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Wednesday, February 19, 2020

South Africa: DStv Easyview Is Better Than OpenView

OpenView is a free-to-view platform owned by eMedia Investments that offers quality entertainment while DStv Easyview is a pay-tv platform supplied by MultiChoice at R29p/m (formerly R39p/m). Ever since OpenView took the market by storm a lot consider it a better alternative to some of DStv's package like Easyview.

Before I get to what makes Easyview swell let's look at what makes OpenView superior starting with general entertainment section. For years e.tv has constantly restructured that section back in 2013 it was a kind of crappy compared to now where's so much entertainment including reality, international and local drama series, telenovelas and quality movies. With Easyview they basically have a Telenovela channel that's already found on OpenView except OpenView has 2 more channels for telenovelas, a repeats channel except OpenView's repeats channel also airs international programming, a dull reality channel which is accessible 24 hours a day compared to eReality on OpenView and a movie channel that airs somewhat classical films relying on a portion of channels found on OpenView for modern movies (ouch). Community channels also air a bit of everything in this section but most would rather stick with OpenView for quality entertainment over MORE low quality programming there. If you want quality entertainment get OpenView and if you want more channels with low quality get Easyview. The winner is OpenView.

Sports, at launch viewers only turned to SABC for that on OpenView with Easyview they have a highlights channel and sport-infused programming and old matches on a variety of community channels besides SABC giving them the edge overtime OpenView grew their lineup with their first sports channel now defunct Kwesé Free Sports and went on to bring Fight Sports and use OpenNews for sports and turning it into e.tv News & Sports for reruns and exclusive sports matches with some news remaining. None of these platforms will give you soccer 24 hours a day but OpenView wins this round as well.

Now we get to the rest of section that makes Easyview "superior" even though it's a section operators put less investment onto its definitely bigger on Easyview side of things. Whatever you read from below just know Easyview wins it all and takes most of the cake compared to OpenView.

News, OpenView offers 2 news channels and only 25% of that channel is local with news programming being carried out on SABC and e.tv daily while Easyview has more than double the news channels alongside community channels and a weather channel with two of them being local news channels besides having SABC and e.tv for daily news.

Kids, OpenView had 4 kids channels, two educational, one factual and the other entertaining now it's been reduced to just 2 channels the same channels found on Easyview with programming on SABC and e.tv found on both platforms. Now getting to the part where Easyview wins there's a standard preschool channel alongside content from community and religious channels and possibly even that upcoming youth channel(s) and maybe the African animation channel.

Music, I know OpenView no longer has one and won't have one yet for another foreseeable future but let's look at the time they had one which was the trainwreck Beatlab TV along with content and segments from SABC and Glow TV not everyone likes indie so yeah the options are lacking on OpenView side even the radio channels seem weaker in comparison(your phone has a radio even the no internet or camera phones have it so use that). Easyview has segments from SABC, community channels, 3 music channels (2 gospel), DMX (international music only) and radio channels so no matter what happens OpenView will never beat that package when it comes to music.

Religion and community channels, OpenView had a couple of them and that didn't go so well Easyview has a ton of them even community channels have religious programming that ain't fading away from anyone's screens, it's enough to even launch a standalone package. These genres don't attract much attention to most of the media so does it matter if OpenView has one if they'll all be treated in the same manner.

If you tally up everything OpenView is only good for general entertainment and sports which is premium game changer while Easyview is better with the smaller and sometimes overbooked sections which has less impact and seems niche in a way overtime it could grow on both sides in the end OpenView might have each of these missing gaps but I doubt they'll be much growth in these sections compared to Easyview after all you need to pay R29p/m as opposed to OpenView free entertainment.

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