Category: Tech News

  • Boldly going without DSTV

    Boldly going without DSTV

    South Africa is an interesting country. We have crooked politicians, state-owned monopolies and more crime than you can shake an AK-47 at. But we love it here nonetheless – or some of us do, anyway.

    Another interesting phenomenon in South Africa is DSTV – part of Koos Bekker’s media empire. At roughly R600 per month (I have to pay extra to access the HD content, etc.) it really isn’t cheap, especially not if you consider what you’re really getting for your money. As a tech savvy individual, I recently decided to see if I can go without DSTV. Step 1: Disconnect it!

    Did you know that you can disconnect your DSTV subscription at any time, for as long as you want? This means that, if you are heading abroad for a month, you don’t have to pay for that month! Obviously if you want your PVR to record stuff while you’re away, you have to pay. But if you don’t need to record, it could be worth saving that cash. Hell, I’ve even turned it off when I go away for a week – because then I don’t pay for that week. Just call them, and they’ll do it – or visit the self-help section on www.dstv.com

    The reason for making the disconnection Step 1, is that it forces you to get on with alternative plans. Which is exactly what I did. To me, the process was two-tiered: Firstly I wanted to stream my existing media from the desktop in my study; and secondly I wanted to watch TV shows and even sport online somehow.

    Some background: I run a 4mb line at home, which is administered through Axxess. So even though the infrastructure still belongs to Telkom, I can complain with Axxess, who then sort it out on my behalf. My data also comes through Axxess, and even though they do offer an uncapped service, I opted for a 50GB capped service, which has less shaping than the uncapped offering – this is important for streaming TV and movies.

    AppleTV now available locally, for around about R1,000.

    After much research and digging around, and with the sound of my wife and kids screaming for content, I decided to get an AppleTV. This was before they were officially available in SA, but I got one through a shop in Cresta Shopping Centre regardless. Nowadays you can just buy them off the shelf at your local iStore for around R1,000 a throw.

    With iTunes set up on my desktop, and both the desktop and AppleTV connected to my home network, I was up and running in minutes. Lovely streaming of movies, TV shows, music, images and more – all from my shared iTunes library. Quick, easy and relatively cheap. BUT this meant I still couldn’t watch all the latest TV shows. So how now brown cow?

    First I indulged in some Bitorrenting, which I shall not elaborate on. Suffice to say that I had to hunt down my content, download it, convert it to MP4 and then import it into iTunes. Works okay, but it is a bit laborious. And it takes up a heck of a lot of space on my desktop. With Apple not supporting the popular codecs for downloaded torrents, it kept me busy too with all the converting and what-not.

    So I turned to Netflix and Hulu Plus – the two stalwart American streaming services, which everybody knows you can’t get to work in South Africa. Except, of course, if you are ‘n ‘boer’, Because a boer makes a plan, eh?

    Enter – a DNS service which makes services like Netflix and Hulu and many more think you are in the US of A. And this means you can get Hulu and Netflix to send you content. Sadly you still need to pay for these, and setting up working accounts for both of them is a test in itself – but it can be done. If any of you want help with that, let me know and I’ll write up a how-to guide. But after a couple of hours of tinkering and many, many restarts of my router, I got it to work like a charm. Now
    I can watch the latest episode of Greys Anatomy on Hulu the night after its US broadcast – which means I’m about to finish the series next week. Cool. I can also delve into the mass of historic content on both services, and keep the kids busy with plenty of suitable programming. Also, I can access Netflix and Hulu on my iPad, iPhone, AppleTV and Desktop – all at the same time if needed. And the 4MB line is plenty fast for this. So all of a sudden my AppleTV has become a major hub of entertainment – and you get apps to control it from your phone too, if you want.

    But what about live sport? Alas, this is the one area where I still need to figure things out. As a fan of the British Premier League, I desperately miss my footie. But I shall keep hunting for solutions. I did find one service, Firstrowsports (link deliberately left out) I think it was called – but their ‘client’ added so much crap to my machine that I ditched them.

    XBMC is worth checking out if you have spare hardware lying around.

