The big risks that could see DStv lose subscribers

ToxicBunny said:
There wasn't anyone overseeing those processes before.. they were horrendous at the best of times.
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Well, even back from the old days, they preferred to use the cheapest aka under-qualified engineers. Looking back at their decoder in 1987 and how easy it was for the lay public to hack it, and the shoulder chip their subsidiary IRDETO developed as a result of their crypto being routinely compromised, its clear- they're a bunch of palookas. But its like that everywhere in Naspers... no surprises really.. Even the founder's son criticises the company and has been caught leaking technical info to the hacker groups.
 
Ja beware of the brown wire syndrome ..... That is where it all started.
The very first decoders ever released for use by Mnet, lasted about 2 hours. The decoders were released to the public at 09:00 on a particular day, and by 11:30 the first one was cracked.
 
ArtyLoop said:
Well, even back from the old days, they preferred to use the cheapest aka under-qualified engineers. Looking back at their decoder in 1987 and how easy it was for the lay public to hack it, and the shoulder chip their subsidiary IRDETO developed as a result of their crypto being routinely compromised, its clear- they're a bunch of palookas. But its like that everywhere in Naspers... no surprises really.. Even the founder's son criticises the company and has been caught leaking technical info to the hacker groups.
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It has, however, never been worse than it is now .... and I am not even going to try and say why .... It is not relevant. It is just getting to the point where a serious user of their service can hardly get through a 24-hour period without something going wrong with his or her decoder driven service. Whether due to a head end problem or a decoder issue, or a service authentication glitch or a failure of the EPG, whatever.
 
Shoaybd said:
I think we need to understand that Netflix is currently making huge losses and selling services at a loss. The business model for streaming services has not been proven as yet. They might need to change things to actually make money in the future. Similar to what Facebook had to do. It is seen as a bait and switch model.
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link? This site seems to suggest Netflix is making huge profits:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross-profit

  • Netflix gross profit for the quarter ending December 31, 2018 was $1.453B, a 23.34% increase year-over-year.
  • Netflix gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2018 was $6.163B, a 52.8% increase year-over-year.
  • Netflix annual gross profit for 2018 was $5.827B, a 44.48% increase from 2017.
  • Netflix annual gross profit for 2017 was $4.033B, a 44% increase from 2016.
  • Netflix annual gross profit for 2016 was $2.801B, a 28% increase from 2015.
 
And MC avg salary per employee id R739 000 p/a. That is excluding the top management millions. How?
 
I have stated previously that MC don't know their target market. Lame ass people sitting in offices. Give us just the same package like they give to the restaurants and guesthouses for the same price. Wonder who sits in a restaurant or guesthouse the whole day to watch DSTV non stop. It's bloody murder doing that. Repeats.... By the time they bring movies series on DSTV/Catch Up or Box Office it's old....
 
Shadowchaser1 said:
I have stated previously that MC don't know their target market. Lame ass people sitting in offices. Give us just the same package like they give to the restaurants and guesthouses for the same price. Wonder who sits in a restaurant or guesthouse the whole day to watch DSTV non stop. It's bloody murder doing that. Repeats.... By the time they bring movies series on DSTV/Catch Up or Box Office it's old....
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The company is too bloated, too fat, and too far down the rabbit hole to change. The rot is right through, up to Koos Bekker's arsehole, from here
 
Geoff.D said:
One of the big risks facing MC is the loss of technical competence in their field, The drop in the quality of their decoders, the poor software written for the decoders, the incredibly debilitating service authentication process MC runs, and their security paranoia.
MC is making it incredibly difficult to continue using their services across the board, not only because of the competition they now face.
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Don't remind me. The HD decoders were retired without the EPG ever being fixed. The Explora2 has no ability to edit programs, you have to delete and reprogram them. The search bar doesn't show the correct program slots. With the Explora3 now being rolled out I guess these issues will never be fixed either. And all of their decoders seems to have the problem of randomly not recording programs. The SD-PVR would record a black stream. The Explora will show record but there's zero minutes and as soon as it ends it would delete the program.

Quey_Quick said:
Contrary to what some may believe soccer is the most supported sport in south Africa. This is why it is offered on the cheaper packages, so it is not rubbish that no one actually wants.

That being said, I don't have any DSTV and Naspers only ges my R 99 for Showmax.
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No it's because its supporters can't afford the higher priced packages. MC is about profit so don't believe for a moment they're throwing it in as a gesture because it's popular.
 
No it's because its supporters can't afford the higher priced packages. MC is about profit so don't believe for a moment they're throwing it in as a gesture because it's popular.
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I never said that's why they did it, of course they are all about profit, I was just pointing out that it is not rubbish no one wants.
 
The SD PVR was by far the best PVR decoder ever. It had very good receivers, excellent RF demodulators but a rather poor HDD.
The software was very basic and did not have much in the line of bells and whistles. It did the basic job very well.
Black recordings were always because of a poor installation.
There was and still is the impression amongst installers that skew angle adjustments are not critical. The decoder would lock on a signal but the quality was not good enough to make recordings.
The HD PVRs never ever got their sw fixed. The Exploras just blundered from one disaster to the next. Apart from the JAVA issue, there is a string of other sw problems.
 
