by Thinus Ferreira
e.tv is testing and putting the finishing touches on Openview Ultra as a new satellite pay-TV service which eMedia plans to launch soon and which will represent South Africa's biggest traditional pay-TV market shake-up in decades.
Openview Ultra will launch with two pay-TV bouquets: a gay bouquet carrying LGBTQ content, called the "Pride Bouquet", as well as a Bollywood bouquet branded the "Spice Bouquet".
Openview Ultra's Pride Bouquet will include TV channels like the lifestyle and documentary channel fuse, as well as OUTtv that MultiChoice tested as a DStv pop-up channel in 2018.
Openview Ultra's Spice Bouquet will include Indian TV channels like ZEE Family and Star Select.
No monthly subscription fee pricing is available yet although eMedia plans to price OpenviewUltra very competitively as it takes on South Africa's duopoly pay-TV market dominated for decades by MultiChoice's DStv and the much smaller StarSat from China's StarTimes.
Openview Ultra as a subscription version of eMedia's existing Openview free-to-air satellite TV decoders, will function through three existing models of the existing Openview set-top box (STB), giving users who want to subscribe at a fee, access to these additional pay-TV bouquets and TV channels.
By September 2022, Openview - growing by 500 00 activations per year - was already present in over 3 million homes across Southern Africa.
It means that enabling pay-TV functionality and giving those 3 million users the option to become subscribers, would instantly transform eMedia's Hyde Park-based Openview Ultra into the biggest traditional pay-TV rival in South Africa to the existing Randburg-based MultiChoice.
South Africa's broadcasting regulator Icasa granted e.tv a traditional pay-TV licence 16 years ago in 2007 under the banner e.Sat which it decided never to use.
Instead, it opted to become a TV channel supplier, for instance producing the eNCA (DStv 403) TV news channel for MultiChoice since 2008, and offering DStv other general entertainment channels as well.
Bennum van Jaarsveld, eMedia spokesperson, told TVwithThinus in response to a media query that the company is currently busy testing Openview Ultra.
In late November 2022, Khalik Sherrif, eMedia CEO, commenting on the group's interim results, said in a statement that the group is set to "launch a smarter set-top box with functions that will be unique in the South African market".
In last year's annual report, Sherrif noted that "The 2023 year will see the group enter the pay television market".
eMedia has created new social media pages for Openview Ultra on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a website at www.ultraview.tv which is still under construction.
