A new streaming service is available in South Africa as of Friday in BritBox.
The platform was created by the BBC and ITV in the UK and it brings us a whack of content you may likely have encountered before.
We signed up for the service to take advantage of the seven day free-trial that comes with your first sign-up and what follows are our thoughts on the service.
User experience
At this stage one expects certain features from streaming services. The ability to skip a few seconds ahead or back, the ability to set individual profiles for users who might be in the same house sharing an account and a few others.
BritBox is rather barebones. For one there is no option to create individual profiles which means that you are going to have to co-ordinate your watching with anybody in your home that you’re sharing the account with.
In terms of the streaming interface on PC we were also left wanting.
There are options to play, pause and skip ahead as well as volume options and the ability to display closed captions but that is it. There is no way to set a resolution although the only platform we’ve seen that option is Showmax.
We would have liked to see an option for playback speed which we’ve found ourselves using more and more often on Netflix. We understand BritBox is not as robust as Netflix but it’s worth mentioning.
Something we found odd is the volume control. When adjusting volume the volume will only change once you’ve finished adjusting rather than changing as you move the slider.
In terms of browsing there are currently five genres to choose from:
- Drama
- Crime
- Comedy
- Docs & Lifestyle
- Entertainment
You can also create your own watchlist if you spot something you want to watch but might not have time to watch at that moment, and BritBox showcases featured content as well.
While browsing you can view more information about the programme including who stars in it, whether there are closed captions and what resolution the content is available in.
The Big C
Speaking of content, what is the mix like on BritBox?
We’ll be honest, the moment we saw that My Family and Only Fools and Horses were available to stream we lost all sense and moments later we had started our subscription.
After the joy of being able to watch Del Boy again faded we were rather pleased to see that there is a mix of old and new content including cooking shows, true crime series and reality TV.
What we will say is that if you are expecting brand new content you may want wait a month or two as most of the content is what we’d describe as the cream of British television.
Some notable titles we feel warrant mentioning are:
- Top Gear (Highlights of older episodes and one newer Top Gear Special)
- Black Adder
- Luther
- Prime Suspect
- Pride and Prejudice
- Joanna & Jennifer – Absolutely Champers
- Midsomer Murder
- Wedding of the Century
- Gavin & Stacey
- Fawlty Towers (The episode The Germans is understandably not available)
Price
At R99, BritBox is in-line with other streaming platforms but we suspect that in future we may see more subscription tier options that open up things like 4K streaming to all devices, the ability to create individual profiles and perhaps the ability to download content for offline viewing.
For us though, BritBox is nostalgia fuel.
While there is some modern programming available, we suspect many will be drawn to older content such as Black Adder or Prime Suspect.
We hope that in the future BritBox will add more content, but for now unless you’re chomping at the bit to watch a VERY young John Cleese try to run a hotel, you might want to hold off on subscribing to BritBox.
