by Thinus Ferreira
MultiChoice has pushed the launch of its DStv Glass out by up to as much as 2 years, with the smart TV set taken from Comcast's Sky in the United Kingdom, which will no longer go on sale this year as originally promised but only between November 2024 and May 2025.
In September 2022, Calvo Mawela, MultiChoice CEO, said that the DStv Glass TV set would launch in South Africa in 2023.
On Wednesday, Calvo Mawela, during a virtual recording of MultiChoice's first Capital Markets Day presentation, revealed that the DStv Glass launch date has now been pushed out by between a year and a half, and up to two years.
"We plan to launch DStv Glass in a partnership with Sky in 18 to 24 months," Calvo Mawela said. "We are proud to be launching one of the most innovative television products and most-powerful content aggregation tools globally."
Sky in the United Kingdom which is part of Comcast, introduced Sky Glass in October 2021, and although it contains the word "glass" the product doesn't have a lot of real glass in it - the 4K QLED TV has a 4K Ultra HD Quantum Dot screen with Dolby Atmos and a built-in soundbar at the bottom.
While Sky Glass - which will be branded DStv Glass in South Africa - is available in five different colours and in 43, 55 and 65-inch sizes, it's not yet clear which of these colours and sizes MultiChoice will sell DStv Glass as in South Africa.
MultiChoice says the DStv Glass, similar to Sky Glass, will offer a "world-class streaming aggregation product that will include the collation and search functionality across MultiChoice's own content and third-party apps".
The DStv Glass will also come with voice search, but interestingly the streaming Sky Glass has no storage in the way that a traditional DStv Explora decoder has.
Instead, you press the "+" button on the remote control which adds items to your playlist. The device then grabs the episodes wherever they might be found and then lists them for watching. There's no recording with everything streaming on demand.
