If you're like me, you've seen advertisements for watching Satellite TV on your computer. The question is: do these products really work as advertised? I've seen some claims that the picture quality is so good that you can give up your regular subscription to the Satellite TV provider and just use your computer to watch satellite TV. All you need is a high speed internet connection and some software to watch over 3000 channels from the comfort of your computer.
Well, I've found 2 products that worked well enough to talk about. One of them free, and one of them not free. I tested both products on Windows XP and on Windows Vista. The computer running XP, is a Sony Vaio laptop, a 1.6 Ghz P4 processor and 512 MB of RAM. The computer running Windows Vista, is an HP 6710b laptop, with a duo core 1.83 Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM. Both computers connected to my broadband cable modem via my 802.11g wireless network. I mention the specs, so that you know that these were very capable machines, and not bottom of the line computers that are barely operable.
The free product, is called TV Now. It downloads as a zip file, and there's really nothing to install. It seems to be a simple browser plugin that sorts and lists different channels that are streaming their video signal over the net. The software lets you pick out what you want to look at based on the country of origin of the signal, then alphabetically by the station's call sign. Most of the channels are Asian, and Middle Eastern, although there are some European and Latin American channels as well as the occasional "U.S. American" channel. The quality of the feeds on the Asian channels is spectacular, matched only by some of the Latin American channels. Most of the feeds however, are choppy or require you to install additional software like Real Player or QuickTime player.
The paid product, is called Satellite TV on PC. The license allows you to install the product on up to 5 computers at once, which is a very nice feature. This software has a somewhat cluttered user interface, and like the free product, it allows you to sort by country, and call sign, but it also lets you sort by genre. I found that there were more English language stations available using this player, but the quality of the video was on par with the free product. I liked the interface of the free product better, only because I felt it was cleaner, but this product had more English channels and once I figured out how to sort the views it was easier to find the channels that I wanted to mark as a "Favorite" so I can get to them quickly next time around.
To sum up, both products offer comparable quality of feed. I like the interface on the free tv on your computer product better than I did the Satellite TV on your PC product. However, I liked that there were more English language channels on the Satellite on your PC paid product. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would cancel their paid subscription to Satellite TV so they can watch TV on their laptop or their computer screen, but I can see the use of this type of connection if you're away from home. All in all, if you're at an Airport or somewhere with high speed internet access and have nothing else to do, why not hop on and check out what's playing on TV?
I recorded a video of myself buying the paid software, and then playing some of the video from the paid product. Go check it out on my webpage http://www.satelliteonyourcomputer.com
Rafael is a technology geek with many varied interests ranging from sports, to computers, to pets. Check out http://www.satelliteonyourcomputer.com for more information about satellite TV on your computer.
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