The wise once said, necessity is the mother of invention, and for centuries that statement proved to be true. We live in a much more comfortable world than the first human did where in some places you can get a fire going by clapping your hands like a magician, as opposed to the traditional tedious rubbing of two sticks.
Only 15 years ago the idea of walking around with a phone in your pocket must have been limited to those in uniform who used walkie-talkies to communicate. Now the idea of even answering the call of nature without one's cellphone close by feels unnatural.
On the topic of inventions, a few years back DStv came up with an amazing advancement in TV viewing when they introduced the PVR decoder. It gave people the option to freely record the shows of their choice. People were no longer slaves to television schedules because they could watch whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.
Multichoice has gone even further by introducing its latest technological advancement, DStv On Demand, which promises to make life in TV land much easier. Currently supplied to only premium account holders with SD and HD PVR decoders, the free service automatically lets you catch up on all the popular shows that you may have missed.
This is made possible by a new system that saves popular shows as they play and makes them available for replay later at your convenience. But there is a catch - the shows can only be watched within a specific period and after that they are deleted and replaced by other, newer shows.
For instance, if Prison Break Season 5 were to premier tonight on say, M-Net, you could afford to miss it and watch something else, because for the next seven days it will be saved somewhere in your decoder. After a week, the first episode is removed and the second episode is saved in its place.
The service saves up to 20 hours of the week's best shows. The expiry date of each saved programme is also shown on the programme selection menu.
The second way of getting the most out of this service is through the Internet, on www.dstv.com, where there are about 300 hours of saved TV content.
But getting back to necessity being the mother of invention, this new development is really not convincing, not least because it is competing against its predecessor, the PVR decoder.
The other drawback with DStv On Demand is that shows are chosen for you according to what the service provider feels is most watched by viewers.
"DStv conducts consumer surveys on a monthly basis to determine the best possible programme schedule," said Jackie Rakitla, the general manager of Multichoice's Corporate Affairs.
So that means if you prefer niche shows that only you and your grandfather like, chances of having them on this service are slim.
Kudos should be given to the online TV viewing though, because is a first in South Africa. You can even download the shows to watch them offline, but come the end of the seventh day, the shows automatically self-delete (every pirate's nightmare). The facility only works with M-Web for now, because of its latest uncapped Internet service.
"DStv On Demand is the first online television service available in South Africa. Multichoice is proud to offer its customers a service that is on par with the international viewing experience," said Rakitla.
While this is all very useful, how is this better than recording your programmes using PVR? If you miss a show and it happens to be one of those selected by DStv for recording, but you don't get a chance to watch it before the seven days are up, you will lose out. Another drawback.
Also, thanks to the advent of TV series on DVD, many people now prefer to watch a few episodes of a series in one sitting. Which they can also do if they use their PVR to record several episodes. DStv On Demand, however, does not provide this option. Instead it comes with a week's viewing ultimatum on international shows and a month on local ones.
Not that we don't welcome technological progression, but there are times when we get unnecessary "advancements" and, sadly, this feels like one of those times. It reminds me of when the rotating toothbrush or the four-in-one ballpoint pen came out - they both do not really add much value to the existing quality of life.
Since Multichoice is about constant innovation, how about developing something much-needed, such as a multi-split-screen viewing function on one set so that we can navigate various channels visually at the same time?
That way we can watch and hear the news on the background screen while the Bafana live game appears in the smaller insert frame. Tell me you wouldn't like that?