What is HITV's answer going to be to the following press release today?

MultiChoice Africa Launches Easyview

| Posted: Monday, February 04, 2008

MultiChoice Africa, the leading pay-TV operator on the continent, has announced what it calls “one of the biggest single contributions to Africa’s digital future”. The company, which has established a world-class reputation for innovative offerings and pioneering technology, has now launched a new product DStv EasyView.

With an affordable annual subscription fee of just USD 30 (GC30) a year, DStv Easyview debuted in several markets simultaneously. Offering unprecedented mass market access to multi-channel, pay-TV services, it’s the first product of its kind ever introduced on the continent.

With its pricing the equivalent of USD 2.50 a month, DStv EasyView is destined to positively transform the landscape of the pay-TV in Africa.

Available from February 14, DStv EasyView effectively makes pay-TV accessible to millions of viewers, allowing them to share in a world of news, music, movies, sport and more. Its creation also allows MultiChoice Africa to explore a broad new market segment, previously untapped in the pay-TV sector.

MultiChoice Africa CEO Eben Greyling says that the latest product launch is a result of the company’s ongoing aim to deliver relevant product options that meet the viewing and budget needs of a wide range of consumers.

“We’re incredibly proud that MultiChoice Africa is the first to offer this service. DStv EasyView is a product that we designed specifically to offer the benefits of digital information, education and entertainment to a wide new community of subscribers. Further, we’ve always believed that the continent’s success is our success. Therefore it’s of great importance to us that we play a significant role in assisting Africa to bridge the digital divide while also growing our business.”

Encompassing both international and local programming, DStv EasyView offers the same unbeatable product quality that has come to define MultiChoice’s product offerings, from its prestigious DStv Premium bouquet to its attractive Compact and Family offerings.

With channels such as the headline-driven Al Jazeera, the panoramic National Geographic Wild, the all-action SuperSport Update, the educational Mindset Learn and the M-Net packaged MagicWorld channel among others, DStv EasyView combines high value, affordable pricing and great programming. Subscribers can also access interactive gaming via Playjam Games plus 14 radio channels.

One of the highlight features of the DStv EasyView package is the inclusion of local free-to-air channels. This inclusion allows widespread coverage for public broadcasters who have previously been challenged by the reception limitations of analogue signals.

The launch of DStv EasyView is directly in line with MultiChoice Africa’s deep commitment to creating a vibrant and exciting television industry in Africa.

The company, which was the creator of the first digital satellite broadcasting system outside the US, has an unparalleled history of investing in local film production industries and showcasing home-grown talent.

Having been in operation for over a decade, MultiChoice Africa has also honed its state-of-the-art delivery mechanisms while continuously upgrading its payment options. It has also invested extensively in the growth of its staff and its consumer service. Further, in partnering with African governments in the creation of unique MultiChoice Resource Centres, the company has invested significant amounts of time and money to aid learning across the continent.

Source: MultiChoice

wow thats a killer! lol but its too early to say RIP Hitv. 30 USD annualy? Thats abt N3400 a year and N270 a month. hmmm but obtaing d dish and decoder might be d downfall lol. also contents of programes will count a lot. Lets see hw it all plays out

hi senga if u check will dstv will be giving about 11 channels,including nta,ait,stv,mitv,channels.so is that value for money.apart from nat. geo. wild what is the quality channel there.

hi senga,well toyin was in london to finish some offical business,but had to come back because of d hitv 1year anniversary.hitv will be opening a business office in the uk.as at last year december they had signed trace,zee cinema,foxnews,islam channel,cnbc africa.this year more has been signed and will be added plus the others i mentioned next month.

Well e good as HITV still dey believe in their bizness, cos thats the first step for any salesman to succeed.
I wish all em playaz in Naija huge success.
Mk una tell Toyin say when next him dey town mk him hola at him boi, mk we package correct stuff/content for am at affordable rates.

As kpe boiz dey lounge for JD we no fit dey follow him staff, Chuma dem dey yarn ova fone. u know dat kind levels.

Hi urfriend
I agree there is no meat on the bone, and as dekin says how much is the decoder and the dish. They have been clever though giving free kids games but that will make the middleware more expensive. This launch I believe is aimed at platforms that are not investing in good content and it is also clever marketing to get new viewers onto their platform. This not just Nigeria they are targeting, it is the GTV, Myafrica and anyone else who wants to enter into the market at a lower level. Remember Multichoice is a cash cow and must make a profit of tens of millions of dollars per year, they can throw more money at this business than we can dream of and not lose any sleep about it.

All the free to air are already being transmitted and paid for by the main subscribers and the channels in this package will only be cents per sub. The quality of terrestrial channels are pretty bad so people will pay just to get a better quality picture.

Whoever loses out in the next EPL round will not survive unless they have built up robust content, there are two kings in this business, Content and of course the customer, they go hand in hand.

