Streaming TV: out of sight for the masses?

There must have been a temptation to call it Net Flieks, but parent company Times Media Live have gone with Vidi instead – “to see”.

Much is made of the affordability of the system – R149 per month to subscribe to the whole bang-shoot, which at launch level means access to around

1 000 hours of miniseries and 100 films, or R27 (new release) or R15 (premium library titles) rental options. Those are lovely numbers, with the package being a sod-load cheaper than satellite TV fees and, hopefully, your favourite content guaranteed rather than merely potentially on sometime.

But there remains the challenge, for the average South African internet user, of sourcing and using the sort of bandwidth needed to enjoy an optimal streaming experience and then – and this is the kicker – managing to bring in all that fun under budget.

The issue here is not for the superconnected, the knowledgeable sorts whose days revolve around uploads and downloads and who are already watching all their TV in this way, if slightly less than legally. For them, Vidi’s opening offering, with its limited titles (the company says they will upload an additional 200 hours of content a month, but that’s then and this is now) is, to some extent, already outdated, and the fact that the platform operates on Microsoft Silverlight technology just freaks them out.

Here’s a paraphrased Facebook conversation held on the day of the system’s launch (the names have been changed to protect against Vidi staff hunting down those involved).

Noddy: “I subscribed; there’s relatively little on offer. May use the rental service – streaming will kill my data.”

Big Ears: “I won’t use it. They want my credit card for a trial and I’m not interested. And Microsoft Silverlight is a problem. They need to use HTML 5.”

Noddy: “Am having a few problems with the site on my mobile browser. There’s no iOS app yet, or PlayStation or Xbox support, which is a problem, because my laptop’s not connected to my TV.”

Okay, nerds. Settle down. Valid issues all, but there’s a first hurdle to get over that you haven’t even touched on yet – most South Africans aren’t as connected as you are. The rest of us are having problems regarding figuring out how to upload a small bonus data package that will get us through to the next contract renewal.

When the question came up about how much data streaming a film would consume, the number suggested (for a long title, to be fair) was 700MB. Reading that, anyone with a 2GB cap has just winced. And once the facial tic settled, they shrugged and thought: “Well, maybe if I have a slow month on the rest of my usage and am going to lose the data anyway; otherwise, I’m out.”

See Arthur Goldstuck’s more in-depth look – on these pages – at the service and its pros and cons.