This article was first published in the third quarter 2016 edition of Personal Finance magazine.
It rankles, but let’s get it out of the way: if your preferred home entertainment is live sport, you have no choice. While others agonise over DStv packages and prices, you don’t think twice. For 12 SuperSport channels – three of which are high-definition (HD) options of SS1, 2 and 3 – you’ll pay the DStv Premium package subscription of R759 a month (8.58 percent more than last year) and get more than 130 other channels thrown in – many of which you’ll never watch.
And that’s not the end of it. Even the most sport-mad South African has to get off the couch sometime, which means you’ll have to record programmes. That calls for the PVR (personal video recording) facility that comes with an HD or Explora decoder, for which you’ll pay an access fee of R85 a month. That entitles you to download the DStv Now app, which lets you live-stream sporting events on the move, on your laptop, tablet or mobile phone, or record remotely.
If you don’t live alone and have to compete for the remote with members of the family with priorities other than Formula 1 or football, you might also need XtraView, which allows you to have two channels playing simultaneously in separate rooms on a single contract. Once again, the R85 access fee applies, and you’ll need an HD or Explora decoder, plus one other (which could be the one from which you upgrade).
By now you’re spending R929 a month for your Premium viewing, over and above the cost of the decoder (or two), satellite dish and installation. All the prices of DStv’s top four packages went up at least eight percent in April, and DStv Family went up even more – 10.5 percent – but it is Premium that focuses minds and results in an outburst of renewed fury against MultiChoice each year at price-increase time (see “Is the price of DStv Premium defensible?”, below).
In the absence of anything to compare it with at home, MyBroadband, South Africa’s biggest IT publisher, compared DStv Premium with roughly equivalent packages in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia in 2014. Based on simple currency exchange rates, DStv came out at the lower end of the price spectrum. However, once the buying power of the currencies was factored in (using the World Bank’s 2013 purchasing power parity measures), DStv ranked with the two most expensive ser-vices – both premium services in the US offering far more channels.
When prices are unavoidably high, all consumers can do is pare down their consumption and buy strictly what they can use. Yet MultiChoice continues to resist cries for more content choice and corrals subscribers into the most expensive package by loading it with goodies not available on other packages.
The company told MyBroadband last year that “offering a genre-specific package (for example, sport) would actually end up costing the customer more than the current subscription for the Premium package”. Grouping channels into six predetermined packages is a critical part of DStv’s business model, MultiChoice said, and it’s a model used all over the world. It has certainly served MultiChoice well so far, in terms of both domination of the market and profitability (trading profit was more than R5 billion for the six months ended September 2015), but the forces of competition are gathering. The long-delayed migration from analogue to digital television has begun (see “Digital migration ... the end is nigh”, below) and will see the launch of a number of new free-to-air (FTA) and pay-TV services. Inevitably, they will try to give viewers the range of options and value for money for which they are clamouring.
This is reflected in the plans of the only two companies that have been granted new commercial subscription broadcast licences by the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (Icasa) in the run-up to the digital switchover:
* Siyaya TV will start with about 20 channels, and subscriptions will be priced from R70 a month, with the unique selling point being its football coverage, including the rights to all Bafana Bafana games. The company has signed a six-year, R1.2-billion contract with the South African Football Association (Safa), but will share the rights to broadcast certain games with the SABC, Safa’s free-to-air partner.
My Television is Siyaya TV’s 100-percent black-owned management company and the major shareholder is the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela tribe based in Moruleng, North West province. The service’s target market is the approximately seven million young black South Africans who do not yet have pay-TV, and the company believes 1.6 million subscribers is a realistic goal. The launch date has not been announced.
