The supremacy battle between South Africa’s Multichoice (owners of DStv, Gotv & Showmax) and American over-the-top media services provider Netflix has gone a notch higher after Netflix published an ad dissing the tedious process of installing DStv, and how the signal can be lost easily.
In the ad that has left tongues wagging, a man who works for Netflix going about the process of installing DStv (disguised as Netflix), and then goes on to say that unlike their competitors’, their service is hassle free.
“It is quite technical and detailed. First you have to do a full site inspection,” says the ‘DStv’ technician, who is camouflaged in a Netflix uniform.
In June this year, MultiChoice admitted that it has lost some 100,000 subscribers from its DStv Premium service.
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The South Africa-based pay-TV operator complained that it has been hit hard by the arrival of Netflix into some of its markets.
Multichoice South Africa CEO Calvo Mawela has already complained about Netflix’s financial privileges in that it does not have to pay for a broadcasting licence.
In a fight back strategy, Mawela says that MultiChoice will launch its own streaming service, and has already launched DStv Now.
Part of the problem has been in obtaining the streaming rights for all of its broadcast content, but Mawela now says that by the end of this year it will have achieved streaming rights for all of the channels and content carried on the broadcast service.
However, this might pose an inside fight with Showmax, whom together with Multichoice are owned by Naspers.
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