It's no urban myth - there's a golden decoder inside the MultiChoice City headquarters in Randburg and if you're lucky, really lucky, you might just get a chance to see it as part of an excellent interactive exhibition about the history of pay-TV in South Africa that is truly Smithsonian level great.
MultiChoice recently - and quietly - repurposed one of its ground floor meeting rooms in its MultiChoice City headquarters in Bram Fischer Drive in Johannesburg into an astounding walk-through exhibition detailing the history of subscription television broadcasting in South Africa that has of course been spearheaded by Naspers, and its pay-TV arms M-Net and MultiChoice.
Tucked away to the right behind the MultiChoice City reception desk and access gates of the airy lobby, the astounding exhibition isn't open to the general public or DStv subscribers although visitors, business people and MultiChoice, SuperSport and M-Net staffers can visit and experience the incredibly detailed and wonderfully interactive exhibition.
Few people at first glance will realise or even recognise that the "premium museum"-level standard of this TV history exhibition, tucked away in the southern most country of Africa, is actually as good, informative, and as well conceptualised as the best of American TV exhibitions that you get and is being done by the Smithsonian in the United States.
True lovers of television and television history in South Africa will get a huge kick out of entering the cleverly conceptualised, windy pathway whisking people past a colourful array of newspaper clippings, TV screens looping endless and memorable South African video-nostalgia, M-Net and DStv decoders, and walls adorned with fascinating facts.
The amazing audio-visual exhibition offers a look back at past and current iconic TV shows from across M-Net's range of TV channels since the starting days of Front Row, Carte Blanche, Egoli and others, and visitors can even enter an interactive booth to experience a virtual 4D TV satellite launch experience.
"Welcome! This is our story" beckons the front wall of the exhibit, that exits at the end with a "cast" photo mosaic wall of MultiChoice staffers' faces.
Along the walls are mounted transparent perspex cases each with various M-Net and DStv decoders showing the rapid evolution over the past two decades of the various set-top boxes since M-Net introduced the very first one in 1986 (yes, it's part of the exhibition too!).
Included and on show in the exhibition is a "C-3PO" decoder - M-Net's millionth decoder it made in 1993.
This 24-carat gold plated beauty can't translate languages as part of human-cyborg relations, but once upon a time unscrambled satellite signals into a profusion of M-Net TV channel choices.
In mid-October TVwithThinus was inside MultiChoice City for the media event of one of M-Net's new shows, when an M-Net publicist asked if I was aware of it, and maybe wanted to walk through - which I did along with another journalist. We were both astounded and completely blown away.
Afterwards I asked MultiChoice about the beautiful exhibition.
MultiChoice says that due to security reasons people can unfortunately not just walk in and see and experience the exhibition but that MultiChoice does have "open days" for various groups like DStv installers, agencies and customers during which it might be possible to experience the exhibition.
