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Showmax: a legal way to download movies, series [Sponsored]
What is the best show available on ShowMax right now? Sign up for ShowMax and let us know in the comments and you could win a 3 month voucher. This is open to new and existing ShowMax subscribers in South Africa.
That’s what you get for only R99 per month with ShowMax — 100% legit, guilt-free downloads of the binge-worthy series and movies you’ve been meaning to see.
ShowMax’s download feature is only available on smartphones and tablets, ideal for flights and long car journeys where you can’t or wouldn’t want to chow your data bundle. When you’re at home you’ve probably got WiFi so you can stream on the big screen.
What can I watch on ShowMax?
ShowMax internet TV gives you access to over 25 000 local and international episodes, movies and kids’ shows.
There’s everything from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Nim’s Island to Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory, classic movies like Thelma & Louise and Rain Man, stunning documentaries, including David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet, to kids’ shows that will keep the little ones whine-free. All for a monthly subscription of R99.
All you need is a ShowMax account, internet connection and the right device – like a laptop, PC, smartphone, Apple TV, smart TV, tablet or the DStv Explora.
Should I stream, or should I download?
You can stream all the shows and movies you like with ShowMax. Watching two hours a day will use between 3GB and 15GB of data a week, depending on the quality setting.
Luckily, there are ways to control how much data you use.
- Quality control: ShowMax’s bandwidth-capping function reduces data consumption by selecting a lower streaming video-quality level. You can optimise data usage for different devices: for example, by setting the kids’ cartoons to low quality on the tablet, and your smart TV to the maximum.
- Shop for the best-value internet service provider: For example, Telkom ADSL and Fibre customers get 100GB of data every month with the Entertainment Bolt-on for R99 pm to use with entertainment services like ShowMax. That’ll give you more than two hours a day at the highest video-streaming quality or six hours at the lowest quality.
And Afrihost offers internet packages starting from R29 a month, which include a Free Time special that gives customers free internet to stream or download between midnight and six in the afternoon — that’s 18 hours a day!
The upside of downloading with ShowMax
You can download up to 25 series or movies using the ShowMax app on your Android and Apple smartphones and tablets. Do this when you’re in a WiFi zone to watch offline, and you won’t use any of your mobile data. Win! Downloads are ideal for keeping you entertained on your next flight from Joburg to Cape Town.
But, if you do connect using your mobile data, you’ll use between 100MB to 500MB, depending on the quality, to download a 30-minute show.
As ShowMax South Africa General Manager John Kotsaftis says, “Not everyone has fast internet access throughout the day or can afford to stream using a mobile connection.
“The beauty of this download feature is that as long as you’re connected at some point, perhaps using a public WiFi hotspot, at work, or a night-time mobile data bundle, then you can still use ShowMax to get shows and movies.”
“You can download up to 25 series or movies across all your devices using the ShowMax app… ShowMax is the only streaming service with this feature.”
How to download with ShowMax
Open the ShowMax app on your smartphone or tablet (iOS and Android), select what you want to watch and tap the download button to save the content to your device to watch offline. View what’s on your device as well as on other devices. Download up to 25 shows or movies across all connected devices.
Sign up for ShowMax’s 7-day free trial to start streaming and downloading right now.