    In the mean time I have started tinkering with XBMC – an open-source media centre system that runs on almost any platform – including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux… It is robust, if not particularly user friendly. As things stand right now, I have sacrificed a spare laptop with HDMI output for this purpose, and run the server on my Desktop. The main advantage over AppleTV is that XBMC can play almost any codec, so no converting of new content needed. It is also more customisable, which is great if you know what you’re doing (and less so in my case). Overall I think this is another good solution, though the hardware will cost more than an AppleTV (or similar box). Worth investigating though…

    Other solutions also exist. WD makes a great alternative to the AppleTV for similar money, and if you want to order from abroad you can look at Roku or Boxee – all with their own pros and cons. In the end, though, I have found that it IS possible to get away from DSTV, but at a cost:

     

     

    PER MONTH

    • LINE RENTAL – R350.00
    • DATA – R400
    • NETFLIX – R80
    • HULU – R80
    • – R80

    So I pay roughly R1000-odd for my TV now, which is R400 MORE than I used to. But the big thing for me is that I work from home, and would have had to pay the ADSL line rental and data regardless. Thus my actual increase runs only to R160 for the two streaming services, which is a hell of a lot less than DSTV. Plus the small fee for the unlocker – and check out their variety of payment options. Oh, and I can’t watch live football. Which sucks.

     

  • Great customer service from Incredible Connection

    Great customer service from Incredible Connection

    Last week Wednesday  I came across an awesome deal from the guys at Incredible Connection, where they had a 3TB external hard drive on special for just over R1000. As I had been looking for something along these lines, for a while I decided to grab the opportunity and purchase one through their online store.

    I have admit though, I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to e-commerce in South Africa. I honestly don’t think there is anything wrong with the actual system, but our biggest problem is the logistics and the delivery of goods. (That said, I have to exclude Takealot from this generalization, who have delivery nailed)  In this case, Incredible Connection were offering 3-5 day shipping for free on the day (normal price R55) and overnight shipping for R45. Being the gadget junkie that I am, I needed it now, so I selected the overnight option.

    Bad Mistake.

    Assuming because I placed the Order after 12pm, I thought I would it give it a day when it didn’t arrive on Thursday. By Friday lunch time I still hadn’t heard anything and sent the Incredible Connection twitter account a message, asking if they could find out what was happening. I gave them the required details, and waited in anticipation. Nothing :(

    It seems that nothing happens over the weekends, So on Monday I made a bit more noise on Twitter, and *eventually* I got a phone call & email from the Online Manager, Jean, humbly apologizing for their mistake. Granted, it wasn’t his fault, but I just wasn’t happy, so I just asked that they reverse the order. Once again,  Jean tried his best to rectify it, and ensured I would have it in my hands by Tuesday morning.

    A few minutes later, I got a call from Shane, who is the KZN Ops Manager, apologizing for what could only, what seems to be, an honest mistake. He offered to have someone drive out to my house, and deliver the drive to me personally and offered to give me the drive for Free ! I was amazed. An hour later (at about 5pm) , Mike, who is the Branch Manager at Incredible Connection in Springfield Park, personally delivered the external drive in my hands. I was seriously impressed with the action taken, and how everything just happened.

    Yes, E-Commerce in South Africa has a long way to go, and at the best of times, and I absolutely hate using twitter as a soapbox to moan. But I saw yesterday that some brands in SA are taking their customer service very seriously, and are willing to ensure their customers are happy all the time. So a big thanks to everyone at Incredible Connection for making what could have been a horrible situation, into a happy experience, ensuring I will be a return customer.

    Now to fill up that hard drive…

     

  • iTunes Music Store Now available in South Africa

    It was bound to happen, and finally the iTunes Music store has launched in South Africa. With the announcement yesterday that the iPhone 5 will be released in South Africa on the 14th Of Dec, the timing couldn’t be more apt !

    At a quick first glance, individual songs will cost around R8.99 and full albums around R89.99. It looks like the store will just be offering Music to start with and no movie category.

    South African Idols winner starts off at the top of the album charts with his album “For You” at the number 1 spot, and the popular Gangnam Style as the number 1 song (obviously) . Other than that, the music collection doesn’t look that comprehensive, with only some of the categories being represented, and doesn’t seem as may artists as the US store, but I’m sure with time that will change.

    Another exciting addition is the popular service iTunes Match which stores your entire music library in the cloud allowing you to access it from any device anywhere. The service costs a fairly priced R199.99 in South Africa.

    Finally. It’s about time :)

  • Microsoft Tech Days Durban 2012

    A guest post from Matt over at Rogue Code. Rogue Code are top notch Windows Phone Developers ! Matt attended Microsoft Tech Days in Durban, and gives a very cool insight to what the day was all about. Thanks Matt !

    Friday the 12th of October, I found myself headed to the International Conference Centre in Durban. The sun was shining bright and the temperature was on the rise, much like it always is in Durban. I was headed to this year’s Microsoft Tech Days. Tech Days is a yearly event hosted by Microsoft aimed at reaching out to the community to bring them up to speed with their latest innovations in hardware and software and what they expect from developers and the like.

