Broadcasting12.05.2019

DStv Now – Error 500

By Staff Writer

DStv Now subscribers who tried to use the service on Sunday were greeted with the message “Error 500 – There is a problem with the page you requested”.

Through DStv Now subscribers can watch their favourite movies, TV programmes, and live sports on a wide range of devices.

The service comes free with a DStv and PVR subscription and is available through a web app or iOS and Android mobile apps.

The DStv Now service was unavailable for hours on Sunday which prevented users from viewing high-profile sporting events like the Premier League’s final matches.

The company said on Twitter that their technical teams are aware of performance issues on DStv Now and have been working round the clock to resolve these problems.

“This is due to the Optimization that’s currently being done to improve the overall viewing experiences,” the company said.

Resolving the problem

Some of the problems persisted, and early on Monday morning many users who visited DStv Now were greeted by an endless “loading spinner”.

A hard refresh removed the loading spinner, but users could still not watch their favourite shows.

DStv Now told users that the service “is working fine. Kindly refresh, log out completely and log back in again, it should be fine”.

Logging out and logging back in did indeed resolve the problems and made it possible to watch shows and live sports.

Second outage in a week

This is the second outage in the past week with many users expressing their frustration on social media.

MultiChoice Connected Video head of communications, Richard Boorman said on Friday that they were busy investigating the outage on Thursday evening.

“We’re currently busy with a full post-mortem to determine the exact cause of the outage,” said Boorman.

“Broadly the cause was a systems update which we’d tested ahead of deployment without any issues arising, but unfortunately in the live environment it failed”.

MultiChoice responds

MultiChoice apologised for the technical problems that resulted in DStv Now not being operational for a number of hours on Sunday.

“Our technicians worked tirelessly to ensure that we could resume the service as soon as possible and ensure stability, which we have done,” said Benedict Maaga, said senior manager corporate communications at MultiChoice.

“As with any other Technology platform we continue to work towards ensuring the best customer experience. We apologise to everyone that has been affected.”