Important Things You Should Know About the DSTV Explora

Is the Explora worth the money?  This will definitely depend on your financial situation, obviously. Yet I would argue that what should matter more is the device’s value for money. Unless you are hardly even interested in TV (and then I would argue that if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be reading this article), this should concern you. The incessant barrage of ads and commercials highlighting the Explora’s features on your TV might be annoying and irritating, but there is a handful of knowledge I have gained from that, as well as actual use of a friend’s model. The most prominent and most known feature of the Explora, is the “total viewing control” aspect. At least that is how it is put by DSTV. The pause/play, rewind, and fast forward. These functions are fairly self-explanatory. They allow you to pause/play, rewind and I would assume, briefly fast forward whatever programme you are watching. Another well-known feature is the record function. This allows the user to record an episode of a programme at a specific period. It was a component of the older ‘PVR’. However, with the Explora, if there is a recording conflict – two or more programmes you wish to record that air during the same time period – the Explora automatically offers to solve the problem or allow you do it manually. The automatic solution it offers, is to record a different airing of either of the programmes; the different airing nullifies the conflict. Another new feature now available is the ‘record series’, which again I would assume allows you to record all available episodes of a single series. It is the rare DSTV subscriber who has not heard of the next function of the DSTV Explora: DSTV Box Office. The day I started this piece, I found myself saying the monologue of one of the commercials as it happened, almost word-for-word. Basically DSTV Box Office allows you rent the “latest blockbuster movies”, at a flat rate, with the first movie free. Without actually using it, the only problem I can perceive is that the movies are not exactly in cinemas right now (or recently). Still, it is a useful feature, especially for those of us in Africa (who do not have access to similar foreign ventures like Netflix) The Catch Up is next. DSTV’s naming system is not the most profound admittedly, but at least the ‘DSTV Catch Up’, does what its name implies. The Catch up is a feature where DSTV keeps at least the most recent episode of a wide selection of TV series. As far as I can tell, the Catch Up has nothing to do with the recording function. At the press of a button on your remote, you can access a menu full of a large variety of TV shows. This is where it gets tricky. I have only used Catch Up once, so I’m not sure about this next part. From what I know, it seems that some shows in Catch Up have multiple episodes, while some only have one. So that’s the DSTV Explora. I have tried to touch on the parts that I figured were most important. I haven’t mentioned things like “crystal clear HD” or “over 400 channels”. Hopefully this helps you, as (a) consumer(s), make an informed and intelligent decision about what you want in your television viewing experience.   About the Writer: Tobe Halim is a teenage student, Liverpool Football Club fan and avid reader of fiction novels. Twitter: @TobeHal  

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This article was first published on 27th August 2015

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