E.tv plans streaming service

South African free-to-air service e.tv is planning to extend its Openview satellite-TV offering and roll out Openview Plus by October as a video streaming service, reports News24. Openview Plus will provide eMedia’s Openview channels and content as a direct-to-consumer offer through the internet and will probably be available as a bundled offer along with Openview Connect, a new broadband access service.

At the moment, no specific date regarding the launch for Openview Plus is known, nor pricing, but eMedia Investments is looking to expand its existing Openview satellite-TV footprint as soon as possible into the streaming service market in order to compete with MultiChoice’s Showmax, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and VIU, all available in South Africa. The CEO of eMedia Investments, Khalik Sheriff, said in the latest 2020 eMedia Holdings annual report that the group will launch its own over-the-top offering called Openview Plus by October 2020.

The Openview satellite-TV service is now accessible across 2 million TV households in Southern Africa and offers self-packaged channels besides e.tv like eExtra, eMovies, eMovies Extra, eToonz, eRealitu, eRewing and eAfrica, with carriage agreements for some channels that are also accessible on pay-TV operators like DStv.