Bamba TV launched late last year as another option for Free To Air Digital TV Set-Top Box, few days before the commence of digital migration in Nairobi which was on the 31st of December.
Now as you might well be aware, Bamba TV, owned by Radio Africa Group in Kenya, sold their box as the best free-to-air box among all other options. That is debatable depending on where you stand. Why do I say that? Well if you do not have a plan to ever go paytv to get some more choice of premium channels, then this is your thing.
If you may at one point consider to get there, you may as well pick up Startimes which offers both free to air and paytv on the same box, nothing required. GoTV also sell themselves as another option that has both paytv and free to air, but their model is cunning and discouraging. There is this process they call “upgrading” that requires you to pay Kshs 2000 (almost a cost of buying another FTA Box) to get to free to air, something I find very discouraging to anyone willing to go that direction.
Now this was not about who has the best spread to your digital TV bread, it’s about Bamba TV channel offering.
The company lays claim to the fact that they have over 50 channels on offer. Well! I will have you know that as much as they do have one of the best offers for FTAs, this is skewed. The box receives Bamba TV channels, Signet channels and Pang tv channels. And right there is where the devil is in the details. Bamba, Signet and Pang have a duplication of sorts, so you will find some channels repeated on the three of them, but Bamba Tv will count these as, you know, more channels.
I have the set-up at my place and counted as many as 70 active channels. In there, I saw KBC over three times, Kiss TV the same and on and on. There are channels following each other in channel numbers that are the same channel, several of them. So If I were to remove duplication, I could say around 20 channels are repeated, sometimes thrice. That leaves, say 30 different channels. Did I mention that you also get GoTV and Startimes guide channels?
Now onto what’s interesting
The table above shows that, according to Bamba Tv is already or is going to be available on Bamba TV, no timelines set. Note, these are separate from what’s available on Signet and Pang Tv channels.
Available channels:
- Fashion TV
- Nollywood Movies
- iFilms TV
- Smile TV (cartoon
- Deutsche Welle
- EWTN
- Al-Jazeera
- France 24
- NHK World
- Press TV
- TBN
- Dove TV (also on Signet)
- The Church Channel
Bamba TV announced that they have several content partnerships that gets them some premium channels on board too. And true to that, the list up here exists, however as you will notice, the larger part is what’s yet to be implemented. There are channels like Juctice TV, Cars TV and Africa Movies Channel that have been on coming soon mode as a splash screen ever since launch with an indicated launch of January. Given, January is not yet over, so there is still time to wait.
Should these materialize, then we will have one of the best offering of a free to air set-top box among what’s available in the country. Also, we will update any new channel we find out to be available as they come. Meanwhile, this is what you get.