* The company Close-T will launch CloseTV with a content package targeting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community, demonstrating that it plans to make niche markets its business. A director of Close-T Broadcast Network Holdings, Mia Groenewald, told the media the company had set up exclusive partnerships with global providers of content specifically for this community, which the company estimates to be six million strong. The company believes that 1.4 million TV households will be willing and able to pay for LGBTI content. Content niches will be based on geography, ethnicity, lifestyle and interests and will be narrowly focused, with as few as five channels making up a package, to ensure that customers “only pay for the bouquets that are of interest to them, as opposed to paying a monthly subscription for a premier service and then only watching 20 percent of the total bouquet”, Groenewald said. A video-on-demand (VOD) service will come later.
Icasa spokesperson Paseka Maleka told Personal Finance that three other applicants for subscription licences and five applicants for commercial FTA licences have either withdrawn or had their applications turned down, because they were unable to
satisfy Icasa’s stringent requirements, which include providing details of business models, market research, sources of funding and empowerment structures. Icasa plans to invite further applications in future.
In the face of competition, the existing services are having to up their game. When “dual illumination” (the actual start of digital migration, when analogue and digital signals are made available simultaneously) started in February, M-Net immediately launched its digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform GoTV, which has been available in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa for some time. The set-up cost is R699 for the decoder, R299 for the antenna, plus the installation fee. Then there is a choice of two standard definition (SD) packages: the Value package at R99 a month for 12 channels, or the Lite package at R49 a quarter for two channels. Both options also provide access to free content from the SABC, e.tv and the various community channels, but only if a subscription is active.
When it comes to FTA, e.tv’s group manager of corporate affairs, Vasili Vass, says e.tv is already broadcasting its main channel on the DTT platform launched in February, although as yet it has very low penetration. “As the penetration of DTT grows, e.tv will evaluate its channel offering on the platform,” Vass says.
e.tv has also moved into the “on demand” space in a small way by offering popular shows such as Rhythm City and Scandal for viewers to stream from the online platform www.etv.co.za once they have been broadcast on the channel. “The way viewers are consuming television is continually changing,” Vass says. “This service is critical in the digital age and will grow exponentially through the years.”
The broadcaster has the same expectations for its free satellite television platform, OpenView HD, launched in October 2013. You pay for the decoder, satellite dish and installation (a R1 199 package available at Game stores) and get 15 satellite television channels at no monthly charge. The content includes SABC 1, 2 and 3, the HD version of e.tv, plus a movies channel, three children’s programmes, religious and lifestyle programmes and radio stations.
According to a press report at the end of May, eMedia Holdings, the owner of e.tv and eNCA, is seeing very little revenue from the service so far, but considering that the prospect of analogue switch-off creates a demand for about 5.4 million set-top boxes or satellite decoders (according to a recent report by telecommunications research firm Dataxis), the company is probably prepared to wait.
The SABC hasn’t announced its plans yet, but the website promises to “make available a range of new public services, including interactive and information services, and access to all SABC radio services anywhere in the country”. (FM transmission is not affected; the DTT platform just makes it available countrywide via the set-top boxes and TV receiver.)
Now for the real competition
“Do people still watch TV? Sweet!” commented one reader on a tech website. That makes a strong statement about the direction home entertainment is taking, with the most dramatic signposts being the launch, five months apart, of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services ShowMax, owned by Naspers, and US giant Netflix. These digital interactive services offer content “on demand”, rather than on schedule. You choose what you want to watch from the provider’s catalogue and the content can be streamed to your television (suitably enabled for digital viewing), personal computer or smartphone in real time, or downloaded for viewing later, usually within a 48-hour period (see “Beginners’ notes”, below).
Although Netflix is not new to South Africans, it is newly available to people who are not tech-savvy or motivated enough to access it directly using an “unblocker” or proxy VPN (virtual private network) to hide their location. For a fee of about US$4.99, these technologies route requests for content via another computer in another jurisdiction, thus hiding your IP address and bypassing attempts to limit content by country borders.
