{"id":561404,"date":"2024-09-19T19:12:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T17:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=561404"},"modified":"2024-09-20T07:40:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T05:40:39","slug":"dstvs-big-edge-over-netflix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/561404-dstvs-big-edge-over-netflix.html","title":{"rendered":"DStv’s edge over Netflix"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While Netflix is the world’s top service in on-demand video streaming, its plan to ramp up its live streaming offering to compete with seasoned live content broadcasters and streamers like DStv could prove challenging and take time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Netflix’s online streaming services were first launched in 2007, but its first live stream happened in March 2023, when it showed a live comedy special by Chris Rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While that stream went off without a hitch, the second attempt was a complete disaster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Netflix encountered technical difficulties while trying to livestream a reunion episode of one of its most popular reality shows \u2014 Love is Blind<\/em> \u2014 in April 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although some users said they could start watching the stream over one hour after it was supposed to begin, most had to wait until the next day to watch a recording.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Netflix’s co-CEOs blamed the problem on a bug the streamer’s team had introduced when trying to implement changes to improve live streaming performance after the Chris Rock special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa’s biggest pay-TV broadcaster and streamer \u2014 DStv owner MultiChoice \u2014 has over 30 years experience with live broadcasting and a decade with live streaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, its SuperSport channel broadcast 34,490 live events, while it is on track to deliver 50,000 live events in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“DStv and SuperSport have a long history with live sports, so we are better equipped than anyone else on the continent to handle the technical demands of real-time sports events,” MultiChoice South Africa CEO Marc Jury recently told MyBroadband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jury explained that on-demand and live-streamed content were two very different “beasts.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“On-demand is simpler; it’s pre-recorded, encoded, and cached on a server near you for instant play,” Jury said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Live streaming is a lot more complex and must process content in real-time, from the field to your living room or phone as quickly as possible.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The signal needs to be captured, broken into chunks, encoded, distributed, and then reassembled on your device.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from overall stream stability, Netflix will have to tackle one common challenge with live sports streaming in particular \u2014 latency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many South African sports streaming users will have had the frustrating experience of a neighbour or nearby venue’s crowd reacting to an important moment in a rugby or football match before they can see it for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These live streaming delays are not unique to DStv Stream. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a traditional over-the-air setup \u2014 like with satellite TV broadcasts \u2014 live programming is delivered via a relatively direct path to the user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For SuperSport’s broadcasts, cable feeds are pulled from cameras in the stadium or other venue and sent into a broadcasting van, where a mixer selects the best shots to show viewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The van has a large dish on top that transmits the selected video to DStv’s satellite, which beams the broadcast to customers’ dishes that connect to their TVs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In broadcasting, the delay between the on-the-field events and the viewer’s feed is around two to three seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only people who will know something happens before the DStv satellite viewers are those physically at or near the venue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In online streaming, the mixed feed is broken up into data packets that are delivered over the Internet using various third-party networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First the content is uploaded to a server, which then sends a stream to each individual viewer using a content delivery network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the content arrives at the customer’s destination, its data packets are reassembled and presented to the viewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This process takes much longer than a direct broadcast \u2014 introducing significantly longer latency from the occurrence of the real-time events.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Mixing camera fees inside a SuperSport van<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

DStv Stream delay among lowest in the world<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Disregarding all the equipment, staff, and expertise it would need to deliver live sports content from a stadium or other venue \u2014 equal to the standard of SuperSport \u2014 competing on sports streaming latency alone could be a challenge for Netflix in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jury told MyBroadband that DStv Stream had among the lowest streaming delays in the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Streaming services across the globe face live streaming delays two to four times worse than that of DStv Stream,” Jury said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DStv has improved its best-case streaming latency versus satellite from around 23 seconds in 2023 to five seconds in ideal scenarios in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typically, the DStv Stream latency will be roughly 10 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’re incredibly proud of these results, considering the global average sits between 20 and 40 seconds,” said Jury. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“DStv Stream’s latency has decreased by up to three times over the past year, a testament to our commitment to deliver as much live sport as close to real-time as we can.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company said it uses leading encoding and packaging technologies and works with one of the world’s best content delivery network (CDN) providers to reduce latency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our CDN is distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa and has max capacity to handle even the most popular Springbok matches,” Jury stated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One of the challenges with lowering the latency of live streams is that the risk of buffering goes up, so carefully adaptive bitrates are chosen in case network conditions dip.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Getting the balance right is important to make sure the streaming experience is seamless.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’re always looking for ways to make the experience better, while also being data efficient, which we know is important to our customers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jury said that MultiChoice continued to analyse and optimise the factors it could control to reduce this even further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some DStv Stream users may be experiencing higher latency, this could be due to the stream buffering because of their Internet connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To ensure you are watching the most up-to-date feed, users should refresh their browser window or exit and re-enter the stream if they notice a pause occurred and playback continues without skipping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Netflix has a long way to go before it could match DStv in one particular type of streaming. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":523266,"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":[85,12071,85277,475,2054,78012,62312],"class_list":["post-561404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-dstv","tag-live-streaming","tag-marc-jury","tag-multichoice","tag-netflix","tag-sports-streaming-services","tag-video-streaming-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561404"}],"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=561404"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561531,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561404\/revisions\/561531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}