MultiChoice has completed development of its DStv Now standalone streaming service and plans to launch it once the COVID-19 situation has normalised.<\/p>\n
The service will allow users to stream DStv content without linking their account to an active decoder and satellite dish installation.<\/p>\n
MultiChoice CEO Mark Rayner stated<\/strong><\/a> in 2017 that the company would offer a standalone streaming service for DStv in the future.<\/p>\n In May 2018, MultiChoice South Africa CEO Calvo Mawela confirmed<\/strong><\/a> to MyBroadband the company still planned to launch the standalone streaming service.<\/p>\n Later that month, Mawela said MultiChoice anticipated launching the service in 2019.<\/p>\n The launch was later postponed to the end of the 2019\/2020 financial year, however.<\/p>\n Connected Video CEO Niclas Ekdahl told MyBroadband<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0this was still the plan as of November 2019.<\/p>\n He said although the company had been working on a decoder-less product for a while, it was important that the platform was well-optimised before its launch.<\/p>\n “I didn\u2019t think the user experience was up to scratch to deliver what the end consumers would expect,” said Ekdahl.<\/p>\n DStv Now has since added several improvements, which include the introduction of user profiles, watchlists, and recommendations.<\/p>\n “We are about to hit field trials, and I think we announced last year that we will be rolling it out within this fiscal year, so that\u2019s still our plan,” Ekdahl said at the time, referring to March 2020.<\/p>\n By the end of March, however, the service had still not launched.<\/p>\n MyBroadband asked MultiChoice for comment on the progress of the decoder-less streaming service, following the lack of official launch.<\/p>\n The company said it is has concluded the development of the service, but that it was currently undergoing a second set of tests.<\/p>\n “We\u2019ve completed development work and are in the second round of field trials,” MultiChoice said.<\/p>\n The company said it will publicly launch the service when market conditions have returned to normal.<\/p>\n “We expect <\/span>to\u00a0launch commercially once the operating environment has normalis<\/span>ed,” MultiChoice stated.<\/p>\n MultiChoice has launched a variant of its planned online-only service, however, when the company opened<\/strong><\/a> a selection of news and educational channels on DStv Now.<\/p>\n The service is accessible to all South Africans and does not require the user to have an active DStv subscription.<\/p>\n Users can create a profile on the DStv Now portal<\/strong><\/a> and skip the section which asks for a DStv customer ID number.<\/p>\n Channels included in the free service are BBC World News, CNN, eNCA, SABC News, and Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n MultiChoice told MyBroadband this campaign does not form part of its field trials for the standalone DStv Now service, however.<\/p>\n MultiChoice has completed development of its DStv Now standalone streaming service and plans to launch it once the COVID-19 situation has normalised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":280627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,27627,35,475,54773],"class_list":["post-346641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-dstv","tag-dstv-now","tag-headline","tag-multichoice","tag-niclas-ekdahl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346649,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346641\/revisions\/346649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}First delay<\/h3>\n
Development concluded<\/h3>\n
Free DStv Now channels<\/h3>\n
Now read: Don\u2019t expect 4K DStv Now or Showmax streaming soon<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"