If you’ve been accessing US Netflix this way, you may be reluctant to give it up, because the South African service comes at US dollar prices, but with only a fraction of the US content. The problem is that certain regional content licences are already in place – for example, M-Net has the broadcast rights to the blockbuster shows Grey’s Anatomy, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, and it has the rights to current and future episodes of Game of Thrones, while ShowMax has the rights to past episodes of both Game of Thrones and ITV’s Downton Abbey.
This won’t last forever, according to Netflix, but it will be the case for two or three years, until the platform can fulfil its promise of a uniform offering worldwide. But for now, ShowMax has the advantage of a lower price, a larger overall catalogue than Netflix offers in South Africa, and a large amount of local content, including a substantial library of Afrikaans movies and TV series.
There are plans for ShowMax to produce its own content, as Netflix has started doing in the US.
Compared with ShowMax, with more than 20 000 episodes of series, 400 Hollywood movies and 200 local movies and series, the three other local VOD platforms that have survived into 2016 are small fry: DStv Box Office (which not everyone realises is available to non-subscribers) has about 160 movies; MTN VU (formerly FrontRow), has 830 titles across movies and series; and ONTAPtv, offers about 430 titles.
It’s a rough, tough industry, with SVOD services trying to establish themselves before the broadband infrastructure they need for efficient streaming and downloading is fully in place, and, at the same time, the suppliers of infrastructure competing aggressively to grab their share of the business.
According to “The state of the internet report” published in 2015 by Akamai, which specialises in web-based content delivery systems, South Africa had an average connection speed of only 3.4Mbps a year ago (90th fastest in the world), and the fastest speed recorded at the time was 16.8Mbps (112th in the world rankings). However, 2015 was a watershed year for superfast broadband, in which the roll-out of FTTH (fibre to the home) took a huge leap forward and prices were cut significantly by providers such as Telkom, so the number of households with access to VOD is expected to increase rapidly.
As ShowMax spokesman Richard Boorman said at the time of the launch: “We know connectivity is coming to South Africa, and the thinking from our end is to make sure we are investing now to take advantage of this boom in connectivity.”
And you can see why they think the gamble is worthwhile. According to global statistics service Statista, the number of digital video users worldwide is expected to rise from nearly 400 million in 2014 to over 800 million in 2020. In the biggest VOD market by far, the US, SVOD is particularly strong, with (in May 2015) 30 percent of TV viewers using their sets to stream Netflix.
Already global niches are being exploited – for example, movie-lovers who are more interested in quality than quantity can subscribe to the website Mubi (available in 200 countries, according to the website), whose experts present a new example of “cult, classic, independent and award-winning films” from all over the world every day, so you get 30 new films a month to stream or download for a monthly subscription of R119.99.
The struggle at home
In the race for the local SVOD space, two services have already fallen by the wayside: Altron’s Altech Node, a satellite service using a multi-purpose box that could also manage home-security systems, shut down in October last year after operating for just a year. Then Times Media’s Vidi closed at the beginning of 2016, 16 months after launch, citing the slow progress of broadband delivery and increasing competition.
The services that remain are MTN VU and ONTAPtv, plus the satellite broadcaster StarSat (formerly TopTV). TopTV has had a rocky ride: it launched in 2010 and was in business rescue by April 2012. In 2014 it was in the news for its failed attempt to launch four “adult” channels. It became StarSat after attracting a major investor in the form of the Chinese media company StarTimes Media, which operates in 10 other African countries. The broadcast licence was successfully transferred from TopTV to StarTimes Media SA as recently as November last year, so it is fully back in business, offering five packages (including a Mandarin-language package) priced between R199 and R99 a month. StarSat Super, the catch-all package at R199, is a mixed bag of channels ranging from Al Jazeera news to Star Kungfu and Star Bollywood and including SABC1, 2 and 3 and e.tv.
ONTAPtv offers a package of African-made content, another Mandarin channel called NOWtv, sourced from Hong Kong, a fight-sports package, and four general packages of movies and TV series priced between R39 and R89 a month.
