{"id":958,"date":"2007-08-14T07:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-14T05:45:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-08-14T07:45:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-14T05:45:00","slug":"broadband-dstv-offering-taking-shape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/958-broadband-dstv-offering-taking-shape.html","title":{"rendered":"Broadband DSTV offering taking shape"},"content":{"rendered":"

Multichoice yesterday announced<\/a> that they launched a trial website offering video content from selected local DStv channels, which can be streamed or downloaded to a Personal Computer. <\/p>\n

This forms part of a phased approach for their Broadband DStv trial. Phase 1, which was launched in March this year, was aimed at obtaining technical knowledge. According to Multichoice they gained valuable knowledge and are now making improvements to some systems and processes. <\/p>\n

The objective of the 2nd phase of the trail, which started in August, is to obtain content and usability feedback. This part of the trial involves selected DStv premium customers.<\/p>\n

Content<\/strong><\/p>\n

Multichoice<\/a> says that premium bouquet DStv subscribers can look forward to enjoying a full spectrum of local programming when ever they want. The offering will cover many genres of programming such as local soapies, youth and Afrikaans programming as well as sports highlights. <\/p>\n

This selection of content will enable viewers to catch-up on missed full length programmes or get a quick overview of a sports event. The company is further negotiating with the various studios to broaden the variety of the content offered on the site.<\/p>\n

This is effectively a video-on-demand service where users can choose to stream the content or download it and view later. <\/p>\n

DStv broadband offers different streaming options such as stream in existing video window on the website, stream in Windows Media Player or buffered streaming. The content is encoded at 2 different qualities (300k and 700k). <\/p>\n

“With all these options it’s anticipated we are offering a value-added service that will suit different preferences and different connection speeds,” Multichoice said.<\/p>\n

Being a video-on-demand service it can be accessed using any Internet access method and will be open to DStv premium bouquet subscribers with any broadband connection.<\/p>\n

Cost and capping issues<\/strong><\/p>\n

Multichoice said that the service will be offered free of charge to DStv premium bouquet subscribers. They did however point out that in future, some content may be charged for.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest concerns regarding online multimedia content to local broadband users is the low monthly usage allowances. <\/p>\n

While this problem falls outside the control of Multichoice, the company said that the 300k encoding process delivers a good quality video experience and has been set-up specifically to deal with bandwidth and usage limits. <\/p>\n

“Our hope is that SA moves to an internet environment that is not hampered by usage caps and high bandwidth costs,” Multichoice said.<\/p>\n

Multichoice versus Telkom Media<\/strong><\/p>\n

While many people see this move as a pre-emptive strike at Telkom Media, which is anticipated to launch its own IPTV services next year, Multichoice says that this is merely to enhance the experience of their premium subscribers.<\/p>\n

“The launch of the DStv Broadband platform is purely to give premium subscribers another choice to view our content on an alternative platform. We are looking and testing many platforms (DVB-H being another good example) as various media types converge. You can expect to see many new innovations in this area in the future,” Multichoice says.<\/p>\n

The DStv provider said that while this initial IPTV offering is essentially a webTV service rather than true IPTV, it is investigating all options for possible further services.<\/p>\n

“MultiChoice has in the past run a trial IPTV service with Telkom and we continue to investigate a wide range of TV delivery platforms, IPTV being one. The DStv Broadband service should however be seen more as a webTV service using the open internet; really a value added service to DStv Premium subscribers at this point,” Multichoice said.<\/p>\n

With a true IPTV service there is no choice but to bypass the user’s cap, and here Multichoice is confident that this will not be a major obstacle.<\/p>\n

“The IPTV service that Telkom Media plan will use an exchanged based technology and is not delivered over the open internet therefore caps would, by definition, be bypassed anyway. Telkom Media stated at the ICASA hearings that their relationship with Telkom is ‘at arms length’ and as such MultiChoice would therefore be interested in investigating such a service on similar terms if made available by Telkom,” Multichoice said.<\/p>\n

MultiChoice is planning to open this website to all DStv Premium bouquet subscribers later this year.<\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Multichoice recently announced significant progress with their broadband DStv offering \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a service which will be available free of charge to their premium subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}