DStv Premium vs Compact — What you get for double the price

DStv Premium customers pay nearly the same amount for around 35 of the service’s most sought-after channels as they do for 100 that are also available in the more affordable Compact bouquet.

With many entertainment and broadband products, the overall value per resource may increase as you go up subscription tiers.

For example, a Netflix Premium subscription costs R199 per month and allows you to stream on up to four devices simultaneously.

That works out to R49.75 per stream, significantly better value than the effective R79.50 cost of a stream on the cheaper R159 Standard plan.

South African mobile users will know that the price per megabyte of mobile data also reduces as you buy bigger bundles.

The same goes for speeds on uncapped fibre-to-the-home packages, where higher-end packages often have a better price per Mbps of speed.

DStv’s packages do not follow this trend, at least not in terms of the quantity of channels available across its bouquets.

The effective cost-per-channel increases as a subscriber moves up packages — going from R0.97 on EasyView to R6.88 on Premium.

The pricing of DStv’s packages is evidently a function of the content on the channels and not just how many are on offer.

Certain channels have content that either carries a significantly higher cost to distribute than others or appeals to customers willing to pay substantially more.

The most expensive package jump is from Access to Family, which costs an extra R190 per month for just nine channels — working out to R21.11 per channel.

The second most expensive upgrade is from Compact Plus to Premium, which works out to R15.50 for each of the extra 20 channels.

It was also noteworthy that the upgrade from Compact to Premium cost an extra R460 for just 35 channels, working out to R13.14 per channel addition.

That is a substantial increase over the effective cost of R4.69 for each of the first 100 channels on both bouquets.

The table below shows the effective price channel across DStv’s bouquets and the effective cost per additional channel when upgrading to the next-best package.

Compact is the overall middle-of-the-road package but is the most affordable entry-level option for sports fans, with 10 Supersport channels covering football and a variety of other smaller sports.

The major channels available on Premium but not on Compact include several focused on movies and TV shows — including M-Net HD, M-Net Movies 1 and M-Net Movies 2, and Max.

There are also a handful of documentary and reality programming channels, such as Discovery, History, and BBC Earth.

However, the most obvious and sought-after ommissions are 10 Supersport channels that provide live coverage of sports other than football.

It is no secret that DStv Premium’s extensive sports offering is its standout feature and a key selling point.

South Africans can get a wide range of movies and TV shows on Compact and Compact Plus, as well as various video streaming platforms.

What they cannot get — at least legally or easily — is live broadcasts of high-profile rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, and motorsport events.

The exclusive broadcasting rights for these events are often acquired by MultiChoice, which reserves them for broadcast on DStv Premium.

While Compact Plus and Compact have respectable sports offerings, the only sought-after specialised coverage they offer is for football.

If a user’s primary aim with buying DStv is for sport, the effective cost they will be paying per channel is best on DStv Premium.

The table below compares the main sports channels available on Premium, Compact Plus, and Compact and their effective cost if they were the only reason a customer bought the packages.

The colours of the diamonds signify the following:

• ♦ (Green) — Channel available
• ♦ (Red) — Channel unavailable

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