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Geoff.D said:
The SD PVR was by far the best PVR decoder ever. It had very good receivers, excelent RF demodulators but a rather poor HDD.
The software was very basic and did not have much in the line of bells and whistles. It did the basic job very well.
Black recordings were always because of a poor installation.
There was and still is the impression amongst installers that skew angle adjustments are not critical. The decoder would lock on a signal but the quality was not good enough to make recordings.
The HD PVRs never ever got their sw fixed. The Exploras just blundered from one disaster to the next. Apart from the JAVA issue, there is a string of other sw problems.
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That hardware designed overseas, that's why it was good.
HD PVRs designed here, and produced here (I know the people who got insanely rich from that) but as for the software.. ja.. port of the same old shyte.
 
walterl said:
link? This site seems to suggest Netflix is making huge profits:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross-profit

  • Netflix gross profit for the quarter ending December 31, 2018 was $1.453B, a 23.34% increase year-over-year.
  • Netflix gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2018 was $6.163B, a 52.8% increase year-over-year.
  • Netflix annual gross profit for 2018 was $5.827B, a 44.48% increase from 2017.
  • Netflix annual gross profit for 2017 was $4.033B, a 44% increase from 2016.
  • Netflix annual gross profit for 2016 was $2.801B, a 28% increase from 2015.
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Gross Profit is not net profit. They are making huge losses and burning through cash at a faster pace every year.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...ing-cash-burn-with-2-billion-in-new-debt.html
 
Shoaybd said:
Gross Profit is not net profit. They are making huge losses and burning through cash at a faster pace every year.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...ing-cash-burn-with-2-billion-in-new-debt.html
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okay here is a website with their net income...they don't show the 2018 figures yet (guess they will soon) but the 2017 figure was a healthy $558,929,000 and the three years before that was also positive..so unless they made a loss in 2018 you are talking k@k


https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nflx/financials
 
Geoff.D said:
The SD PVR was by far the best PVR decoder ever. It had very good receivers, excellent RF demodulators but a rather poor HDD.
The software was very basic and did not have much in the line of bells and whistles. It did the basic job very well.
Black recordings were always because of a poor installation.
There was and still is the impression amongst installers that skew angle adjustments are not critical. The decoder would lock on a signal but the quality was not good enough to make recordings.
The HD PVRs never ever got their sw fixed. The Exploras just blundered from one disaster to the next. Apart from the JAVA issue, there is a string of other sw problems.
Click to expand...
I don't know what the exact issue was. I redid our installation adjusting both the angle and direction after the installers did a pretty kak job to near 100% for signal strength and quality. The issue would only happen after a few days and then continue on that channel until you reset the decoder. MC claims the mandatory daily reset is for maintenance but it's more to fix issues that would arise if decoders are left running for a while. The software was decent until they tried to add their crappy Boxoffice which they were clearly not designed for. Everything just went backwards from then on and it looks like their programmers aren't up to the task. Why I don't know why there's an "access" fee for something that isn't working and is no longer being maintained.

walterl said:
okay here is a website with their net income...they don't show the 2018 figures yet (guess they will soon) but the 2017 figure was a healthy $558,929,000 and the three years before that was also positive..so unless they made a loss in 2018 you are talking k@k


https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nflx/financials
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He is correct. In 2018 Netflix had $6.5bn in debt but it's free cash flow has never been more than $279m. It's even worse if we look at how much money they have committed to spending in the coming years and what their debt is expected to reach. So they're spending the cash but can't realise the income to make up for it. They're running at a loss.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...eal-about-netflix-s-cash-and-spending-numbers
 
Swa said:
I don't know what the exact issue was. I redid our installation adjusting both the angle and direction after the installers did a pretty kak job to near 100% for signal strength and quality. The issue would only happen after a few days and then continue on that channel until you reset the decoder. MC claims the mandatory daily reset is for maintenance but it's more to fix issues that would arise if decoders are left running for a while. The software was decent until they tried to add their crappy Boxoffice which they were clearly not designed for. Everything just went backwards from then on and it looks like their programmers aren't up to the task. Why I don't know why there's an "access" fee for something that isn't working and is no longer being maintained.
[/QOUTE]

[QUOOTE]
He is correct. In 2018 Netflix had $6.5bn in debt but it's free cash flow has never been more than $279m. It's even worse if we look at how much money they have committed to spending in the coming years and what their debt is expected to reach. So they're spending the cash but can't realise the income to make up for it. They're running at a loss.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...eal-about-netflix-s-cash-and-spending-numbers
Click to expand...
 
walterl said:
okay here is a website with their net income...they don't show the 2018 figures yet (guess they will soon) but the 2017 figure was a healthy $558,929,000 and the three years before that was also positive..so unless they made a loss in 2018 you are talking k@k


https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nflx/financials
Click to expand...

If you understand AFS then you would know that they are capitalising the cost of content on balance sheet and not expensing through income statement. They amortised this over time.

But the main thing is that they are borrowing a ton of cash and burning through it for content and growth. This borrowing has to stop some time and they need to generate this cash from operations. They will then need to grow income rapidly, that can come easily via advertising and increasing subscription costs. This is what traditional pay TV business has done already. Netflix will probably need to do the same.
 
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