IPTV vs Sat and other ramblings

[lparsons21]

With all the discussion about Dish dropping AMC and D* looking less and less likely to add BBCA in HD, I bought and downloaded from a couple places to check out the video quality. And being a bit frugal at times, I thought I'd buy an episode in SD just to see how good it was. Here's what I found.

1. Amazon - bought 1 episode of Doctor Who @$1.99 SD - video was great! Not exactly HD, but far, far better than either D* or E*'s SD, and nearly as good as E*'s HD for BBCA-HD.

2. iTunes - bought Series 5 of Primeval cheap in SD. Same video quality as I got from Amazon. As an aside, I can't believe I missed this last series of the show.

But doing it showed why IPTV can be so irritating. There just is no one box solution to IPTV! I needed an AppleTV to get the iTunes stuff on my big screen. And then some other box for Amazon. And I won't even start about all the other IPTV channels and where/how to get them on the big screen. Let's just say that it is irritating enough that I would not want to depend on IPTV for all my TV watching.

And of course, I can't forget that no matter what you do, or what box you used, live boxing and golf is seldom, if ever, available via IPTV.

But the reason for my 'testing' was to help me decide which sat provider I'll use going forward. If Dish drops AMC, then Direct is the better choice from the viewpoint of buying a TV series. In my case, only one or two BBCA shows are worth buying, and BBCA shows are in general much cheaper than buying the AMC shows by far.

 

[jayn_j]

Agreed. We dropped TWC back in mid-April and the kids are complaining. Bought a Roku box and have tried subscribing to various free and pay channels, but Hulu+ is useless to us, and it is difficult to grab stuff like the USA network shows, except to watch them via the computer. The kids want me to spring for a minimum DISH setup at this point.

 

[dangue]

With all the discussion about Dish dropping AMC and D* looking less and less likely to add BBCA in HD, I bought and downloaded from a couple places to check out the video quality. And being a bit frugal at times, I thought I'd buy an episode in SD just to see how good it was. Here's what I found.

1. Amazon - bought 1 episode of Doctor Who @$1.99 SD - video was great! Not exactly HD, but far, far better than either D* or E*'s SD, and nearly as good as E*'s HD for BBCA-HD.

2. iTunes - bought Series 5 of Primeval cheap in SD. Same video quality as I got from Amazon. As an aside, I can't believe I missed this last series of the show.

But doing it showed why IPTV can be so irritating. There just is no one box solution to IPTV! I needed an AppleTV to get the iTunes stuff on my big screen. And then some other box for Amazon. And I won't even start about all the other IPTV channels and where/how to get them on the big screen. Let's just say that it is irritating enough that I would not want to depend on IPTV for all my TV watching.

And of course, I can't forget that no matter what you do, or what box you used, live boxing and golf is seldom, if ever, available via IPTV.

But the reason for my 'testing' was to help me decide which sat provider I'll use going forward. If Dish drops AMC, then Direct is the better choice from the viewpoint of buying a TV series. In my case, only one or two BBCA shows are worth buying, and BBCA shows are in general much cheaper than buying the AMC shows by far.

If I was going to pick based on those to channels only, I'd go with Direct and purchase the BBC programming. Sometimes BBCA will edit the BBC programs for time or content. Despite Dish having BBCA in HD, I buy Dr. Who via amazon to avoid any such edits.

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys

 

[lparsons21]

As it sits right now, I agree. D* makes the better choice, both in channel lineups and overall costs although it is close. At some point in time I'm either going to switch or get an HR34 to replace 2 of my HR24s just because of the management of recordings.

And I don't think I'll give up on IPTV either, it has its place. It just isn't all that handy at this point in time, imo.

 

[mike123abc]

I buy all my stuff from Amazon's VOD. It works everywhere but on Apple devices. I have avoided buying itunes contents since they only work on apple products or a PC. I use my google TV to watch Amazon VOD.

 

[lparsons21]

I buy from both depending on which has the best price. I have 2 seperate setups that I use to get on the big screen.

1. AppleTV for what I get off iTunes, but most often I buy with the computer so it downloads and then stream that internally of my network. Movies are a rarity, but when I do get them, I usually do the same. Then I have local copies of all those shows. I could stream and buy/rent on the AppleTV I just don't prefer to do it that way.