MTN VU is a simple movies-and-series service that competes by making the data for streaming free to anyone with an active MTN SIM card.
And coming soon: an intriguing new VOD service called SAVuka TV from film production company Pecil Productions. It will target a black audience “with connections to rural and township life” and offer short (typically eight minutes long), locally produced content suitable for streaming on smartphones. Payment options will range from a monthly subscription service at R35 to single-day access at R9.99, and there’ll be pay-per-view prices from R5.50 for premium content to R1.50 for “lite” content. The launch date has not yet been set.
Whether any – or all – of these options poses a challenge to DStv Premium’s subscription remains to be seen. In hard economic times, you might consider a subscription television or VOD service an economical solution to entertainment, or you might prefer to pay strictly for what you view and opt to use a transactional video (TVOD) service. DStv BoxOffice requires only a DStv Connect ID and a credit card, MTN VU offers a limited service, and the iTunes Store offers movies for rent or purchase. The latest addition to this group is Google, which responded to the Netflix launch in January by adding South Africa to the countries able to download movies for rent or purchase via the Google Play store.
It’s complicated, it’s technical and it may be bewildering to the uninitiated, but in the end it comes down to a simple choice: do you want entertainment without the commitment? Or are you incomplete without a 24-hour window on live news and sport, and someone to bring you the latest TV series? Several options for the former; for the latter, it’s back to square one: DStv Premium … at least for now.
BEGINNERS’ NOTES
Free-to-air (FTA) television is just that: the television services you don’t pay for (apart from the licence fee) and everyone with a TV set has access to. At the moment, this is SABC 1, 2 and 3, e.tv and seven community stations.
DTT stands for digital terrestrial television, which will replace the analogue system we have now, probably within the next two years. Like analogue, DTT is transmitted through terrestrial space by radio signals and received by aerials, but the technology makes it possible for multiple channels to travel on a single frequency range, making digital much more “economical” in bandwidth terms. (The spin-off is that much-needed bandwidth will be made available for mobile telecommunications.)
Video-on-demand (VOD) refers to content that is available when you are, instead of when the broadcaster schedules it. With a subscription service (SVOD), you buy a subscription, usually for a month, during which there is no limit on how much you view. There are no contracts, so you can cancel the subscription at any time and the content is available until the end of the month.
Transactional VOD (TVOD) has no subscription; you simply pay per film or per episode of a TV series. TVOD is available on some SVOD services, such as ShowMax and MTN VU. The iTunes Store and the Google Play store offer movie rentals, but their main focus is video sales.
Streaming is the primary delivery system for SVOD and takes place in real time via an internet connection from the provider to an internet-enabled television, personal computer (PC), smartphone or other device. Streaming uses up data quickly; the higher the definition (which may be standard, high or ultra-high), the more data is used and the more space is required on the receiving device. Costs are a real issue, as is the actual speed of the internet connection (as opposed to the speed your internet provider claims you are getting). Services such as Netflix and ShowMax make allowance for variable speeds by allowing you to choose the definition you want and/or adjusting the quality automatically.
Downloading is the other way to receive video content and it has the advantage of allowing you to view the material offline at a another time, within the limits set by the provider. Downloads can be delivered to a computer or smartphone, or to a PVR (personal video recording) facility, such as DStv’s PVR-enabled HD (high-definition) or Explora decoder.
IS THE PRICE OF DSTV PREMIUM DEFENSIBLE?
When DStv raised its prices on April 1, 2016, these comments on Twitter and the websites of IT publishers MyBroadband and BusinessTech, were typical:
Implement pay-per-channel. I only watch three channels and live alone; who the heck is going to watch the others?
#dstvmustfall with immediate effect
What are you doing better for your viewers to warrant the price increase? It is a rip off and you know it!
DStv, you must realise that we kept you going from the beginning, and some people REALLY cannot afford the full package.
Another rip off! Pirating will be on the rise.
