REVIEW
David Shapshak
DStv interactive TV service
It’s hard to remember what we did without remote controls, but now you can interact with your TV using a keyboard. It looks much like a computer keyboard but it is made of transparent blue plastic and is completely wireless.
You can, of course, use the usual remote but it is easier to type e-mails with the keyboard, which you point at the decoder and they “communicate” via infrared.
TV-mail is part of the DStv interactive TV offering, launched last month, and is an ideal means to access e-mail if you don’t have a computer at home. It may seem strange to be using a TV for e-mail, but the interface is as simple as the usual channel-changing one.
The e-mail has basic functionality, but “we’ve spent a lot of time making it look good for TV”, says Jonah Naidoo, Multichoice Africa’s interactive division’s general manager.
The new decoders have jazzed-up TV settings and programmes guide interfaces. They are more detailed and intuitive, and you can colour-code them according to the seasons. After having to spend ages trying to figure out how to set the language selection and shorten the screen display times when changing channels on previous decoders, I found this one remarkably easy. The only flaw might be having to maintain line of sight with the decoder when typing on the keyboard. Future models might benefit from an infrared receiver on top of the TV.
Besides the TV-mail which uses an M-Web account as it is hosted by Multichoice Africa’s sister company there is TV-shopping and an extended electronic programme guide.
The latter has been available before but is more powerful now. You can view upcoming movies alphabetically, by genre, by channel or by time frame, as well as sports events, news and documentaries.
You may not be able to record the shows to a hard drive inside the satellite decoder which will be possible next year when the next generation of personal video recorders are launched but you can set this decoder to “auto-tune” to the TV show when it starts. This function is one of two reminder options the other will flash a notification on screen that make it possible to set your video machine to tape consecutive shows that air on different channels for instance those Monday nights when ER was on M-Net and Frasier on SABC3. By setting a reminder, the decoder switches channels itself.
The TV-shopping is as intuitive an interface as the other interactive options. It lets you buy CDs, DVDs, books and some electronic goods from catalogue-like display pages.
Perhaps the most useful has been the interactive channel run by SuperSport. It has fed live data of the Proteas woes, which updates every 10 to 15 seconds, and has a nifty display that encloses the live action in a small window, so you can watch the game while groaning through the batting line-up figures or the bowling stats.