ShowMax

Too much negative Nancy's on here about ShowMax. You want & expect it fail but so far so good. And let's not forget the princely sum of only 99 ZAR a month.

It's not even been 6 months since launch & they have come a great deal.
 
Is there free content left on ShowMax. Wanted to test the App yesterday, to see if the newest update makes things better on my Android Media box. Was tjoppie as hell when they launched. Every episode that was free in the past, now tells me to get a premium account.
 
Just made a startling discovery - I hope this helps others.

Quality of ShowMax has been pretty dismal for me even over LTE where I get between 10 and 20 mbps.

I came across http://www.themovies.co.za/2015/09/...e-last-month-and-heres-what-we-thought-of-it/ and noticed it mentioned that you shouldn't use proxy services (mentioning UnoTelly specifically).

My initial response was rubbish - UnoTelly don't have a ShowMax channel so why would they be modifying DNS for it? Turns out it is a problem.

I didn't spend too long looking but UnoTelly resolves showmax.akamaized.net to a totally different IP than other local DNS servers. After using a local DNS server, shows load in seconds and the quality is better. I'm pretty sure it will be more stable too.

My guess is that UnoTelly are doing their name resolution in a different territory and showmax.akamaized.net is set up for geo DNS causing it to return a sub-optimal IP.

Based on this, I thought that using Google's DNS might give you the same issue although it's fairly likely they're customising DNS responses based on the requesting IP territory.
 
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Interesting !

Thanks daniel.

Anyone heard any more on the devices that can run it ?
 
I asked and was told they are working on it but can't give dates for Roku.
 
With the new content loaded for the kids, Showmax is more popular than Netflix in my house. My kids are 8 and 5. My son was happy to see this morning that seasons 1-3 of Avatar where now on Showmax.

When we had canceled our DSTV a few months back, they had Avatar Season 1 on a loop and then some weeks playing in random order. It drove me nuts.

The only issue I've had with ShowMax is that my 2015 Samsung 32" SmartTV hangs at the end of a series when switching to the next episode and they have failed to release a patch for it. No issue on my 2014 SmartTV.

We are now canceling our Netflix and sticking to ShowMax. I feel that for the price of Netflix and the added data on my bill (I use capped as it still works out cheaper than uncapped), I could just as well go back to DSTV.

I'm not dissing Netflix, its just not working for my family.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
With the new content loaded for the kids, Showmax is more popular than Netflix in my house. My kids are 8 and 5. My son was happy to see this morning that seasons 1-3 of Avatar where now on Showmax.

When we had canceled our DSTV a few months back, they had Avatar Season 1 on a loop and then some weeks playing in random order. It drove me nuts.

The only issue I've had with ShowMax is that my 2015 Samsung 32" SmartTV hangs at the end of a series when switching to the next episode and they have failed to release a patch for it. No issue on my 2014 SmartTV.

We are now canceling our Netflix and sticking to ShowMax. I feel that for the price of Netflix and the added data on my bill (I use capped as it still works out cheaper than uncapped), I could just as well go back to DSTV.

I'm not dissing Netflix, its just not working for my family.
Click to expand...

Wow. Good for ShowMax.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
With the new content loaded for the kids, Showmax is more popular than Netflix in my house. My kids are 8 and 5. My son was happy to see this morning that seasons 1-3 of Avatar where now on Showmax.

When we had canceled our DSTV a few months back, they had Avatar Season 1 on a loop and then some weeks playing in random order. It drove me nuts.

The only issue I've had with ShowMax is that my 2015 Samsung 32" SmartTV hangs at the end of a series when switching to the next episode and they have failed to release a patch for it. No issue on my 2014 SmartTV.

We are now canceling our Netflix and sticking to ShowMax. I feel that for the price of Netflix and the added data on my bill (I use capped as it still works out cheaper than uncapped), I could just as well go back to DSTV.

I'm not dissing Netflix, its just not working for my family.
Click to expand...

Netflix is going to struggle to beat ShowMax in South Africa. The problem is that Mulitichoice has just about every exclusive worth watching these days. So as far as Multichoice is concerned it is business as usual.

I'm only keeping Netflix around for the Netflix Originals but otherwise it's a very poor offering content wise.
 
My problem with showmax is that I can't set the video quality. I'd rather have it a bit blocky but moving smoothly, than a crystal clear pic that's terribly jerky. Sure, I'm only on a 2mb line, but watching vidi with the quality turned down is more pleasant that watching showmax. Just a pity vidi doesn't have much that I want to watch.

Is it likely that proper chromecast support (as opposed to screen mirroring my chrome tab - same as I'm doing for vidi) will improve performance?
 
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