Subscribers are April fools every day with DStv
But for all the fury that rains down on MultiChoice for denying subscribers the opportunity to tailor their own packages to their budgets and viewing tastes, there is no shortage of commentators presenting the counter-argument that the investment in SuperSport justifies the package and price structure.
Gareth Vorster, the editor of tech website BusinessTech, says: “I would argue that [DStv] is worth every cent for one single reason: SuperSport, which arguably offers the most extensive coverage of live global sport anywhere in the world.” It is, for example, the only broadcaster in the world that airs all 10 English Premiership football games each week; as Vorster says, not even the UK pay-TV broadcaster Sky Sport does so. According to MyBroadband, SuperSport paid £296 million for the 2016–19 broadcast rights in sub-Saharan Africa. The website pointed out that that translated to about R6 billion when the deal was signed in August 2015, or closer to R7 billion if payment was delayed until the end of the year, when the rand had taken another tumble after the firing of Nhanhla Nene as Minister of Finance. (MultiChoice declined to tell MyBroadband which sum was closer to the truth, saying it does not disclose its costs.)
Vorster points out that, apart from football, we expect live coverage of SuperRugby, the Rugby Championship, the Rugby World Cup and the Cricket World Cup, the winter and summer Olympic Games, Formula 1 motor racing, tennis, Indian Premier League cricket, golf and, more recently, major US sports such as the National Basketball Association and the National Football League, which comes with the Superbowl. All these are enormous money-spinners thanks to their television rights.
So much for sport. The other major drawcard for pay-TV users is, of course, TV series and movies … and we all know what has happened to production budgets, and therefore to the cost of broadcast rights. We can only guess what the rights to a prime-time series such as Game of Thrones must cost. According to the authoritative US publication Entertainment Weekly, series six of Game of Thrones cost US$100 million to make – roughly the same as the final series of Friends. What Friends lacked in special effects, location costs, costumes, and so on, it made up for by paying the cast US$1 million for each of the 10 episodes.
Just two examples, but spare a thought for MultiChoice negotiating exclusive rights in US dollars and paying in rands. As the company wrote in a letter to customers announcing this year’s price increases: “We buy most of [DStv’s] fantastic content in foreign currency, and due to the depreciation of the rand by 29 percent since April 2015, our costs have gone up dramatically. Over the past five years, our adjustments have been in line with inflation. We’ve worked really hard to keep this year’s fees manageable.”
DIGITAL MIGRATION ... THE END IS NIGH
On February 1, 2016, the Department of Communications announced that the process of migration to digital television had finally begun in South Africa, seven months after the deadline of June 17, 2015 set by the International Telecommunications Union for all African countries to switch off their analogue services.
We have entered the transition period known as “dual illumination” – which may last as long as two years – during which both analogue signals and digital signals are transmitted, to give TV viewers time to prepare.
By the time the analogue switch-off date finally arrives, it’s thought that 43 percent of TV households in South Africa will have had to obtain set-top boxes (STBs) to receive digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasts on their analogue TV sets.
The government is making available five million free STBs for those who cannot afford them, but do have a valid TV licence.
The satellite decoders supplied by DStv and StarSat (formerly TopTV) and Openview HD are already digital-compliant, so no extra equipment will be needed.
Smart TVs with digital technology built in are already available, but will become more widely available, and less expensive, in future.
The delay was caused by a long-running – and still unresolved – dispute over whether the STBs should be equipped to unscramble encrypted content, as e.tv believes they should, so that broadcasters can protect their content. At the time of writing in June, e.tv had just won the latest round of its battle, by having the Minister of Communications’ decision to exclude encryption set aside by the Supreme Court of Appeal. But the manufacture of STBs and the migration process continue.
Despite this inauspicious start, and the need for an extra piece of equipment, DTT is good news for viewers:
* It will mean more services and channels, because digital signals can be compressed so that they take up much less bandwidth than analogue signals. The switchover means that nine times as much video and audio content will be broadcast per bandwidth, or up to 10 channels instead of one.
