Spam Today
So I got an email from Farstone in my inbox today. I had bought some other software from them quite some time ago and still get spam from them. Today’s email was kind of intriguing though. It describes a new product called Digital TV for PC (DTV4PC).
I checked out their “live demo” which is a live feed of CNN. The quality looked good. It was clearly webcast quality but appeared to be high bitrate and looked pretty decent. I then googled for reviews and couldn’t find a single one. I thought it might be fun to plop down the cash and be the first to take a crack at it.
The website advertises over 1,000 channels available for your viewing. They claim this is 100% legal. It loosk to me to be legit. It seems that they are just aggregating existing free feeds into a Windows front end.
PS – Yes I know this is why spammers exist, because every once in a while someone (like me today) will bite. Sorry in advance…
What content is available?
Channels can be sorted many ways such as most popular, by genre, by country, etc. I chose to first view the channels based here in America. At the time of this review, 334 (323 unique) USA channels are listed. Breaking this down:
4 of these are weather channels (including the actual “The Weather Channel”)
There are 2 travel channels. One is a no name, the other is GlobeTrekker TV.
17 channels are sports related. Both ESPN and ESPN Sports are listed as choices in the channel browser but I have not yet been able to connect to these channels. One of the MLB channels is listed and did work. Also one interesting channel of note in this category is the “Backyard Wrestling Network” which although seems to be an amateur produced “channel” it was fairly hilarious to watch.
11 of the channels are shopping related (read QVC and Home Shopping Network)
11 of the channels are religious programming of the UHF and Sunday morning infomercial variety.
There is a single channel in the “Reality” category which was just playing video tapes of local rap shows every time I tuned in.
9 of the chnnels are in the politics genre. All of these are local government cable access feeds.
33 of the channels are in the news category. The worthwhile ones here are live feeds of BBC, CNN, CSPAN, CNBC, Sky news, and Bloomberg. The rest are local news channels consisting of the alternate programming on HDTV channels. ABC news now is also available (sort of like on-demand). It’s not actually a channel but a news summary that starts playing from the beginning when you select this channel.
There is a single channel in the “nature” category. I was only able to briefly connect to this channel but it appeared to just be a webcam pointing out into a park or possibly a yard.
There are 34 audio only channels. It’s the same fare you get on cable, satellite, or XM radio.
6 channels are in the “movies” category. All of them are no names. Though the “horror channel” did sound interesting, I was never able to connect to it.
4 channels occupy the “lifestyle” genre. One of them was broadcasting an interview with a farmer talking about how to increase yields (on the country channel). The lifestyle channel was playing an into to prenatal yoga video.
There are 2 channels in the comedy category. Both were no names. One was broadcasting shows from tv.com.
19 of the channels are listed as “government”. These are rebroadcasts of local government cable access feeds.
107 channels are in the general category. Any of you have an OTA (over the air) HDTV receiver to pick up local HD stations? You know how a lot of local stations will broadcast non-stop weather or repeats of their newscasts on their alternate HDTV channels? A lot of these are rebroadcasts of that same OTA programming. Some interesting things in this category are “Tom Green Live!” (non stop Tom Green comedy), NASA TV is here, other wacky stuff is in here that appears to be local tv stations that are fairy low budget.
There are 3 gamer channels. One’s description said it showed live on-line gaming. I wasn’t able to connect to it though. the other two were not in english and one repeatedly would go to re-buffer the stream.
There are 5 in the finance category. Bloomberg and CNBC are repeated here (they also appear in the news category).
11 appear in the entertainment category. “The Sci-Fi channel” is listed but it’s not the one you know from cable, satellite, or scifi.com
38 channels are listed in the educational category. 3 different NASA TV channels appear (1 is a dup previously listed). A live webcam from monterey bay aquarium is a channel as well. “The earth channel” wasn’t too bad. It even borders on actually being worthwhile. Appeared to be a knockoff of PBS Nova or The discovery channel.
4 channels are listed in the cartoon category, including “The cartoon network”. Alas, this is also a knock off and not the actual “Cartoon Network”. The knockoff was playing very old no-name cartoons with an occasional old Bugs Bunny thrown in.
1 Comedy channel is listed. It was a no name as well but wasn’t too bad. Appeared to be showing tapes of recorded performances from local comedy clubs.
Note that some of the other things listed on the website (such as MTV) are available from other countries. For example the only MTV channel available is from New Zealand. So if you want to see the latest hit videos from down under and watch VJ’s with accents you can tune in. Don’t expect to see any of the popular stuff from America here though. The CBC is available in Canada.
How’s the picture and sound quality?
Now I can see why they chose CNN as their demo channel. There is very little movement and the audio is primarily human speech. This eliminates most picture artifacts as there is no fast action and allows more of the bandwidth to go to video since there isn’t much in the way of audio.
I suppose I should let you know I am on a DSL line from Qwest. I am paying for 1.5 down/768 up but according to dslreports I am actually getting almost 2 down and 896 up.
On some channels I was never able to connect (see ESPN in particular) and on a few others I was constantly buffering and the stream would stall. In my informal, non-scientific review I would estimate roughly 15% of the channels gave me trouble. The vast majority of the working channels streamed well. There was no rebuffering or hiccups.
The quality was exactly that of any video you’d find on a news website. Go to cnn.com and watch one of their videos. That’s pretty much what you’re in for. Looks ok in a window. Looks horrible full screen.
The program itself
It’s a 14 meg download. There is very little configuration aside from selecting a color scheme or skin. The channel list is sortable and searchable. You can bookmark channels you find interesting to a custom channel list. Basically it looks very much like a stripped down version of Windows media player. Installed easily. Didn’t put in any spyware that I have yet been able to detect.
Summary
So in summary, what is available that the average person might have heard of? Well CNN, Bloomberg, CSPAN, CNBC, NASA TV, ESPN (if it ever works) and BBC. The interesting finds I found? Pretty slim. The Earth Channel and Backyard Wrestling Network were kind of fun.
So it boils down to, would you pay $29.95 for a Windows-only program that would allow you to watch low-quality versions of these channels on your PC? Available at: http://www.dtvforpc.com
***Update 5/31/2008*** Just hit 25,000 views on this blog post this morning. Thanks to everyone for the comments. I think we’ve saved people some serious money!
Categories: General
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So to sum up I was ready for something different.