I am pleased to see that your content outside of sport is growing, have you taken another transponder to broadcast them? Your single transponder must be bursting at the seems.

urfriend:

hi senga,well toyin was in london to finish some offical business,but had to come back because of d hitv 1year anniversary.hitv will be opening a business office in the uk.as at last year december they had signed trace,zee cinema,foxnews,islam channel,cnbc africa.this year more has been signed and will be added plus the others i mentioned next month.

Urfriend , when will we believe you?

Its just dat am a bit too lazy to fish out some of your previous posts but i can remember that you said:

1) Channels were going to be added during the yuletide period last year! (nothing happened )

2) You also said the Eutelsat engineers were on "holidays" dat's why there was a delay and that they will upload channels by January ending (this is february)

3) Now you're saying next month (march) , something tells me that by March you may say July

Na u biko!

hi senga,hitv just added trace tv to both it's satellite and cable platforms.they removed mtvbase africa 4rm cable platform because mtv made them get thier signal 4rm dstv.so they told mtv,'no clean feed no mtv on hitv'.more channels to come soon, e.g,zee cinema,setanta sport news,fox news,cnbc africa,fox sports,e.t.c.also hitv is one years,and now offically has over 70,000 subscribers.

Hi urfriend

You telling me that since the 30th Jan (50,000, your words) HITV have amassed another 20,000 + subscribers, that will go into the Guinness Book of Records.

@senga yea i saw it on papers too hitv officialy has 70000 subscribers and they r targeting 500000 by d end of d year. Well, goodluck 2 them. @urfriend just did a rescan and trace tv has been added as u said. d quality was crisp. Just some question, hw many channels do u guys intend to keep adding 2 d one transpoder u ve with eutelsat? or have u guys aquired another one?

Just to let you guys know that Trend TV are up and running on W4 and it is all free to air (5 channels at last count), same as DSTV and HITV, I think they wanted to spoil HITV's birthday!

Check out this website it shows you all the channels that are on Eutelsat W4 and beaming down on to Nigeria.
You are able to see what channels with the different platform names i.e. HITV, Multichoice, Trend and GTV.

http://www.lyngsat.com/36east.html

hi senga,i already know that,i was the one who posted it to lyngsat.both the gtv,hitv and now trend.A. ETON,THAT'S ME.has i said before now,more great things are coming to hitv this year.watch out,

Hi urfriend

The blog was to tell Nigeria that the phoenix Trend TV, had arisen and another Nigerian platform had launched and it is free to air, with Daar in April it will make an interesting scenario.

Would you like to take bets on 500,000 by the year end as mentioned in the press by dekin!!!

@urfriend

Appreciate all your work on lyngsat, it is a reference point to many people.

Where is HITV going to go for another transponder because Eutlesat W4 is full, you cannot squeeze many more channels on your one transponder can you?

hi senga,hitv can get to the 500000 mark.after all it took dstv 15years to get to it's 390,000 subscriber mark in nigeria.hitv will till get another transponder soon,but for now the 11900 H 27500 CAN TILL TAKE AtLEAST 7 more channel if am not wrong.

Why is hitv showing only few premier league matches instead of the 80 percent right we were told they have. Eg this weekend there is man u vs man city fixture,even last week no man u vs tot. fixture.

Hi Urfriend

I love your optimism, your boss says 500,000 by the year end and it took Multichoice 15 years to get to390,000. What magical box are you going to get subscribers to your platform, not what you are now offering? I could believe Multichoice could get that with their $2.50 package.

As far as I know HITV has one transponder on W4 and according to Eutelsat the maximum channels on MPEG2 16, there are no other transponders available. The last four were taken by HITV, GTV, Trend & DAAR.

When you use sport it eats up extra bandwidth and you will be lucky to get 13, how the heck can you get another 7 channels. HITV will get a degradation of signal across the board when you show a lot of sport.

hi senga,if it was not possible to add more channels hitv would not be on eutelsat w4.so pls just wait.hitv will be adding more channels and will be getting another freq from eutelsat w4.

Why is hitv showing only few premier league matches instead of the 80 percent right we were told they have. Eg this weekend there is man u vs man city fixture,even last week no man u vs tot. fixture.
[quote][/quote]
hi badaru1,hitv shows u 8live games.but at middweek games they show all 10.so when they show u 10,the next weekend the will only air 7,dstv 3.
note hitv shows at 4pm 3 live matches at the same time on hisoccer,hi sports and hi sports 2.any other match at that same time will be aired delayed.

@senga

I don't think those channels that Trend tv want to use to "spoil Hitv's party, are good enough to do that.

Secondly, @senga, beleive me, Hitv are selling and getting more and more subscribers despite all the shortcomings.

I think they will make at least 350 thousand by year end.

