In 2006 a select group of journalists and other connected parties were handed cellphones which, apart from doing all the things that a cellphone normally did, could receive DStv channels.
The handsets were part of a test being conducted by Multichoice into the viability of a technology known as DVB-H (digital video broadcasting — handheld), which used a new broadcast network to send out video tailored for viewing on mobile devices.
I can vividly remember driving from my office in Sandton to my home in Roodepoort with the phone resting in the cup holder of my car while I listened to (not watched, of course) a key Football World Cup game. Five years later Multichoice has finally launched its mobile TV offering, officially known as DStv Mobile.
The delay can be attributed to the industry regulator, Icasa, which dilly-dallied about issuing Multichoice with a licence to launch a commercial service. Although you can buy phones that can receive the mobile TV signal, the mainstay of the new service is a little black box (about the size of a small cellphone) called the Drifta. This is essentially a stripped down kind of DStv decoder, which picks up the mobile TV signal and then passes it along a USB cable or by WiFi to your Windows PC, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
There are plans for Android and Blackberry smartphones and Apple Macs to get support later on. Getting the Drifta up and running is remarkably simple. After getting back from the store you call the DStv call centre and they activate the device. You install an application on your PC/phone/tablet and then fire up the program and turn on the Drifta. It connects either by WiFi if you are using an iDevice, or by WiFi or USB if you are on a PC. The channels are displayed in a small window on your PC or on the screen of your mobile.
If you are using a PC, the display can’t be adjusted to fill the whole screen, and you probably wouldn’t want that anyway — once the picture goes beyond the size of a smartphone screen it tends to pixelate. On smaller screens the experience is more acceptable, but ideally it is for quick glances rather than prolonged viewing.
This is borne out by the choice of channels offered by DStv. The original line-up consisted of four sports channels, two music channels, one general entertainment channel, one news channel and Cartoon Network, but this has now been augmented with Sony Max, CNN and E! Entertainment. All of these offer the kind of viewing that can be done in bite-sized chunks or require a low level of overall attention.
The upside of this is that the subscriptions have been kept fairly reasonable. People who subscribe to the DStv Premium bouquet and Compact subscribers who are already on the DStv Mobile service won’t have to pay until April next year, while everyone else will have to pay R32 a month to access the service via a Drifta (or R9 a week if you have a DVB-H enabled cellphone).
Each Drifta can be linked to only one device at a time, so if you are getting it to keep the kids amused and they have their own iPhones then you will have to cough up for two or more subscriptions.
At present, coverage is restricted to the major cities — Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein — as well as Polokwane and Nelspruit.
Of course there are a few low points to the service. Image quality is the first of these. This is not a replacement for your HDTV but it does give you a reasonable way to watch sport and current events on the way. The on-screen visuals haven’t been optimised for mobile devices so you have to squint to make out what the scores are.
The list of devices is still limited, as is the coverage. Also the service seems to be about a minute behind the satellite feed, so you are likely to hear the cheers from the non-mobile watchers well before you see the try on your screen.
Even taking this into account DStv Mobile fills a spot in the market between listening on radio and sitting in front of a TV — and for R32 a month it may well be priced just right.