2. For Amazon, I order online, then use Playon/Playlater to record the show to my Windows laptop and then stream that internally to either the PS3, Sony BluRay player or HR24.

Either way I have local copies of all the stuff I buy, even if not being able to manage all of them with one piece of software.

 

[mike123abc]

I have TiVos and I set some series to auto download to the TiVo when new episodes become available.

 

[dan188]

I buy from both depending on which has the best price. I have 2 seperate setups that I use to get on the big screen.

1. AppleTV for what I get off iTunes, but most often I buy with the computer so it downloads and then stream that internally of my network. Movies are a rarity, but when I do get them, I usually do the same. Then I have local copies of all those shows. I could stream and buy/rent on the AppleTV I just don't prefer to do it that way.

2. For Amazon, I order online, then use Playon/Playlater to record the show to my Windows laptop and then stream that internally to either the PS3, Sony BluRay player or HR24.

Either way I have local copies of all the stuff I buy, even if not being able to manage all of them with one piece of software.

Amazon has a app for PS3 you can link to your amazon account and stream. Not sure if you knew. I use and enjoy it. Wish hbogo was on PS3 but at least I can access on roku

 

[lparsons21]

Amazon has a app for PS3 you can link to your amazon account and stream. Not sure if you knew. I use and enjoy it. Wish hbogo was on PS3 but at least I can access on roku

I knew that, but thanks for pointing it out. I generally don't use the PS3 for much as I get tired of listening to it go into 'hover mode' with fan noise. I have the older big PS3. And I like to record those things I get, so tend to use either iTunes or Playon/Playlater so I have that capability. The other advantage to recording is that then my son and I could both be watching a stream with no glitches ever via my internal network.

 

[dan188]

I knew that, but thanks for pointing it out. I generally don't use the PS3 for much as I get tired of listening to it go into 'hover mode' with fan noise. I have the older big PS3. And I like to record those things I get, so tend to use either iTunes or Playon/Playlater so I have that capability. The other advantage to recording is that then my son and I could both be watching a stream with no glitches ever via my internal network.

Grate point. Have tried PS3 media server

 

[lparsons21]

I looked at the PS3 media server and was not impressed, and frankly most of them left me cold. Too much fiddling around and configuring for the various video codecs. While Playon may not support everything, it is dead simple to use and set up, the addition of Playlater to give recording capability was just too good to turn away.

 

[stardust3]

IMO the best streaming device is the laptop. With most new machines having a hdmi port it allows easy viewing on the TV. I've even seen some wireless hdmi to TV devices that claim no loss of quality, though I haven't personally used 1 yet.

 

[TheForce]

What I do is about every few months make a list of what I want to watch. Then I prioritize the programs. Then I look to see what service offers those and buy the equipment. Don't think that one does all is possible for me so I have several devices and services. It's the bottom line cost of everything that I try to minimize, not the number of devices or services.

Currently I use:
Oppo BD-93 for 3D and 2D Blu Ray and archived iso files on 12Tb of hard drives.
PS3 for Vudu, Amazon, Netflix, & Sony Channel for 3D and 2D
Dish Network 722K with dual OTA tuners for Local network and cable channel programming I only watch time shifted, maybe one live show once every 3 months.

Netflix and SlingBox HD from the VIP722K is streamed to all my mobile devices too.

I also have Popcorn Hour, HiMedia for 3D, XBOX360 but rarely use these for programming anymore as they are mostly redundant with the other hardware above.

 

[Pepper]

IMO the best streaming device is the laptop. With most new machines having a hdmi port it allows easy viewing on the TV. I've even seen some wireless hdmi to TV devices that claim no loss of quality, though I haven't personally used 1 yet.

HP WY555AA#ABC, if you can still find them. Company bought one for the 55-inch conference room TV, works great.

 

[lparsons21]

Grate point. Have tried PS3 media server

I tried it out and didn't like it. In fact, I never found a DNLA server for the Mac that I did like. So I use my Win7 laptop the generally had nothing to do for running Playon/Playlater. While that combo does have some limitations as all of this stuff does, everything that is there works flawlessly and no fiddling required.