TopTV - DSTV alternative

[SilverNodashi]

There's a new TV broadcasting company, TopTV

Their prices are far more affordable than DSTV. Is anyone using them yet?

[tec0]

Why do we have DSTV? It not for the boring old movies and same shows everyday... No... Its for the sport. YES. Believe it or not but Supper-Sport is keeping DSTV going. Now if TOPtv can give us proper sport channels then DSTV will face heavy competition in the future.

[Dave A]

Looking at the channels on offer, I have to admit I'm not tempted at the moment. Hopefully they've figured out a niche where they'll get quick market share, but it isn't immediately obvious.

I wish them good luck, though. Competition never hurts and DSTv has had it all their own way so far.

[SilverNodashi]

I wonder if TopTV could compete with DSTV in terms of service?



My mom used to with friends for a while and had XtraView, where she brought her own decoder and paid the R50/pm difference in to get the extra view capabilies on top of their package. Then she moved to her mom's place in August when my grandma broke her hip and my mom didn't need DSTV since my grandma already has. But now that my mom wants to move back to her own home she has to pay the full price for her own DSTV. No problem, I thought, just get a dish and get it connected. With XtraView, you need to connect both decoders to a dish with a dual LNB & 2x antenna cables, one into the 1st decoder & one into the 2nd decoder. So she brought her decoder over to our place, we hooked it up to the dish and I wanted to un-pair the 2 decoders, but it didn't work. So I phoned DSTV, who patently assisted me over the phone (probably for about an hour) at which point we decided that the 2nd decoder might be faulty. Basically, it could un-pair with the main decoder and work totally independant from the main one, but as soon as you power it off-and-back-on, it wanted to connect to the main decoder again. He said I should bring it in, to Randburg & my mom lives in Benoni. So we decided to get one of those R600 specials & Pick 'n Pay, where you get a new decoder, dish & free installation. Since she didn't have a dish yet, she would have paid that kind of money in anycase. I know I paid R350 to have our dish installed, and got quotes between R350 - R600 just for installation, with my own dish.



Anyhow, so we got the new decoder, I went to her place (about 19:00), phoned DSTV and they helped me over the phone to migrate her account to the new smart card, and it worked within minutes.



So, regardless of their high prices, they offer very good service and service sells in this country, not cheap price.

[sgafc]

Why Watch TV?

I have discovered that ignoring TV altogether works for me. With all the mindless drivel on TV...negative news, boring soaps and yes old movies.

But the Internet, is something else. I catch my latest daily headlines on one of the many local sites.Movies (pay per view) of your choice. News that uplifts the soul. Forums, You Tube, articles etc.

A good book, a walk in the park, a drive in the countryside, is considered over weekends, in stead of the TV.
We sit and watch all these silly programmes and life passes us by.TV has deprived us from family dinners, conversation etc. No wonder, many families are broken..

I kept my TV set however, since I watch DVD's. A wide array of DVD's can be hired/purchased on and off line.

[SilverNodashi]

Sean you do make a valid point on this one. The only reason I have DSTV is cause of the documentories on Animal Planet, Discovery World, National Geographic, etc. Oh, and I still enjoy the series channels as well, they tend to have new stuff from time to time.

[AndyD]

I don't use DSTV or terrestrial TV systems. I use streaming TV over internet. You get to watch series and documentaries etc when they're new and the odd sports event I want to watch it's very rare I can't stream it live as long as I connect a half hour in advance. Instead of a decoder I have a media center PC connected to a TV. All my DVD's and music are on the pc and you can watch anywhere in the house across the LAN. All my viewing is free as such, it just costs internet bandwidth which works out less than a multi-choice package.

[daveob]

I don't use DSTV or terrestrial TV systems. I use streaming TV over internet. You get to watch series and documentaries etc when they're new and the odd sports event I want to watch it's very rare I can't stream it live as long as I connect a half hour in advance. Instead of a decoder I have a media center PC connected to a TV. All my DVD's and music are on the pc and you can watch anywhere in the house across the LAN. All my viewing is free as such, it just costs internet bandwidth which works out less than a multi-choice package.

Hi AndyD

Would you care to elaborate as to where you get the streaming feed/s from ? Am very interested in this option.

[Pap_sak]

I have looked at the top TV package, and it's not bad...besides sports. Unfortunately I love my rugby so it's going to be a hard move, but I will probably move anyway, at least for 6 months of the year. I hate the fact that you you have to pay R520 a month to watch a bit of rugby in this country...there is no other way. Hopefully, if lot's of other people vote with there feet (even for a couple of months a year), our monopolies will not feel so comfortable in their ivory towers.. So I am moving on principal.

