Satellite TV On Your PC Ready For Prime Time?
Well, I’ve found 2 products that worked well enoughto talk about. One of them free, and one of them not free. I testedboth 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 mentionthe specs, so that you know that these were very capable machines, and not bottom of the line computers that are barely operable.
First, the free product, it 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 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 at
http://www.satelliteonyourcomputer.com
