Last updated: July 2026
If you came here looking for MyTV Africa installation settings, there is something you need to know first. MyTV Africa shut down in 2023. No frequency, satellite position, or symbol rate will bring its channels back.
The better news is that your Strong decoder and your dish are not dead. Both can be repurposed, and this post explains how.
What MyTV Africa Was
MyTV Africa was a satellite television service that ran for roughly fifteen years, reaching subscribers across more than eighteen African countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, Zambia, Senegal, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It was a product subsidiary of Strong Technologies, a Dubai based company. That relationship explains something many subscribers never understood. MyTV came bundled with Strong decoders because Strong owned MyTV. The two were the same business.
The service carried a mix of encrypted subscription channels and unencrypted free-to-air ones, and it positioned itself as a low cost alternative to DStv.
What Happened to It
MyTV struggled for years before it stopped. The clearest public sign came around 2020, when the service abruptly went dark and later announced it was moving to an entirely different satellite, Belintersat 1 at 51.5 degrees east.
That move forced every single subscriber to physically repoint their dish. Many never did. Subscribers went weeks without signal, and the service promised compensation that arrived unevenly.
The service finally ceased operating in 2023, after roughly fifteen years. It now sits alongside a long list of African pay-TV ventures that launched with ambition and did not survive, including HiTV, Consat, Daarsat, Trend TV, and Kwese TV.
Why Old MyTV Guides Are Doubly Wrong
You will still find pages telling you to track Intelsat 7 or Intelsat 10 at Ku band, then set your frequency to 12728H with a symbol rate of 30000 to find Eutelsat W3A.
Those instructions were obsolete long before MyTV died.
Eutelsat renamed its entire satellite fleet in 2012. The satellite once called W3A has not carried that name for fourteen years. Intelsat 7 and Intelsat 10 were likewise replaced at their orbital position by Intelsat 20, in the same year.
Then MyTV moved to Belintersat 1 in 2020, making even the corrected names useless. Then the service shut down in 2023, making everything useless.
If you have been following an old guide and wondering why nothing appears, this is why. Your equipment is almost certainly fine.
Your Strong Decoder Still Works
Here is the part worth knowing. A Strong decoder is a general purpose satellite receiver. It was not locked to MyTV in the way a DStv decoder is locked to DStv.
That means it can still receive free-to-air satellite channels, which are unencrypted broadcasts anyone can pick up without a subscription. Many Nigerians and Ghanaians still use old Strong receivers exactly this way, on models like the SRT 4669X, SRT 4940, and SRT 4954H.
You will not get MyTV’s old subscription channels, because those were encrypted against a service that no longer transmits. But free-to-air television costs nothing monthly, and there is a reasonable amount of it.
Use blind scan rather than a frequency list
This is the single most useful thing in this post, and it is why I am not giving you a list of frequencies.
Satellite frequencies change. Broadcasters move transponders, switch satellites, and shut down. Any specific frequency published today may be wrong within months, which is exactly how the old MyTV guides became worthless.
Blind scan solves this. Instead of telling the decoder where to look, blind scan sweeps the entire satellite and finds whatever is actually broadcasting right now.
On most Strong decoders, press Menu, open Installation, and enter the default PIN, which is usually 0000. Select your satellite, then choose Blind Scan rather than Auto or Manual scan. Let it run fully without interrupting it.
Be patient here. A thorough blind scan can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to well over an hour depending on the model. Some older Strong receivers are genuinely slow. That is normal, not a fault.
Which satellite to point at
This depends on where you live and what you want to watch, and it is worth asking a local installer rather than guessing, since coverage varies considerably across Africa.
What matters technically is that you aim the dish accurately and lock it down once the signal quality reading peaks. Signal strength alone is not enough. Quality is the number that determines whether channels actually decode.
Our guide on how to align a satellite dish without a meter covers finding azimuth, elevation, and skew, and using your decoder’s own signal screen to fine tune. The method works regardless of which satellite you are aiming at.
Your Dish Is Worth Keeping
A satellite dish is simply a reflector. It has no loyalty to any broadcaster.
Your MyTV dish will serve DStv, StarTimes satellite, or free-to-air perfectly well. You may need a different LNB depending on the service, and you will certainly need to repoint it, since different providers use different orbital positions.
If your dish is 60cm or larger, it is worth keeping. Larger reflectors gather more signal and hold up better during heavy rain, so an old MyTV dish is often an upgrade on the standard dish bundled with a new subscription.
What to Use Instead
Your realistic options come down to four.
DStv remains the premium service across Africa, with the widest channel range and the fullest live sport. It is also the most expensive by a wide margin.
GOtv offers the same operator’s reliability at far lower cost, using a small terrestrial aerial rather than a dish. It operates in nine African countries.
StarTimes competes directly with GOtv on price and offers both antenna and satellite versions, giving it reach into areas where terrestrial signal is weak.
Free-to-air satellite costs nothing monthly once installed, which is the natural home for your existing dish and Strong decoder. The channel selection is fixed and limited, with no premium sport, but there is no bill.
For a detailed comparison of what each subscription service actually costs and includes, our breakdown of DStv, GOtv and StarTimes puts the three side by side. And if your priority is avoiding subscription costs entirely, our guide to the best alternatives to DStv covers the free-to-air routes in more detail.
A Warning About Old Guides
The internet is full of installation guides for African pay-TV services that no longer broadcast. MyTV, Consat, HiTV, Kwese TV, Daarsat, and TStv all have detailed setup instructions still sitting online, complete with frequencies and symbol rates.
Before spending money or an afternoon on any pay-TV platform, confirm two things. Check that it is currently operating, and check that it has an active dealer network you can actually reach. A service that looked healthy five years ago may have been gone for three.
MyTV’s story is a familiar one in African satellite television. Scale wins, and competing with MultiChoice takes deeper pockets than most challengers have. Keep the dish, blind scan the decoder, and choose from the services that are genuinely broadcasting. For the documented record of which African satellite services remain active and which have closed, Wikipedia maintains a detailed survey of satellite television by region that is updated as operators come and go.
Frenzy valentine is a passionate blogger, developer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and author of myfreshgists.com.