Tuesday, June 24, 2014

MultiChoice's DStv BoxOffice grows to 529 000 pay-per view video rentals per month; PVR base grows 15% to 1.1 million.


DStv BoxOffice - MultiChoice's pay-per-view video-on-demand (VOD) service - has grown to 529 000 movie rentals on average per month.

This was revealed in Naspers' financial year report for the year ended 31 March 2014. It's a dramatic increase from the 400 000 movie rentals per month recorded in 2013.

DStv increased the price for new movie rentals from R25 to R27 on 1 June this year.

Jim Volkwyn, the head of Naspers' pay-TV division, told investors, stakeholders and the media in a tele conference call late this afternoon that Naspers will "aggressively" push pay-TV content to all platforms, meaning online and mobile devices.

Jim Volkwyn said that Naspers does not envision a drop in the spending of "localisation of services", meaning investment and money spend on producing and distributing local TV content in TV markets such as South Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.

Jim Volkwyn said that the MultiChoice's PVR base (subscribers using a digital personal video recorder decoder) has increased 15% year-on-year (YoY) from 956 000 tot 1.1 million.

Regulatory and competition is intensifying for MultiChoice's pay-TV business; Jim Volkwyn said that MultiChoice is now involved in digital terrestrial television (DTT) in 11 African countries "and we believe we're fast catching up with competitor StarTimes".