    Upon entering the main hall of the event I was met by a barrage of various sponsors and Microsoft orientated displays. The hall was packed with event goers who found themselves caught in the customary act of networking, as one would expect from an event such as this. Overall the event had a rather excited vibe in the air, and received a rather good response from the relatively small techy community in Durban.

    Once it was apparent that all registration had been completed, we all shuffled into one of the secondary halls, this is where the Keynote session took place. The keynote session was focused on giving a general overview of the topics of the day, to help attendees decide on which sessions they might want to attend. The event hall also had bowls of mints strewn across the tables, which was a major plus – I love mints. The keynotes session had come to a close and I found myself shuffling back into the main hall where we were served a rather tasty breakfast of waffles with syrup and cream. After breakfast we all decided which track we should attend. The topics were:

     

    Session 1

    • Track 1 Windows 8 Part 1: Introduction

    • Track 2 Migrating an existing LOB application to Windows Azure

    • Track 3 Managing your Core Infrastructure

    • Track 4 The New Office: The Insider’s Guide to What’s Coming for IT Pros and Developers

     

    Session 2

    • Track 1 Win 8 Part 2 – Application Development with HTML / JS

    • Track 2 Using Windows Azure Service Bus to integrate LOB applications and Office 365

    • Track 3 Server Virtualization • Track 4 Call Me If You Can: Lync 2013 Voice Architecture and Management

     

    Session 3

    • Track 1 Windows 8 – End to End Application with C# & Xaml

    • Track 2 End to End Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 – Part

    • Track 3 VDI and Access

    • Track 4 Exchange Online in Office 365: Administration Deep Dive

     

    Session 4

    • Track 1 UI Design

    • Track 2 End to End Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 – Part 2

    • Track 3 Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform – using Azure Cloud Services • Track 4 SharePoint 2013: Return of the Technical Jedi!

    • Track 4 SharePoint 2013: Return of the Technical Jedi!

    With Windows 8 being released to the public on the 26th of this month (October), there was quite a substantial amount of focus paid to the Windows 8 tracks. A large part of the event goers were quite enthralled by the Windows 8 topics, and rightfully so. Windows 8 is bringing a whole new style to the Operating System, they now focus on “content before chrome”, meaning that apps should use all the space they can without wasting it on chrome. Another saying that was tossed around repeatedly in context to Windows 8 apps was “fast and fluid”. All in all it seems that the release of Windows 8 opens up a lot of opportunities to a lot of people, the ability for developers to monetize apps has never been easier than in Windows 8, and the potential market share is absolutely massive.

    There was also quite a bit of chatter about the new Office 2013, which looks to be the next major update after the “ribbon” interface. There are a lot of nifty changes in Office making it more user friendly, but what stuck out to me was the new animations and the fluidity of it all. The incorporation with SkyDrive (Microsoft’s cloud storage platform) also means that the users’ files now travel with them across any computer, phone, or web browser.

    Throughout the day I found myself attending all the Windows 8 tracks, however I managed to speak to some people that had attended the other ones, and they all seem to have been as equally as enlightening. Overall the sessions for the day were rather effective and I believe they not only helped me quite a lot, but a large portion of the Durban techy community. Durban really needs more events like this to, you know…get us all out in the sun for a bit.

  • iPhoneographySA JHB 2012 a HUGE success

    WOW. That’s pretty much all I can say about Thursday evenings opening of the iPhoneographySA event at the iStore in Sandton. I was blown away at how awesome the setup looked, and how many people arrived at the venue. I am estimating we around 600 people on the night, but could def well be more. All in all for the Johannesburg competition we around 211 entries from people, with around 850 images uploaded. On the night there were 211 images up on display. This year we decided to do all the printing through Printwild, and they all looked awesome

    We setup the event on Wed & Thur, and finally got down to choosing the winner for the event. After loads of back & forth debate, we eventually came up with the 3 winners.

    In first place (top left) was Zeno Peterson with his image called Reflect, winning himself an iPad. In 2nd Place we chose Tristan Winslow’s image called “A Lomo Camera with a Lomo app” and finally Liezel Els’s image called “Her Feet tell a story” who both won iStore hampers.

    The exhibition is up for the next 2 weeks at The iStore in Sandton Drive, get there if you can :) If you live in Cape Town be sure to join us on the 23rd Oct at Roodebloem Studios in Woodstock for the opening event, RSVP on the Facebook Event here !