Great leap ahead for TV on demand

Frustrations

While many might have envied PVR owners for their ability to prerecord programmes, the process has not been without its frustrations. Not only did it mean avid viewers having to consciously sit down every day and record their favourite programmes for the following week but, because the majority of big names series had new content being screened on one channel with repeats on up to two or three others, the result was that it often became difficult to remember what was being screen where and at what time.

Now, most of these can be recorded in one hit, not only saving time and frustration but also being able to do away with the greatest frustration of all and that was missing out on programmes by being away from home and not being able to record the following week's episode.

TV on demand

The new software also added the DStv On Demand feature to the HD-PVR allowing viewers to access a schedule of automatically recorded recent programmes at the push of a button.

In addition, myriad existing features have been speeded up with the whole HD-PVR experience becoming a lot quicker and crisper.

Multichoice has been talking about this HD-PVR software upgrade for some time but it is still interesting that it has been announced and automatically downloaded to HD-PVR customers in the same week as the launch of pay-tv competitor, TopTV.

But, there is no doubt in my opinion that Multichoice is not going to lose any of its HD-PVR customers to the new kid on the block because once one has lived with high definition, anything else is a huge letdown by comparison.

While Multichoice has come under severe criticism from a lot of subscribers with regard to customer service and cost of the premium service, I still argue that when one looks just at the sport offering, for example, and the price of tickets to sporting events, the SuperSport HD channel just on its own is probably worth the subscription.