DStv prices from 2000 to 2012

qDot said:
The value we get from their service is a personal thing and an evaluation criteria will not be the same for all of us.
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What he said.

Those canning DSTV are mostly only after entertainment and not sport. Pity they don't offer a non-sport bouquet. Supersport has the best coverage in the world. For that, in HD, and a few good movies in HD and Dolby Digital every month I find the subscription reasonable.
 
Greggle said:
PS No, I dont work for Mutichoice but I do work in IT and so have an idea of the kind of costs involved!
While their subscriber base has gone up their costs would have gone up too!
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Disagree. They should be reaping the benefits of economies of scale, which their strict inflationary price increases don't reflect at all. The costs increase should be a fraction of the subscriber base increase - i.e. it's not like they have to put up more satellites as they get more subscribers.
 
I agree with Drukkie. They are holding the country to ransom, or is it that the public broadcaster has given it up. I would give up dstv in a heartbeat, and might just have to this year anyway!
 
I switched off DSTV and switched on my old MNet decoder. I see all the sport I want to and a bunch of nice series and only pay half! I will not pay R600 for repeats. For the rest I consult my uncapped ADSL.
 
qDot said:
I think it is hard to compare Multichoice to the Mobile Network business. In my mind the two are simply not the same. There are more mobile subscribers per household than there are DSTV subscribes surely ? I think that speaks to the economies of scale.

In any event, as consumers it will be hard for us to work out of DSTV is being excessive because we do not have all the information about the costs involved.

Yes, much is available off the net, but based on that alone one cannot make the decision to disconnect from Multichoice because in any household people enjoy different things. So the value derived from DSTV is different to everyone else.

The value we get from their service is a personal thing and an evaluation criteria will not be the same for all of us.
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I don't agree with your analysis. There are enough economies of scale MultiChoice can gain from the market.

1. How many households are in SA? Let's assume there are 5 people per household and the population is 50 million people. We are basically looking at a market size of 10 million households - fairly close to Cell C total subscribers ;).
2. Of course we can make some eliminations - i.e looking at the number of people who own TVs and their disposable income. Even with this in mind, I would argue that some households have more than 1 TV set. Also don't forget people's holiday homes have TVs too. I can also argue that some businesses i.e. hospitality have a good number of TV sets, etc. To me that's economies of scale.
3. Assuming market size of 10 million households (1 tv per household) and 1.7 million MultiChoice customers, this gives market penetration of 17%. Compare this with mobile operators of over 120% population penetration or 600% household penetration.
4. Now let's look at MultiChoice's ARPU - compare this with mobile operators' ARPU. If MultiChoice today cut its prices by 50%, the company's ARPU will probably still be better than mobile operators ARPUs.

In fact, my calculations are conservative since MultiChoice has introduced new products and services that make them provide more than one service per household.

I am sure someone would say that he/she doesn't subscribe to MultiChoice per TV set compared to mobile phones which are subscribed to per person. This is where innovation comes in to ensure that better economies of scale can be achieved. I have ideas that can help if MultiChoice is interested in achieving economies of scale.
 
garp said:
+1

Uncapped 4mbs ADSL on Afrihost now works out to comparable price. Add a cheap HTPC with Sickbeard and SABNZBD... voila!
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add to that the cost of purchasing the online movies and series. Is it still competitive?
 
I canceled my DSTV some months ago.
used the money towards uncapped 4096 ADSL
Now I can watch what I like when I want:

* No bliksemse annoying ads
* No over-compressed blocky MPEG video
* No sound deopouts because their software ugrade stuffed up my smartcard
* Real HD content... not the.blotchy crap on Mnet HD because they are trying to be greedy by "saving" money on bandwidth costs by overcompression
 
They added new channels, yes. But who needs 7 news channels, and 3 nature channels, 3 children's channels etc? More than half the channels are not worth watching. Japanese Cartoons, Channel O, Channel Church, ancient films, ancient MNET Star films, ancient action films etc. Who asked for that?

If I look purely at the movies they are showing over and over again and I compare the number of films that are made each year with the few they buy I wonder.

The question should be whether we are receiving the same or better quality.
 
evilstebunny said:
It's not that it's too expensive, it's simply too expensive for the entertainment value I'm getting out of it.