Mr Toyin Subair has affiliations with some people in religous circles(Churches).

These Churches have very influential leaders and all it takes is an endorsement from these Church leaders and there will be a surge.

I beleive thats where a lot of the optimism is coming from.

@urfriend, what is Zee cinema like? Sounds funny!
Hope its not another art movies. I was made to understand in another thread that Art movies 2 was targeted at the Lebanese community in Nigeria.
Also are you guys still talking with Sky for content?

Edit: Just checked the zee site and its indian movies. Hope at least they will be showing Indian films in English or subtitled.


_{See me o , the channel wey I never see na im I dey demand how it should be}

@Urfriend

Pls don't give us all the scrap about Mtvbase and whatever you called it. You have not surpassed the Hi Rubbishes you have given us,namely:
Sky News
God Tv
BBC
Eurosports
Hi Sports
Hi Soccer
Hi Sports2
Hi Nolly
Hi Mix
E!
Arabic
Nigezie and the 3 other rubbishes. So what are you trying to say here? Instead of upgrading and finding better services here you mentioned you are wasting your resources having an office in UK. Shame on You and your cohorts!

hi bluehorizo,u call the channels hitv has given so far has hi rubbishes,which one have u done.we nigerians are very good at complaining and condemning but if we are put there we will even do bad things.dstv is 15years in nigeria,hitv is just one year.do u think they are opening the office in london to play there?,they opened it to be able to make more contacts.see,give hitv more time.has i said b4 now,more great things are coming up this year 2008.from movies,sports,cartoons,documentaries,series,etc.

@everyone
@senga
@urfriend
@twintaiye

I am now able to view DSTV channels in my New HITV decoder.

This is what happened: I was having problem before because my dish was not well aligned, my quality then was just above 67%. I just recently moved apartment, i left my former flat to another and had to fix my dish all over again, so it didnt take me time (like five minutes) and i had a connection to Eutelsat W4 again, with quality 74% and Signal Strength of 88% and now all the channels on DSTV is not showing in my decoder.

Another problem i have is that they information for programs dont show on my decorder, last night a friend of mine brought a new Strong decoder (465xx) he just bought and it was showing the program information and EPG, what could be wrong with my decoder? software?

Can anybody paste the latest software for HITV new decoder here for me to pick with flash drive?

I just paid N2,500 (Family) for my DSTV card, when i get home, i will see how it goes.

Another problem i would have loved to solve is: is there a device i can use on my decoder so that i will be able to use both my HITV card and DSTV card at the same time?

Expecting your replies!

Thanks to all

First things first: what is the brand name and model of your receiver and who is the manufacturer. As it seems to be a HITV branded receiver, there is the risk that it is limited in the functions it can perform and may even be limited in terms of the kinds of software that can be loaded into it.

Second: put your DSTV card in and come back to report so that we can know if at all your receiver can do Irdeto encryption (used by DSTV) at all.

Third, it is possible to use some receivers to accommodate two cards at once; but the receiver must usually already have been built for that purpose from the factory. The possibilities are: (1) the receiver has two CI (Common Interface) slots; then you can insert two CAMs each of which can take a card; or (2) the receiver has one card slot into which one card goes and one CI slot into which a CAM + the second card will go; or possibly, the receiver has two card slots (this is rare AFAIK). Those are really the main ways by which you can use two cards in one receiver.

@enigma,

I have already done that, it works with DSTV Irdeto card. Infact, works fine!

but i don't think it will be able to activate the dstv with the hitv branded decorder.

I activated the DSTV card with the HITV Decorder.

My only problem now is the fact that i use a less than 90cm dish and because of that, some of DSTV transponders are for wider dish, i paid for Family Bonquet and i dont get Event Channel 1 & 2 and if i move my dish and my quality for HITv transponder is below 74%, some DSTV channels like Channel 0, MTV Base, African Magic etc wont be showing or will be breaking.

My problem still remain, i want to use two Access Card (DSTV & HITV simultaneously) on my decorder.

Thanks all

@all

Is there anybody that has a DSTV Decoder only (preferably) or with card sha, that wants to sell it?

If yes, either drop a message here or call me on 01-8165873 or 08050989962 for urgent purchase.

Competitive price o.

Thanks, hoping i will get here.

urfriend:

hi bluehorizo,u call the channels hitv has given so far has hi rubbishes,which one have u done.we nigerians are very good at complaining and condemning but if we are put there we will even do bad things.dstv is 15years in nigeria,hitv is just one year.do u think they are opening the office in london to play there?,they opened it to be able to make more contacts.see,give hitv more time.has i said before now,more great things are coming up this year 2008.from movies,sports,cartoons,documentaries,series,etc.

It is not how far but how well. You are a Nigerian and i am sure you must have also used this saying times without number. Wake up!

What's new HITV?

The new thing is that Eurosports news is gone!