Last week BBC and ITC announced their shared streaming platform, BritBox, is coming to SA in the latter half of this yea. Neither an official date has been set for the platform’s release, nor has a list of what content will be available to South African subscribers been shown yet.
But, while the old adage might go “comparisons are odious”, in this instance they may make for a pretty fair estimate of what we might expect from BritBox while we wait for any official information.
What’s in the (Brit)Box?
BritBox predominately plays host to “Britain’s best telly” (so the official site says). Currently, the platform is available in the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada, and its offerings in those regions range from reality television like The Voice: UK, to tense crime-dramas like Luthor, to the classically dry British wit of Fawlty Towers and Blackadder.
These shows are logged on JustWatch (a great site for finding out what gets streamed and where) as available in the aforementioned 4 regions, and also float around the South African BritBox site (along with several other titles that also appear on JustWatch), so while it wouldn’t be absurd to guess that they’ll be what’s on offer to us when the streaming platform touches down on SA soil. Keep in mind, though, that the BritBox site says that what it shows is a “good indication” but “not a guarantee”.
As for how deep your pockets need to be to have access to “an unrivalled collection of British TV”, BritBox will be subscription based, like (and competing with) Netflix and Showmax. A subscription in the UK costs £5.99 (just under R125) per month, and in the USA it’s $6.99 USD (about R104).
Prices probably won’t be the same in SA, but will at least be similar. For comparison, a standard Netflix subscription in the UK costs just shy of £10, which is R207, while the same plan costs R139 in South Africa. Then again, the subscription in the UK features more content than the one available down here, so perhaps it all evens out.
Again, none of this is set in stone. We’re still waiting on anything official from ITV and BBC, but this is certainly a fair assumption. If you want to follow the latest BritBox news, you can sign up for updates via the official website.
Source: My Broadband