* The picture will be much sharper and brighter, with less risk of interference.
* The sound will be noticeably clearer.
* There’ll be scope for some useful extras, such as alternative language tracks on programmes, public service channels (for example, for educational purposes), and an electronic programme guide. The government has plans to use DTT to provide internet access in the home and e-government services in hard-to-reach areas.
The government has not yet disclosed what an STB will cost, but there will be no installation cost. The STB plugs straight into the TV set, either via the aerial connection point in older sets or via the RCA/AV point in newer sets.
If you decide to go satellite, you can buy the package of decoder, satellite dish and installation from StarSat for R599, or you can avoid a subscription fee by buying the Openview HD package for R1 199 (sold through Game stores). At the time of writing, a DStv HD decoder, with satellite dish and installation, cost R599 through Pep Stores, or R658 (including a dish/installation voucher) from online store Loot.
SUBSCRIPTION VOD: THE PLAYERS
SHOWMAX
Content: claims to provide about 11 000 hours of viewing. At a rough count, 126 TV series (including Game of Thrones, Friends, Downton Abbey and Suits) and 636 movies; 170 Afrikaans movies and series, plus for 16 Zulu speakers, three Sepedi, three Xhosa and three Tswana.
Free trial period: seven days.
Subscriptions: one month, R99; three months, R297; six months, R594. Cancel online whenever you want and the subscription ends at the end of the month.
Payment: credit card or prepaid vouchers available at Pick n Pay, CNA, Game and Makro.
Access: stream anywhere, anytime to a personal computer, iPhone or iPad, Android phone or tablet running Android 4.1.0 or higher, or Samsung or LG smart TV. You can register up to five devices and stream to two of them simultaneously. Content you have chosen to view is available to stream for up to 30 days, and once you have started, you have 48 hours to complete your viewing.
You can also download 25 TV shows and movies at a time to an Android tablet or smartphone using the ShowMax Android app. They are available to view offline for 30 days. Apple users will be catered for as soon as possible, according to ShowMax.
Connectivity: beware the cost of data and the real speed of your internet connection. You need at least a 2Mbps connection to have a good streaming experience, according to ShowMax, 5Mbps if you want to stream on two devices, which could limit that option to users with an ADSL, fibre or LTE-Advanced connection.
NETFLIX
Content: something like one-tenth of the content of the 7 000 titles available in the United States. A rough count of series and movies produced the following numbers:
232 TV series across all genres (including Ray Donovan, Narcos and Line of Duty) and 544 movies (77 action, 61 children/family, 25 thrillers, 30 independent, 44 romance, 42 sci-fi and fantasy, 76 drama, 163 documentaries and 23 horror).
Free trial period: first month.
Subscriptions: Basic (one standard-definition stream) costs US$7.99/R126; Standard (two HD streams) costs US$9.99/R157; Premium (four HD or ultra-HD streams) for US$11.99/R189 (rand-US dollar exchange rate at the end of May.) Cancel whenever you want and the subscription runs to the end of the month. Downgrade or upgrade your package at any time.
Payment: you are billed on the day after the last day of your free month and that date becomes your billing date every month. The billed amount will vary with the exchange rate. A credit card or a PayPal account is required.
Access: streaming only, on every conceivable platform: TV (smart TV, PlayStation, Xbox, Chromecast, Apple TV and Blu-Ray player), plus laptop, mobile phone or tablet. You can’t download for offline viewing, as you can with ShowMax.
Connectivity: at least 0.5Mbps per stream, with 25Mbps necessary per stream for ultra-HD quality. If you have a data cap, you can change the video quality setting to low or medium to consume less data, or use the auto setting to get the best quality based on the speed of your internet connection.
