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DSTV Box OfficeNo doubt you have heard on the radio or from a friend, that DSTV has just released a new service to premium PVR subscribers called Box Office. 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
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?
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 Related posts: July 22nd, 2011 | Category: Movies |
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17 comments to DSTV Box Office |
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Just a quick update which I failed to mention before…. The first movie you watch on BoxOffice is free. My decoder currently only has 2 movies available for viewing, but no doubt by tomorrow morning there will be more.
I’ve sent the SMS to get my account activated, but have not received the reply yet to say my account has been activated. Obviously this is a popular service and their servers are under strain…..or this is DSTV’s first problem with BoxOffice. One never knows.
The message from DSTV this morning says, “The overwhelming interest delayed our system response times, which we’ve worked through the night to resolve. To show our appreciation, your next TWO movies are on us!”
So although I was not able to take it for a test drive last night, I’ll be able to test it more now
3 movies are now on my list, so it’s slowly getting there.
Very interesting. Is it possible to download movies to a DVD recorder hard-drive, or does it have to be a PVR?
How does DSTV stop people from copying the movies onto DVDs?
Hi Jerry,
Thanks for your comment.
To answer your first question, no you can’t download the movies to a DVD recorder and yes it does have to be a PVR. There is no-where to choose to ‘download’ the movies. Your PVR downloads the movies as they become available, just like the DSTV on demand service. So when you select to rent a movie from DSTV BoxOffice, really all that happens is that your decoder now allows you to play the movie that is already on the hard drive of your PVR. Although there are supposed to be 15 movies available at any time, my PVR has only downloaded 6 so far, every day I check the menu and there are a couple more. Obviously with time this list will grow and then when DSTV brings out new movies (roughly 2-3 per week) old ones will be deleted and the new ones will be downloaded.
Like the DSTV on demand, I have no doubt that the movies are stored on the hard drive in encrypted format. This means that only your decoder will be able to decode the movies for you to watch. This would prevent anyone from trying to copy the movies from the hard drive.
To answer your second question, about copying them onto DVD, nothing is totally copy proof, as proven on the side of the road at William Nicol. I suppose the only thing stopping you, is your conscience telling you that you would be breaking the law.
This is all very exciting but is no body worried about the amount of people working at rental stores who could possibly lose their jobs?
Hi Nicky,
Thanks for the comment, and yes you are right, it certainly is something to wonder. I don’t think rental stores are in too much trouble, remember that there are thousands of people that don’t have DSTV at all and they only rent. I for one, don’t rent movies ever, but I might consider using the Box Office feature from time to time, in my case the rental stores would not lose out at all.
If I order a movie through my HD decoder( which is only connected to 1 TV), will this movie also be downloaded onto my other decoder in the same house- and vice versa.
Hi Dons,
DSTV state that if you have extra view (2 decoders), you only need to register one of your smart cards and both decoders will be active, this of course does require that both of your decoders are PVR’s. I have this setup at home and when I joined this weekend both decoders showed a message to say that my account had been activated. I have not tested if I can rent a movie on the one and watch it on the other but I don’t see why this wouldn’t work. As I mentioned in a previous comment, the movies are pre-downloaded to your decoders, so when you rent all that really happens is that you decoder allows you to access the data on the hard drive. Since DSTV knows that you have two decoders, when you rent a movie it should be available on both decoders for 48 hours, but as mentioned, I have not tested this theory… I’m just going on what I’ve read and seen so far.
Thanks Jay.I rented one movie via the HD decoder but couldnt watch it on the PVR decoder.I havent tried ordering it the other way around yet.
mmmm, that’s not great to hear. So it looks like although both decoders can rent a movie, you can only watch the movie on the decoder your rented it on. Hopefully they fix that at some point. I suppose if you have your whole house cabled you could always watch the SD PVR in another room. Sadly this is not the way my house is cabled
Hi Jay
Apparently Blockbusters (dvd hire) in Aussie has gone under because of movies being downloaded to computers/pvrs
Hi Jerry, I’ve just done some research on Blockbusters in Australia… it looks like the the one in Queensland has just shut down, but there are still 268 stores open nation wide. The U.S Blockbuster’s however looks to be bankrupt but Blockbusters Australia say they are a separate entity and are still doing well.
I certainly do think that video/DVD stores world wide are probably feeling the pinch though, with the amount of piracy that is going on and the fact that you can download pretty much any movie / TV series off the internet with little effort, I’m sure stores everywhere have lost quite a bit of business. I know the UK are trying to clamp down on illegal downloads and now internet service providers have to provide information on what their clients are downloading to the government. There have already been a few cases in the UK where people have been fined over 20 thousand pounds for downloading illegal software / Movies / Music etc.
I could be wrong, but I think stores are losing more money to piracy than they will to DSTV Box Office, however the new offering from DSTV is certainly not going to help! I think what would totally crush the video stores would be if DSTV suddenly had a list of hundreds of movies that you can rent. At the moment DSTV only has 15 movies at a time, so there is always the chance that people will want to rent a movie that is not on the list, or was on the list and they missed it.
I suppose time will tell.
Why is it that we as honest Rental stores had to wait all these years for a window period between 4-6 months before we can buy titles from Ster Kinekor and Nu Metro? Not only do we have a constant battle to fight against piracy and fraudelent Dvd’s BUT now we have to compete with DSTV. All these years Mnet and DSTV had window periods that made the playground fair for everybody in the industry. Where are Nu Metro and Ster Kinekors’s loyalty. It is in fact Rental stores that supported them all these years…… The only ones laughing all the way to the bank is Nu Metro and Ster Kinekor. Funny how people can just bite the hand that fed them all these years. Quite disapointed. Why was it not proposed if Dstv wanted to go this route why not give Dstv a smaller window period than currently is available and give Rental stores still the slight advantage?
Hi Dissapointed, Very valid points you have raised there… have you been in touch with NuMetro and Ster Kinekor to see what they have to say about it? I would be interested to see what they have to say.
Are you already starting to see a reduction in sales? I would be interested to see if you do see a reduction because from my point of view I think the DSTV box office is a nice to have extra, it won’t replace the experience of walking into a store and looking through hundreds of titles to find the perfect movie to watch with the family for the night. I think it would be more a case of, there is nothing decent on TV to watch, so let me see what is available on box office. Or as a friend of mine said this weekend, “DSTV have just proved that with over 80 channels to choose from, you still need to rent a movie through box office because everything else they are broadcasting is crap”
I know of 4 people who have cancelled their DSTV this month. It might have something to do with death by CSI?
You are correct when you say there are over 80 channels,yet nothing to watch.What gets to me is that we are paying a subscription fee to see movies,now why must we pay another R25.00 to see extra movies?. These box office movies should be part of the package. Having said that I have fould it usefull and I believe the video shops will definetly lose out. I have alreday rented a box office movie which if it wasnt avaialable I would have gone to a video store.
why is it only south africa,here in zimbabwe we can afford the rentals
stick to the subject mr jay yes video stores are closing yes they wont make it,thanks boxoffice,have a vedeo store good erea next to pick n pay friday turnover before boxoffice oppende R7000.00 after box office started R1500.00 so