Is DSTV Stream worth it?

I have has DSTV Stream running on a 1Gb internet connection for around 3 months and I get less and less impressed with the product every day.

Price - Two Premium Streams costs R799 vs Premium Decoder plus one stream costing R929 - a R130 difference - not even the price of a Pizza!

It looks as if Premium Stream is a better option price wise. It is not. Features available on a decoder that are not available on Stream are access to Box Office (I have no idea why it is not available on Stream it should be); the ability to record programs that you are not able to watch when broadcast; ease of finding alternate broadcast times; ease of changing channels (just punch in the number of the channel you want to go to); Information on programs by pushin "I"; Channels that generally work when you want them to; Live action sport (all streaming options run between 5 - 10 minutes behind the live action which becomes disconcerting if you have a live score app reporting a goal being scored 5 minutes before you see it on your screen).

My experience of Stream is very poor. As I said you have no access to Box Office (or if you do it is extremely well hidden). You cannot record a program for later viewing so have to rely on finding the alternate times that it is broadcast. On a decoder you can go to Alternate Screenings - no such function on Stream. I cannot for the life of me find any information on programs or films so end up using IMDB to help me out, but then you are looking at your phone while the program you want to watch slides by. Selecting a channel is probably the most frustrating part of Stream. You can't just enter the channel number to go to it, you have to scroll through every single channel available to get there and they only pop up 5 at a time before you have to wait for more channels to load. It is clunky and extremely frustrating and when you get there it may not even load for whatever reason. Then you often get a CDNAT400 Error which I have been told means your profile has been updated. Fine you need to update profiles, but why does this get done in Prime Time? The unwritten solution to this is log out then log back in again - a process that can take anything up to 5 minutes while you wait for Stream to register all the channels again to even display them (unacceptable at the internet speeds I have). I often get so frustrated I drop watching DSTV and watch Netflix or Britbox who have got the idea of streaming right.

Is all this frustration worth a R130 saving? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I suspect that in time Stream will go the way of the Drifta and the Walka without the added expense of of useless equipment unless Multichoice get their act together and improve the Stream service, but right now it is not worth having as your exclusive viewing option. Stick to a decoder with 1 stream and get the best of one world and the worst of the other.