MUBI
Content: arthouse/cult/classic and independent movies, one introduced by Mubi’s experts each day by email, so you have 30 a month to watch. After each release, the 30 days of availability tick down to none. There is also a database of movies, with reviews and trailers, as part of its service to film buffs, but they are available to watch only when they are offered. A daily magazine called The Notebook discusses movie news and issues.
Free trial: one month.
Subscription: R119.99 monthly; cancel any time and you won’t lose the balance of the month you’ve paid for.
Payment: PayPal and the following credit and debit cards: Mastercard, Maestro and Visa, except Visa Electron.
Access: watch on PC, Mac, Android, iPad/iPhone, PlayStation or Samsung smart TV.
Connectivity: at least 5Mbps of bandwidth and network latency (a tendency for delays in the processing of network data, which can slow down speed slightly or dramatically) under 100 milliseconds.
MTN VU
Free trial period: none. You can try MaxVU before signing up by renting via PremiereVU, the pay-per-view service, or sampling WeekendVU.
Subscriptions: MaxVU: all the movies and series you want to watch for R99 a month; WeekendVU: all you can watch between 4pm on Friday and midnight on Sunday for R39 a month; PremiereVU: limited range of pay-per-view movies (no series on this package) at R29 (blockbusters) or R15 (library movies).
Payment: pay by credit, debit card or bank account, or charge to your MTN account or MTN prepaid airtime.
Access: streaming is available through all mobile networks, not just MTN. You can register up to five devices and stream on two of them concurrently. You have a 48-hour window in which to watch a movie or episode.
Connectivity:1Mbps or better for internet streaming, and the technology adjusts the quality of the video stream according to the internet speed and the computer’s processing capacity in real time. MTN offers free data for streaming by its customers – an important incentive to use this service considering that MTN estimates (conservatively?) that a movie may use 300MB of data, depending on the file size, connectivity, internet speed and the duration of the streamed content.
Content: from six of the big Hollywood studios. Over 800 titles: 732 movies (241 on subscription, 491 on pay-per-view) and 100 series (nearly 3 000 episodes), including Bates Motel, The Missing, Joy, Suits and House.
ONTAPtv
Content: Mega Pack gives you access to 349 titles, with 108 of them falling into the Movies package, 79 into the TV Series package (for example, Jonathan Creek) and 211 suitable for under-16s in the Family Package. There are also three special-focus channels: African ONTAPtv offers 135 movies and shows across all genres, including the movie Miners Shot Down, and series Knock Knock, Fun Factory and Task Force. The Fight Sports package has 36 titles. The Select section offers movie rentals.
Free trial period: none.
Subscriptions: Mega Pack (all content): R89 a month; TV Series package: R69; Family package: R69; Movie package: R69; African ONTAPtv: R39; NOWtv (Mandarin language): R88; Fight Sports package: R69; Select movies for hire at R15.
Payment: credit cards, cheque cards (Visa, MasterCard) and debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, but not Maestro cards). Access: Video streaming is available on PCs, Macs and Android and iOS-based tablets and smartphones, or you can download on to your Android or iOS tablet or smartphone. You can register up to three devices. Content is available for 48 hours and cannot be copied to or watched on a different device.
Connectivity: you can connect your laptop or tablet to a TV screen using an HDMI or VGA port, and get the best viewing experience by downloading the high-resolution file offered, although this will take longer to download and use more space, so will incur higher data charges. It is not yet possible to connect your smartphone to a smart TV.
Technical note. You can test the speed of your internet connection at these websites: fast.com and www.speedtest.net. As an example: my own internet speed, sold as 5Mbps, was judged by these tests to be 1.8Mbps and 1.96Mbps respectively – too slow for ShowMax. Data usage was calculated by the tech website www.htxt.co.za as follows: “A 40- to 45-minute TV show like Game of Thrones or Suits will require about 600MB of data, while a 20-minute show will be around 300MB per episode. A two-hour movie? You’re looking at around 1.5GB.”