Fibre and streaming vs DStv Premium price comparison

South Africans who want to ditch DStv’s highest-tier package can get fibre and four streaming services for less than the price of DStv Premium, a MyBroadband analysis has revealed.

However, sports fans still get a better deal from DStv, with the price of fibre and five dedicated sports streaming services, which exclude rugby and cricket, working out to R45 more than DStv Premium monthly.

MyBroadband compared the price of a fibre connection and various streaming services to the cost of paying MultiChoice’s monthly DStv Premium subscription.

While a fibre connection can be used for more than video entertainment, such a comparison remains interesting to gauge DStv Premium’s relative value proposition.

Since most streaming services allow more than one simultaneous stream per subscription — or in some cases per household — we added the DStv Access Fee of R115 to the DStv Premium subscription cost.

The Access Fee lets DStv satellite subscribers watch on multiple screens simultaneously or use the PVR recording features (including Catch Up), increasing the total price to R994 per month.

For our comparison, we selected Openserve’s asymmetric 40Mbps package from Afrihost for R472 per month.

Paying the fibre subscription leaves R522 left over from the total price of DStv Premium and the Access Fee.

With the remaining budget, South Africans can sign up for Netflix Standard, Disney+, Showmax, and Amazon Prime Video while leaving R46 left over from the total Premium price.

The comparison is summarised in the table below.

Netflix offers a resolution of 1080p, and Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video offer resolutions up to 4K — something DStv subscribers must purchase the R2,699 Explora Ultra decoder to access.

It’s important to note that although all the streaming services offer simultaneous streams, Netflix has started limiting them to a specific household.

Disney+ has also begun cracking down on account sharing in the US.

Fibre and sports streaming

For the sports comparison, we included the fibre subscription, Showmax Pro, DAZN, and F1 TV Pro, which work out to around R70 per month more than DStv Premium.

You can also access free services like SABC+ and Fifa+.

Showmax Pro’s sports programming includes local and international football, athletics, boxing, cycling, and others for R349 per month.

DAZN is a dedicated boxing streaming service, but it also broadcasts chess, indoor cycling, and women’s football for R149.99 per month.

South Africans can sign up for F1 TV Pro for R93 per month to access live races and other F1 programmes.

However, cricket and rugby fans will be left wanting without DStv. While some less legal options exist for streaming rugby and cricket, DStv owns the broadcast rights to all the major tournaments most South Africans would be interested in.

A comparison between the price of DStv Premium and fibre with sports streaming services is provided in the table below.

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