Of Coffee and iflix

If you were having coffee with me, we would be having coffee and iflix.

 

What’s iflix you ask? Well I am glad you asked, it’s a video on demand (VOD) service that let’s you stream TV shows, movies and sport from the internet. It’s like Netflix a competitor but tailored more for emerging markets being available in 25 countries across Asia, Middle East, and Africa including Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghan and Zimbabwe.

Kwesé TV partnered with iflix to bring on the go entertainment via the Kwesé iflix app and if you are an Econet user you have gotten messages advertising this service and you might even have gotten curious or totally ignored them…

If you were having coffee I would tell you that people, most people love free things, no better way to get them hooked on to something than by giving them a free trial. When the message popped into my inbox telling me I had 1gig worth of data to use on iflix I figured hey let’s give it a try.

 

But first I asked my Twitter timeline if anyone had used the Kwesé iflix because Twitter is like Google Search for me, if it’s not tweeted it’s not real 😂

A few people recommended it:

and the iflixzw twitter team responded to my tweet told me to try it, why not I thought.

The iflix app is available on Playstore for Android bit.ly/1CkgoSC and Apple Store iOS-apple.co/1J00QA5/
The playstore version is 19.75mb which is a fairly reasonable size that one can download.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that setting up this app is a breeze giving you various sign up options; Google|Facebook email /phone

 

I picked the sign up using phone option and an SMS code was sent to my phone for verification and just like that I was in.

 

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you it was a seamless process to set-up but some users experienced challenges during sign-up

which According to the iflix could be fixed by clearing cache memory then trying again, also the app is region specific so it won’t work if you use a VPN.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the app is packed with various goodies for your viewing pleasure TV shows, movies, sport and live streams.

The programs come with summaries and some movies even have trailers how cool is that

It even streams our local TV station ZBC too.

but of course there’s a little catch, the more interesting titles are marked VIP and to access these you need to pay a subscription.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell I am sure you could find something to watch to pass the time in the free section but if you scroll through what they have to offer long enough you’ll get tempted to subscribe since the packages won’t break your wallet.

 

The app has a nifty download function, so you could download what you want also with the option to pick high medium or low quality download (let’s say when you have Wi-Fi) and then play later,

though the download is only available to view for a couple of days.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the app requires a healthy internet connection for seamless streaming otherwise it keeps loading and you would think it’s broken.

I wish it had a data counter so I could keep track of how much data I actually used because it’s easy to get carried away especially if you are on mobile data and on that data conservation tip I did not see any function that let’s one choose the quality one wants to stream in, that way you could pick a low quality resolution stream which uses less data.

If you were having coffee with me I would definitely give this app a thumbs up though I did feel the content is somewhat shortchanged compared to what’s available on competing streaming services such as Netflix however you can pay subscriptions using EcoCash a mobile money transfer service which is a huge plus because the hustle of subscribing to services which require MasterCard or visa card payments in these here emerging markets is real.

I wish they would also engage more of the local content creators and populate the platform with homegrown entertainment and local soapies, this app is a novelty in these here regions and a potential game changer that could shake the broadcasting industry from the traditional giants who have been enjoying monopoly.

~B

PS have you tried it how was your experience?

Do you use any video on demand internet streaming services?

what I really need now is competitive internet priced such that I can enjoy such a service without worrying about the cost of my data because that is the hidden cost