Another video-on-demand (VOD) service is launching on local soil soon, adding to the list of emerging players that look set to take on the industry's current incumbent, MultiChoice-owned DStv.
MobileTV founder Mothobi Mutloatse says TV4U will launch a "next-generation" satellite push VOD service in February next year.
This comes less than a month after Altech launched a VOD service called Node, which in turn followed the entry of Vidi - Times Media's VOD offering - about a week prior.
Mutloatse says MobileTV will use Sentech Freevision's IS20 satellite network, enabling the company to synchronise its mobile digital broadcasting offering and VOD bouquet, dubbed Movielicious.
He says TV4U had assembled a number of international aggregators, content providers and billing management partners in LA, the US, London, New York, Toronto, Canada, Paris, Seoul and Korea. Through these partners, Movielicious will provide users with what Mutloatse says is "premium entertainment and sports programming".
TV4U has chosen a local decoder manufacturer for its VOD decoder, in a bid to make the service relatively affordable.
"Because ours is a satellite-centric concept with content delivered directly to the customer's disk, fast and highly cost-efficient, it provides the additional edge of multiscreen interactivity."
The service has been developed with push VOD experts in Europe, he says, through software that will be revealed when Movielicious launches on 1 February.
"In addition, TV4U's developmental platform will roll out its digital learning service to bridge the distance learning divide and present opportunities to learners and teachers alike from primary school to universities and colleges, to experience simultaneous digital learning television."
Mutloatse says ICT and education "hold the key to SA lifting itself out of the current economic stagnation, by taking a leaf out of the book of a country equal in population - South Korea - where pupils receive their textbooks digitally".