DStv ON DEMAND via MWEB ADSL

JStrike said:
When people talk about streaming to their iPhone, they are talking about WiFi.
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ah fair enough. however the one concurrent connection would be problematic for mweb uncapped users.

edit: ah I see you get 300 wifi minutes.
 
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regardtv said:
Having survived the 11 pages of *cough* 'interesting' comments I thought I'd give some of my views.

I agree that this has been available for a while and probably got somewhat more publicity than it needed - but then MWEB are trying to push a few of the larger ISP's to peer - so I'm totally for the press release. Every attempt at convincing 'certain' ISPs to get into the open peering is a good thing for all...

As for my experience:

As my ISP peers with M-WEB at JINX I got pretty much what I expected - a VERY fast download of the latest episode of Dexter - after it had pulled a portion of the file to disk I was able to commence playback (the file continued to stream down as fast as my connection allowed). I was reasonably surprised by the statistics offered by the player - it indicated bit rates around the 8Mbps mark... I'd have expected a variable bit rate encoding in the 2-4Mbps range as having been good enough - and also a saver on bandwidth... Especially if one considers most of DSTV’s SD broadcasts are in that range.

If the primary purpose of this platform is on-demand services for premium DSTV customers I’d have to agree that it’s a bit of a waste – if however DSTV is just the first of many services I foresee some REAL advantages here. When MWEB announced their extensive uncapped offering I was immediately expecting a Netflix style service – this isn’t quite there but one can certainly see were this is going.

So, overall, while I agree that it may have been a somewhat underwhelming press release – the service and its offering to peered ISPs make sense in the long run.

Now if only MWEB limited the availability of the content to PEERED clients only ....
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Interesting, so you get good speed on a peer, but I get vrot speed on MWEB uncapped 4Mbps...
How is this going to equate to good publicity for MWEB or MC... lol
 
milomak said:
ah fair enough. however the one concurrent connection would be problematic for mweb uncapped users.

edit: ah I see you get 300 wifi minutes.
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Concurrent connections have nothing to do with Wifi. It's not like you establish a pppoe on your phone to use the net via wifi - most have routers that handle that.
 
Tanya35 said:
It doesn't buffer at all, by design.
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It has to - even if it's one or two seconds. If it didn't, then we would get a frame at a time. Instead, you get about two / three seconds before it downloads the next two or three seconds of vid.
 
It would be cheaper for me to just go and buy a HD PVR and then I will have DSTV on demand compared to getting ADSL 4meg line and all of that.
 
How does the MWEB On-demand work exactly, can I log in at the same time as my wife and watch programs, do you use your account number and password to logon? What is stopping someone from distributing their Account no and password and everyone with Uncappe MWEb to watch 'free' DSTV?
 
jalbasson said:
How does the MWEB On-demand work exactly, can I log in at the same time as my wife and watch programs, do you use your account number and password to logon? What is stopping someone from distributing their Account no and password and everyone with Uncappe MWEb to watch 'free' DSTV?
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You use the e-mail associated with your DSTV account (any, even Select) and you select a video and log in to view it It doesn't have to be through MWEB. Downloading it is different and it makes more checks on the account.
 
Yesterday the service was accessible on my WebAfrica ADSL account, but seems they've now locked it down (at least the streaming service):

"Sorry, this service is currently only available to MWEB ADSL subscribers. Please update your profile and provide your MWeb email address and password so we can link to your account"

Anyone still able to use it with a non-MWEB connection?
 
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Trying to download The Pacific Ep1 on my 384 line and it's been running for nearly 2 hours and it's only at 10%. I thought because it's on their own network you would be able to max our line. There is also no time frame or anything.

Anyone tried it with a 4Mb line?
 
Richard7 said:
Yesterday the service was accessible on my WebAfrica ADSL account, but seems they've now locked it down (at least the streaming service):

"Sorry, this service is currently only available to MWEB ADSL subscribers. Please update your profile and provide your MWeb email address and password so we can link to your account"

Anyone still able to use it with a non-MWEB connection?
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lol, i wonder what would happen if you tried a 'borrowed' email address and a 'borrowed' smart card number, although the second would be harder to find
 
TheGuy said:
Trying to download The Pacific Ep1 on my 384 line and it's been running for nearly 2 hours and it's only at 10%. I thought because it's on their own network you would be able to max our line. There is also no time frame or anything.

Anyone tried it with a 4Mb line?
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Read the past few pages. It took 5 minutes to buffer 3 seconds for me on 4Mbps MWEB.
 
TheGuy said:
Trying to download The Pacific Ep1 on my 384 line and it's been running for nearly 2 hours and it's only at 10%. I thought because it's on their own network you would be able to max our line. There is also no time frame or anything.

Anyone tried it with a 4Mb line?
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Glad you're seeing something positive. My ADSL bandwidth is a little slow so I have tried downloading on my XP PC (just sits there initializing downloads, giving no clue as to status of what's wrong) and later on my Vista laptop (Says download failed, even with firewall disabled). Has anyone been given decent technical support to get beyond these problems. My experience with the support folks has been weak, with repeated suggestion like "install Media Player 11" even though my report to them says I have done this.

I'm quite keen to use the download service so that I can catch up on mised series / movies on the PC while the decoder is tuned to Desperate Housewives / Entertainment news & such.
 
I'm on Afrihost 4mb and have just tested it now. No problems at all on my side. Downloads quickly and I can hit play and stream almost immediately!
Nick
 
It's working quickly now on MWEB 4Mbps uncapped. No buffering other than the first 30 seconds or so at around 7pm last night.
 
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