[AndyD]

Hi AndyD

Would you care to elaborate as to where you get the streaming feed/s from ? Am very interested in this option.

There's hundreds (probably thousands) of streaming feeds for all different genre of TV like sport, series, history, documentaries and movies. Many of the US tv stations supply streaming content but they make it USA only. It's not difficult to get around these restrictions with the setting up of a US based proxy which is free. I'm not sure about legality but I haven't encountered any infringement notices in the last year that I've been using one.....touch wood.

You need a 4 meg ADSL connection or better that's unthrottled if you're allergic to buffering delays, I use about 5-6 gigs per month off peak so it costs 1/5th of the normal price for off-peak bandwidth and I record my programs of choice in avi format. 3/4 of the bandwidth I use is for the kids junk. I usually use the lower definition option for throwaway viewing and HD only if I want to hang on to it. You'll also need a decent media player like kmplayer which is streets ahead or VLC if old habits die hard.

It costs me around R150.00 in nighttime bandwidth and 12 Euros per month for a high speed VPN which is optional and I only use it occasionally and mostly for bittorrent protocol traffic, not streaming :-) The proxies are free and the programs are free.

Here's a quick tutorial on watching US streams.

Try ourwebtv for programs as well as TV Shack which is linked in this article. Sidereel is another option to get you started and MyP2P is good for some sport events.

All the sites I've listed claim to have content filtering systems to keep them free of copyright infringing material. I can't tell you for sure that they're completely legal but IMO if they're filtered you should be able to assume that the material is kosher. There are many more if you rummage around on Google and some are blatantly illegal so in the interests of not leading anyone astray I'm not listing them here.

Streaming TV has disadvantages, it's not suitable for internet illiterates and you need to plan ahead a little as well. On the other hand it's price competitive and the content is very up to date.

[daveob]

Hi AndyD

Have tried Charon to get the US proxy IP address, but not getting any results. It just seems to run for ages ( over 30 minutes of activity in the bottom info bar ), but without anything after that.

Any other suggestions ?

Also, is it possible on a std PC to record the program / episode being watched ( like on abc ) for later viewing ? If so, what software ?

[AndyD]

Hi Dave,

As far as I know, Charon is basically a tool that searches for free proxies and tests then. There's a couple of issues with proxies;

1. Not all proxies are anonymous, you would need to filter the results that Charon returns to show you the anonymous ones. I would imagine there a setting in the preferences somewhere to do this.
   
2. Free proxies tend to be limited in bandwidth available and may employ shaping techniques to give preference to HTML and mail traffic so they're not ideal for viewing streaming TV which is bandwidth intensive.
   
3. Proxies in general are a cat and mouse game, they utilise a certain ip-range which soon becomes public knowledge and get blacklisted left right and center so they change regularly to try and stay one step ahead.

I set up streaming TV through a proxy for a while but it was somewhat hit and miss. I believe there's no substitute for a decent VPN but unfortunately you'll have to pay. I run a uk based VPN and a USA one for good measure. The combined cost is around R200/m including a seedbox and I've subscribed to Netfllix with the help of a buddy I have in the US. Netflix costs me another R90.00 on top of the VPN.

I got to the point with free proxies and free streaming services where the lack of quality and reliability sent me toward a higher cost option.

[daveob]

Hi Andy

Thanks for the info. Am now looking at things like strongvpn.com for the US based VPN.

You didn't reply to the last part of the question :
Also, is it possible on a std PC to record the program / episode being watched ( like on abc ) for later viewing ? If so, what software ?

Any ideas ?

[AndyD]

Sorry Dave, you can capture streaming TV using any half decent media player. I use KMPlayer in conjunction with its ffmpeg encoder to capture and save on my local machine as avi. VLC media player can also do the same as far as I know.

[daveob]

Update :

OK. A friend shared the following idea which I am now about to start :

get a TV capture card / USB dongle for the PC and connect with RCA cables to the DSTV decoder. Record a month's worth of CeeBeeBies for the kids to watch over the next few months. Got this bit working and will start recording tonight. TV USB dongle was R450

Next, will be a HDD media Player with External HD - 500gb. Will then start downloading series and movies to the HD and playback via the TV when I am ready to watch. A external drive and QT500 media player is to set me back about R1190.

Have got a US based IP address via a proxy, so am now able to connect and watch series channels on the US sites.

So far, so good. If this works out as planned, it's bye-bye to dstv and their endless repeats.