The football season is long gone a few months back and many tournaments season came through to satisfy the void of many soccer fans with action-packed games. This is the time of the season where fans don’t want to miss a minute of the match, especially the African Cup of Nations and sports broadcasters companies like DSTV and StarTimes are trying to enhance that experience by bringing the TV-like environment to mobile devices and laptops.
Both Multichoice and Startimes have a video streaming service free to their customers with their decoders and today we have taken the liberty to curate and compare those platforms in terms of User Interface, design, content, and data price.
We will leave the final judgment seat for you to take but being a soccer fanatic, I have been privileged enough to use both platforms often during the tournament seasons and here are my thoughts.
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App Design(UI)
Both feature a robust design with the DSTV Now App having a 16MB size download on Google Play Store and 42 MBs size on the iOS App Store. The registration process was a bit tiresome for me but there are 3 straight steps which involve entering your 6 digits smart card number and you receive a one time password on your mobile number registered on the decoder and create a password for the account as the last step. The layout has five tabs at the bottom which houses the Live TV, Catch Up channels and the downloaded movies as the most important elements of the app.
The StarTimes On app, on the other hand, is 13MB from the Play Store and sized at 69.5 MBs at the iOS App Store. The Registration process is pretty much straight forward and easier than the latter since you can choose to use your Gmail account but it requires the details on the smart card and the decoder to match for it to link your account. The grid layout houses all menu tabs on top where you can swipe through to select the category you would like to watch live TV from. The bottom has 3 tabs one for the account settings, Live Tv and the Home page which unfortunately has so many Ads on the slide show.
User experience (UX)
Talking from a background of someone who has a little knowledge in UX design, the DSTV Now offers an advanced superiority over StarTimes app. When using the iOS version of the app, the video automatically switches to a landscape display when playing and the list of other live channels just a swipe away from the bottom to help you choose a different channel in case you need to watch something else. The video also has different streaming options you can choose from to suit your data volume, the highest being a Full HD(1080p) option which uses approximately 1.7GB of data per hour of streaming. The only downside is you need another different mobile app to manage your decoder details which to me is a little disconcerting.
StarTimes On app choose to go with a portrait video display when you’re playing a live video when the feature to go full screen which turns the display into a landscape mode. The choice of going with the portrait display mode means they’re sacrificing the video/pictures qualities to show you a list of programs lineups and TV guides. The app is solid and built to help you manage your account/decoder at a go, you can easily recharge your bouquet from a single tap and save you the hustle like the latter.
Data Price
Both DSTV and StarTimes have dedicated streaming data bundles with MTN Uganda, The DSTVNow data package goes at the price of UGX 6,000 for 2 hours and UGX 12,000 for 4 hours. From past experience when I was watching Cranes Second AFCON against Zimbabwe I used 1.5GB data for all 90 minutes while using a laptop which isn’t bad stats for live streaming a full game.
Startimes On the other hand offers a low price bouquet at 2 hours for UGX 2,000 and 4 hours UGX 4,000, my experience watching a full football game with the StarTimes On app dates back to World Cup days last year but the bottom line is the app confirms way less data than the competition but the picture quality is way below average.
Content
Both streaming services suffer a great loss when it comes to content options for their clients. Apart from football and sports-related material there are virtually no reasons why you should open these apps again. Let’s digest the movie department for example which might make you use the app quite often. On the DSTV now app, MultiChoice have possibly the worst selection ever for the movies in their catch up section. The list of movies includes old Hollywood movies and past Nollywood movies which aren’t at par to the market when you add options like Netflix which has invested tons of materials for their clients. Couple the fact that to access
StarTimes app, on the other hand, doesn’t do so bad compared to the monthly amount you have to pay to access their services. They have a better display for the movie category which houses a list of past Chinese movies and meaningful Nollywood movies. There’s even an option for Live movie channels from their dedicated African AMC movies channel and other related movie channels. The StarTimes On app is the only app which has myriads of free channels you can watch any time of the day without paying a dime as long as you have downloaded the app and linked your decoder details, actually, all local TV channels are free of charge. From NBS to NTV and all your local sports channel like Sanyuka TV.
Summary
| DSTV Now | StarTimes On App | |
| Live TV | Yes | Yes |
| Simultaneous streaming on multiple devices | 2 streaming simultaneously, plus you should pay PVR Acess fee. | Not available |
| Streaming quality | Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD). | Standard Definition (SD) |
| App availability | PC, Android, iOS | Android, iOS |
| Maximum devices per account | Maximum of 4 devices | Not available |
| Downloadable content for offline viewing | Yes | No |
| Telco perks | Yes | Yes |
