MultiChoice and Samsung Electronics intend launching the pay-television operator’s DStv BoxOffice movie rental service on Samsung Smart TVs in about a month from now, TechCentral can reveal.
“We have Smart Hub already on our TVs, but it’s limited,” says Samsung Africa vice-president and chief operating officer George Ferreira. “We are now working with DStv to bring blockbuster pay movies to our TVs.”
The two companies will offer about 100 movies at launch, adds Samsung Africa head of content and services Thabiet Allie.
Pricing will be announced at launch. However, pricing is likely to be similar to BoxOffice on MultiChoice’s platforms. From 1 June, BoxOffice movies online and on the company’s personal video recorder decoders will cost R32 to rent, while DStv Premium and DStv Extra subscribers will pay R27. The rental price of older movies online is set at R10.
MultiChoice and Samsung already launched BoxOffice on Samsung’s Galaxy S5 at the smartphone’s launch in April. Consumers can either stream or download content to their device. The app remains exclusive to the S5 for now, says Allie.
He says even Samsung Smart TV owners without DStv subscriptions will be able to rent movies through BoxOffice when the product is launched. Viewers will only be able to stream content to their TVs, though, and won’t have the option of downloading movies.
Meanwhile, Samsung also intends launching its nMusic Africa streaming music service — which offers access to 20m songs — on its smart TVs by the end of June. “Entertainment convergence across our devices is key to our strategy,” says Allie.
nMusic Africa, which was launched with the Galaxy S5 and which is now available for all Samsung smartphones running Android 4.0 or higher, provides users with six months of free access to its music library. The company hasn’t yet announced what the pricing will be when it does begin charging for access. If users listen to a song for longer than 30 seconds, it stores the track on their phone. Users can also download albums for offline listening and can choose only to use Wi-Fi data if they are concerned about mobile data costs.
Apart from the 20m songs in its library, the TV version of the nMusic app will also offer consumers access to a million music videos. — © 2014 NewsCentral Media
