by Thinus Ferreira
Viewers complained about the bad sound and sound problems with Showmax's live-streamed Tyla concert although no buffering issues occurred on Saturday night.
Tyla's final performance in Pretoria's SunBet Arena as part of a South African tour was the first-ever streamed entertainment event for MultiChoice's video streaming service.
Although the hastily arranged live-streaming tie-in went off without a hitch on Saturday night, Showmax presents Tyla was marred by sound problems that subscribers kept complaining about.
Showmax, which scurried last week to put together a type of pre-show red carpet, also seemed to have done little to get any solid media presence from the traditional press to try and cover Saturday evening's event - opting instead to use influencers, as well as rent-a-crowd social media accounts who fawned on their networks during Tyla's set.
Showmax said Tyla wasn't doing any interviews before Saturday's live-stream performance to promote the Showmax presents Tyla tie-in.
Showmax presents Tyla was live-streamed in 44 African countries including South Africa and is now available on-demand.
Yatish Narsi, MultiChoice South Africa and Showmax chief marketing officer, said that it was Showmax's first live-streamed entertainment event, and that the streamer wanted to "break streaming records".
Showmax's foray into live-streamed events echoes Netflix which said it wants to dramatically scale the volume of live-streamed content on its platform.
Netflix's "unwatchable" live-streamed boxing bout between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson in mid-November was a notorious disaster for the red letter streamer when buffering problems led to millions of angry Netflix subscribers worldwide who slammed it and gave up trying to watch it.
Earlier this month Netflix, which took over live-streaming of weekly WWE wrestling events worldwide (except for a few countries like South Africa where existing deals still exist with the likes of SuperSport), have had more success and a lot less streaming and buffering issues.
On Saturday viewers of Showmax's live-stream of the Tyla event criticised the bad sound.
"The sound mix on this Showmax live-stream of Tyla's concert is not the best," Samba Nelly said.
"Love what Showmax is doing with the Tyla concert but the sound is terrible," said another.
"Where is Tyla's sound engineer?" asked MJ Daniels, who also noted that "Something in the sound is not right! The backtrack is very low. But Tyla looks good".
Tshepo asked Showmax "to please fix the sound coming from Tyla's microphone for home viewers", while another remarked that "the sound quality is bad bad".
