Box office will allow you to rent a movie directly on your DSTV decoder for R25. One is left asking what is to become of video stores and no doubt owners of video stores must be a little worried.

You may or may not know that your hard drive in your PVR is currently partitioned (split) into multiple sections. A few years ago I was training a course with someone from DSTV and they informed me that the extra partitions where going to be used for “future services”. The first ‘future service’ was DSTV on demand which as you know has been around for quite some time now. The second ‘future service’ has just arrived in the form of DSTV Box office. Your decoder will download 15 movies onto the hard drive waiting for you to rent them. Due to the multiple partitions on the hard drive of your PVR you will not lose recording time as some people have suggested and all 15 movies will occupy space on a reserved partition designed for exactly this new feature.

Last night at around 2am, my HD PVR did a firmware update and this morning there is now the new menu for the Box Office movies. No doubt when you get home tonight you will see this new feature waiting for a test drive over the weekend.

So how does this new service from DSTV work?

Firstly you will need to sms you smartcard number to 37569, which will enable the service and will create a new box office account for you. Your box office account is separate from your DSTV account and will need to be paid for separately.

Once you have enabled the box office feature on your PVR decoder, you will then be able to choose the movie you wish to watch and then choose a payment option. There are currently 3 payment options available

1. Charge your box office account. If you currently have your DSTV account set up for debit orders, your box office account will be set up automatically in the same way… if your cell phone number is on DSTV records.
2. You can pre-charge your box office account. Just a like a pay as you go service.
3. Charge to your credit card. This is a little more painful as you will need to sms the rental code for the movie to DSTV, they will then send you a link that you will need to use to make payment.

So how do you rent a movie?

When you press the green button on your PVR remote control, you will have an option for Box Office, you will then see a list of all the movies currently available for viewing. Select the movie you wish to rent, accept the teams and conditions, choose the payment option and then finally sms the rental code to DSTV.

It may seem like a pain to have to sms the code, but at least this will control who can rent movies at home. DSTV needs to have your cell phone number on record, and only if the code is sent from that number will the movie rental be successful. If you choose to give the rest of your household control over renting movies, you can add an additional 3 cell phone numbers to the authorised list of users.

Once all of this is done, you are free to watch the movie as many times as you like within the next 48 hours.

How Often are movies changed?

Box Office will at any given time have 15 movies available for you to rent, these movies will be updated weekly. This is pretty much the same structure that your cinema uses. Every week a movie gets released another movie has to be removed. So although the list of 15 movies is updated every week, this does not mean there will be 15 new movies each week. I have no doubt that if DSTV is making a bundle of money off of one movie, there is a good chance it will stay there longer… just like it does at your cinema.

DSTV have stated that they expect to have 150 title during a year on their box office service, so you could expect to see 2 -3 new movies each week.

How new will the movies be?

DSTV have stated that the launch of a movie on Box Office will be between 4 – 6 months after it was released on circuit. This is the same time frame that you local video/DVD store releases the titles and DSTV has also claimed the movies would be available on Box Office on the same day as the stores get it.

So what are the first 15 movies?

1. It’s kind of a funny story
2. I am Number Four
3. The Dilemma
4. Yogi Bear
5. Drive Angry
6. 127 Hours
7. Tangled
8. The Next Three Days
9. Black Swan
10. The King’s Speech
11. Gulliver’s Travels
12. Little Fockers
13. Due Date
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : Part 1
15. The Town

There is already a lot of talk on forums and blogs about this new service, some of it positive, some of it negative… what are your thoughts?

City: ALL

Country: South Africa

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3. Avatar

I had commented on another post on this site, that The Matrix was the reason I bought a DVD player, and Avatar would be the reason I got a Blue ray player, well… my wife ordered my copy of Avatar on blue ray last weekend, and I promptly went to fetch it at 8:00am this morning. Needless to say, tonight I will be watching Avatar in full HD on my PS3.

Apparently this is just the first release of Avatar, and according to James Cameron, there will be another release later this year that will be a box set with over an hour of extra scenes and behind the scenes footage.

Avatar has already overtaken Titanic as the number 1 grossing movie in history, and now that Avatar is available on Blue-ray and DVD, with more to come later this year, it’s certainly going to be making the gap between number 1 and number 2 much greater….let’s not forget however that Titanic is due for a re-release in 3D… My money is still on Avatar breaking all records.

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Country: All

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So on arriving home and having nothing better to do. I convinced Sian to go watch it with me.
Well…it was nothing less than breath taking!
Not just in terms of the effects, but the story line and acting.
James Cameron created a movie with such magic and beauty that it left me with a feeling that I have probably not had since watching Star Wars as a kid. Elements in this movie include; the discovery of hope, love, spiritual harmony, exhilaration, and a world that is a visual wonder complete with an enchanted portrayal of all its living things.

So keeping this short! It is an absolute must see!
Kudos Jim

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Country: South Africa

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