they've even perfected their standard offerings. Do it properly, or rather just leave it!
Click to expand...

The reason they force local peering is price. If they open up their service to all ISPs, and those ISPs don't have local peering then traffic will actually go from their network to the telkom network, and from there back to whoever requested the file. That means using telkom IPconnect, and that means hundreds of thousands of rands a month.

Now, by forcing local peering the traffic is directly transfered from MWeb to whoever they peer with. No IPConnect involved. That means it is more affordable. Just cause bandwidth is cheap overseas does not mean we can use overseas models in SA :(
 
The thing that does't make sense about this is:

people that already have PC's and uncapped ADSL will likely have signed up for those services so that they can get torrents etc (otherwise why pay extra for uncapped if all you're going to do with it is regular browsing?)

That implies they already have the shows that DSTV has (along with lots more shows that DSTV doesn't have), but have them before DSTV shows them and with better quality, so they really couldn't be bothered if they missed it on TV.

So what could they be offering that makes this worthwhile? sport?? :confused:
 
Been trying to download a movie from them - keeps failing for some reason -_-
Downloaded one episode successfully though, at full tilt 420+Kb/s
 
You guys keep bashing every possible thing a company tries to do. With the current state of internet affairs this is the best any company will be able to do with a On demand service. Through this they are also learning and able to test their online capabilities then when the time comes that SA internet is able to offer true On Demand services they will be ready.

If you think this is a crap service then please explain how they can improve it and maybe they will listen.
 
TheGuy said:
You guys keep bashing every possible thing a company tries to do. With the current state of internet affairs this is the best any company will be able to do with a On demand service. Through this they are also learning and able to test their online capabilities then when the time comes that SA internet is able to offer true On Demand services they will be ready.

If you think this is a crap service then please explain how they can improve it and maybe they will listen.
Click to expand...

I have no complaints... but then I get all my entertainment elsewhere on the web. :D

DSTV can take their R600 a month subscription fee and file it under "Forget It".
 
TheGuy said:
If you think this is a crap service then please explain how they can improve it and maybe they will listen.
Click to expand...
Crappy content doesn't improve just because its available On Demand. Nothing wrong with the tech itself.
 
Oh Geez!

SERVICE PROVIDERS WHO MEET OUR STANDARDS = SERVICE PROVIDERS WILLING TO GIVE KICKBACKS TO DSTV.
 
i agree if the quality was better i might bother to look at it.
 
eh, i think they trying to reduce international bandwidth usage by providing on demand from DSTV, but i dont think will work out, muppychoice to greedy end of the day. but would just like to thank Cybersmart for future DSTV, but if i were them i would first run a questionnaire how many clients got DSTV premium .
 
6ghost said:
eh, i think they trying to reduce international bandwidth usage by providing on demand from DSTV, but i dont think will work out, muppychoice to greedy end of the day. but would just like to thank Cybersmart for future DSTV, but if i were them i would first run a questionnaire how many clients got DSTV premium .
Click to expand...

My suspicion is they are using this to force ISPs to peer with them as it will bring down IPC costs. Take for instance IS most of the traffic in SA goes to IS as that's where most of the websites are hosted. If they can pear with IS it means they will use a lot less of Telkom's IPC which in turn will make their uncapped offerings a lot more profitable.

One thing I'm wondering about if I have for instance a IS account and was able to download from DSTV on demand. Will IS pay Mweb, vice versa or will they both be paying Telkom for the IPC link provided?
 
TheGuy said:
My suspicion is they are using this to force ISPs to peer with them as it will bring down IPC costs. Take for instance IS most of the traffic in SA goes to IS as that's where most of the websites are hosted. If they can pear with IS it means they will use a lot less of Telkom's IPC which in turn will make their uncapped offerings a lot more profitable.

One thing I'm wondering about if I have for instance a IS account and was able to download from DSTV on demand. Will IS pay Mweb, vice versa or will they both be paying Telkom for the IPC link provided?
Click to expand...

This won't have an effect on IPC costs. IPC is ONLY used to transmit traffic between DSL lines and the ISP. No matter how the data arrives at the ISP, the IPC links are still the same. You have different links connecting the ISPs to the internet exchanges (JINX and CINX). Two ISP's may also negotiate a direct connection between them, if they so wish.

However, internationally (and locally) some ISPs won't allow you to peer with them unless you pay them an interconnect fee, similar to what the landline and cellular telco's do. Normally, if you serve more traffic out over the peering link than you consume, then you get paid. MWEB stated before that they want to encourage local ISPs to drop the peering fee, and this may be aiming in that direction.

This is incidently also why it's sometimes easy to get an ISP to host a mirror of a large service (e.g. Akamai or Sourceforce or Steam or similar). It brings content closer to you, so it's cheaper to serve out to your own customers, and it increases traffic you serve out, increasing the peering fee you can charge, or decreasing what you pay out.
 
Valerion said:
This won't have an effect on IPC costs. IPC is ONLY used to transmit traffic between DSL lines and the ISP. No matter how the data arrives at the ISP, the IPC links are still the same. You have different links connecting the ISPs to the internet exchanges (JINX and CINX). Two ISP's may also negotiate a direct connection between them, if they so wish.

However, internationally (and locally) some ISPs won't allow you to peer with them unless you pay them an interconnect fee, similar to what the landline and cellular telco's do. Normally, if you serve more traffic out over the peering link than you consume, then you get paid. MWEB stated before that they want to encourage local ISPs to drop the peering fee, and this may be aiming in that direction.

This is incidently also why it's sometimes easy to get an ISP to host a mirror of a large service (e.g. Akamai or Sourceforce or Steam or similar). It brings content closer to you, so it's cheaper to serve out to your own customers, and it increases traffic you serve out, increasing the peering fee you can charge, or decreasing what you pay out.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response this is all very interesting to me.

I found the following link:

http://stats.jinx.net.za/

Only Mweb and Tenet is on a 10 GB link the rest is all on 1GB.

So what if Mweb decides not to pay IS for peering how does the traffic from Mweb reach IS then?


Edit: another thing I saw there is some ports reserved that probably for new ISP starting up like powernet communications.
 
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this peering thing sounds interesting. so essentially mweb and ISPAnother coudl negotiate a fee between themselves that is far less than the IPConnect Telkom charges? Possibly decreasing overall costs for both ISPs?

Well then if that is the end game i can only support them in their endeavors.
 
milomak said:
this peering thing sounds interesting. so essentially mweb and ISPAnother coudl negotiate a fee between themselves that is far less than the IPConnect Telkom charges? Possibly decreasing overall costs for both ISPs?

Well then if that is the end game i can only support them in their endeavors.
Click to expand...

But as Valerion stated IPC has nothing to do with pearing it's only to get access to the DSL network. So that means you would have to pay Telkom for another connection to it's core network.
 
TheGuy said:
You guys keep bashing every possible thing a company tries to do. With the current state of internet affairs this is the best any company will be able to do with a On demand service. Through this they are also learning and able to test their online capabilities then when the time comes that SA internet is able to offer true On Demand services they will be ready.

If you think this is a crap service then please explain how they can improve it and maybe they will listen.
Click to expand...

One idea - host the Supersport channels and charge a subscription fee or sell on a pay-per-view model. Open it up to all local ISP's and they basically have a licence to print money.
 
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