In addition to reportedly achieving its goals, the sudden change also came with side effects.<\/p>\n
Soon after MultiChoice implemented the change, subscribers claiming to be legitimate customers flooded social media platforms with complaints.<\/p>\n
Different models of TVs and smartphones were throwing an error in the DStv app<\/strong><\/a>, saying users had exceeded their concurrent streaming limit, even though only one device was active on their account.<\/p>\n The single-device streaming limit also completely broke screencasting<\/strong><\/a>. Several months later, MultiChoice had still not fixed the feature.<\/p>\n Subscribers who relied on Chromecast or AirPlay to watch DStv had simply been cut off.<\/p>\n In the wake of the backlash, MultiChoice CEO Calvo Mawela said that the change had been successful as they had seen an uptick in streaming subscribers<\/strong><\/a> after implementing the limit.<\/p>\n He also said they were working on allowing more simultaneous streams.<\/p>\n MultiChoice South Africa CEO Nyiko Shiburi later revealed that the company was working on a “proximity control” system<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n This would allow households to stream more than one video or channel simultaneously \u2014 provided they were using supported DStv devices.<\/p>\n Netflix has taken a much different approach. It has tried to develop functionality matching how subscribers use the service, which they might be willing to pay for.<\/p>\n It launched a key piece of the puzzle last week \u2014 Profile Transfer<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Profile Transfer has already started rolling out in South Africa<\/p><\/div>\n Profile Transfer lets Netflix subscribers move profiles between accounts, including their personalised recommendations, viewing history, saved games, and other settings.<\/p>\n This addresses one of the major adverse effects Netflix viewers would face if forced to get their own account.<\/p>\n It also introduces functionality that isn’t only useful for “account borrowers”.<\/p>\n Couples who break up and children leaving the house might want to transfer their profiles to another account, for example.<\/p>\n Before its Profile Transfer launch, Netflix had been testing a feature<\/strong><\/a> that asked users to pay a small fee to add sub-accounts for people outside their household using their subscription.<\/p>\n This fee was always less than a Standard Netflix subscription in the country it was being tested.<\/p>\n Months later, Netflix began testing a system<\/strong><\/a> that prompts users to pay the additional fee if they used an account outside their primary household for more than two weeks.<\/p>\n No official price for this feature has been announced. However, if it works out to be around 23\u201329% of the Standard price, as was the case in the test countries, it should cost between R37 and R46 in South Africa.<\/p>\n Netflix announced last week that it intends to launch these features, and by implication clamp down on account sharing<\/strong><\/a>, from early 2023.<\/p>\n In fairness, MultiChoice’s challenge is somewhat different as it also offers linear channels and live events, while Netflix only does on-demand video.<\/p>\n Shiburi said they had noticed a sharp jump in viewership during certain sporting events that did not translate into a correlating subscriber number increases.<\/p>\n That said, Netflix has attempted to meet subscribers halfway by developing products and functionality matching how they use the service.<\/p>\n MultiChoice’s approach does not seem to consider the consequences to customers or their needs at all.<\/p>\n While this could work in the short-term, that kind of thinking will only quicken DStv’s demise<\/a><\/strong> as international players with better customer experience encroach more on its territory.<\/p>\n MultiChoice can learn a lot from Netflix, including how to tackle password sharing better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":395671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[79928,85,35,475,2054,61751],"class_list":["post-465753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-account-sharing","tag-dstv","tag-headline","tag-multichoice","tag-netflix","tag-password-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465753"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465757,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465753\/revisions\/465757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Profile-Transfer.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/a>DStv can learn much from Netflix about how to treat customers<\/h2>\n
\nNow read: We tested the DStv Streama \u2014 with disappointing results<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"