Like the guy said in the comments section .. TV has become such a bore I rather spend my entertainment time online.
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+1

We are paying double for more repeats ... I don't mind paying double if there are less repeats and "more" entertainment. And lets not get into a repeats debate ... yes there should be repeats, but nearly as many as there currently are!
 
rpm said:
Sometimes it is good to only give the most basic facts. I would not have done a story if MultiChoice actually provided the prices, but because the official channels said it does not exist, and then for another channel to have all the prices at hand is really interesting.

There are indeed other factors like added value to subscribers, but there are also the increased viewership, higher advertising fees (and even potentially more advertising) and the like. An article with all these factors will be challenging because MC does not want to provide information.
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Wow, a personal response to a post of mine by RPM! I feel honoured! :D
Glad to see you acknowledge that there is more to it, RPM ... perhaps you should have just ended the article with your last sentence above.
 
Koosi said:
I canceled my DSTV some months ago.
used the money towards uncapped 4096 ADSL
Now I can watch what I like when I want:

* No bliksemse annoying ads
* No over-compressed blocky MPEG video
* No sound deopouts because their software ugrade stuffed up my smartcard
* Real HD content... not the.blotchy crap on Mnet HD because they are trying to be greedy by "saving" money on bandwidth costs by overcompression
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Are you paying for all the content you consume over DSL?

Or did you move your money from paying for access AND content to an access only model and now are consuming pirated content?

Just asking.
 
jannievanzyl said:
Are you paying for all the content you consume over DSL?

Or did you move your money from paying for access AND content to an access only model and now are consuming pirated content?

Just asking.
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Can't talk for him, but in my case; cancelled DSTV over 3 years ago. Had an Internet connection that could sustain streaming, and subscribed to Netflix (more content than DSTV at $7.99/month without advertising -- yes Multichoice's other profit stream at our expense that no one talks about).

For sport btw, I simply visit my local pub / restaurant or go see the game with friends (way better than becoming a couch potato clicker) -- clearly the more personable option.

Now you might argue that this is bypassing the media industry's "legal" distribution channels, but I'd argue why should I pay exorbitant pricing only to support the blatant profiteering of Multichoice, Ster Kinekor and others. If they offered competitive services to Netflix I'd support local -- but not the current greed.

Call me a media industry anarchist; I'm ok with that. You could also say I am purchasing goods or services without paying VAT, and I'd argue that the Gov is the reason we have such bad and exorbitant service costs in this country.

iTunes will always be a better / cheaper place to buy my music vs Musica, Look & Listen, ... Similarly Netflix is far superior to DSTV.

Ask the question why many of these international service providers / retailers are unable to compete in our markets as they can in Europe, Canada, South America, Japan, ...?

Clearly our Gov as shown in other countries would receive taxes for our purchases -- so what is the reason except that Gov's ineffectiveness is supporting these monopoly greed mongering situations.

I rest assured that the artists receive payment from me for their work, and the only ones missing out are the industry bodies that support this crap.
 
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ThinkCentre said:
I switched off DSTV and switched on my old MNet decoder. I see all the sport I want to and a bunch of nice series and only pay half! I will not pay R600 for repeats. For the rest I consult my uncapped ADSL.
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+1

and they switch to kyknet for binnelanders and enuus so the wife is also happy.
 
jannievanzyl said:
Are you paying for all the content you consume over DSL?

Or did you move your money from paying for access AND content to an access only model and now are consuming pirated content?

Just asking.
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The monetary value of content in the Internet age is exactly equal to zero. Only dinosaurs who are stuck in the last century still think you can charge money for content. People are paying for easy access to content nowadays. Only legacy industry dinosaurs like Hollywood/record companies are still stuck in the old way of doing things...the times they are a changin'.
 
Valis said:
The monetary value of content in the Internet age is exactly equal to zero. Only dinosaurs who are stuck in the last century still think you can charge money for content. People are paying for easy access to content nowadays. Only legacy industry dinosaurs like Hollywood/record companies are still stuck in the old way of doing things...the times they are a changin'.
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I don't agree -- the approach you describe punishes the artist as well.
 
It would be wise to also include the 1990's where they increased the prices more than once a year to keep up with the falling RAND. And never gave us a decrease when the Rand recovered. But they have most of their customers so well trained that some people actually ask every year on their forum what the increase would be before they even think about it. But DSTV is just another example of how useless ICASA really is.
 
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