Digital Satellite Television (DStv) is improving its personal video recorder (PVR) service giving to give subscribers more storage space for content.
DStv, Multichoice’s digital satellite service’s BoxOffice, has been largely successful, according to Koos Bekker, Naspers’ Chief Executive. BoxOffice enables subscribers to rent movies, but growth is stunted by a lack of storage space.
Subscribers will not have to contend with storage space issues for much longer, according to Bekker, who said they have embarked on a project to launch a new DStv PVR with larger capacity.
Not only will the bigger PVR free up storage space, it will also offer subscribers more TV series and movies that are on demand by DStv subscribers.
“At the moment movie rentals run at about 400,000 per month,” said Bekker, but added the weakness is “we can’t give you a thousand movies because the PVR wouldn’t allow it.”
They plan to double the DStv PVR storage capacity every 18 months, which will allow them to bring more movies to their subscribers. “We can place the latest hits on your PVR and give you a type of video rental experience for about, at the moment, 16 to 20 movies, and hopefully we can expand it in time to 100 and maybe more,” said Bekker.
Aletta Alberts, Head of Content at MultiChoice, said earlier this month they intend to launch a new internet-connected decoder early next year.
The new decoder is designed to increase capacity for DStv’s “Catch Up” content from 20 hours to 175 hours.
“If you have a fantastic internet connection then you could have access to other content,” says Alberts. The additional contact she is referring to include services such as iTunes.
