South Africa's pay-TV industry has more than a bit of catch-up work to do with what is being offered and made available to overseas pay-TV subscribers when it comes to consumer-end direct-to-home (DTH) services.
Take for instance the American pay-TV provider Comcast's latest X1 service it's rolling out which allows subscriber to control their TV by taking into their iPhone, using their remote to send out tweets about their favourite show, and even to search for programming based on the name of an actor.
Comcast's X1 will now give its pay-TV subscribers the ability to use their remote control to not just send out tweets about their favourite shows, but also to search for programming based on the name of an actor or sports team, not just the title of a movie or programme, reports the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Comcast's X1 decoders have three tuners so subscribers can watch one programme while recording two others. It comes with a 500 GB hard drive for storing recorded shows.
Of course Comcast's X1 is up against DirectTV's Genie DVR in America which can record five different TV programmes at once and has a 1 TB hard drive.
Sky in the United Kingdom of course has a 2 TB PVR available. Australia's FOXTEL also has a 1 TB PVR with four tuners available and you can set recordings from your WAP-enabled cellphone without having to be home.
