quiltman

I use bittorrents as well. They are fine for the mainstream programmes and I get my documentaries from MV group torrents, but my wife and i tend to want to watch 'minority' programmes which , rarely, if ever, appear on the torrents. I don't do sport so no problems there, but I do understand that sport is better live! that's why one of my sons gets up at 3.00am to watch Liverpool on a stream.
We are also on PLDT here with a 6mb - so called - feed. In the mornings it's not too bad but does tend to buffer later in the day.
Emmerdale is a good example as it rarely appears on the torrents - used to be a guy on The Bay who posted, but only every couple of weeks or so, and You tube versions are rubbish and get taken down almost daily. with Filmon I can download it early morning here and my wife can watch it at leisure. Each to their own I say. My method suits us, but may not suit others.

Raffin

Yes, everybody here on this thread has a different mix of ways of watching TV here on the computer screen without bothering too much with the local and international TV offerings. But Quiltman, if you say your household wants to watch some less popular "non-torrented" UK programmes in addition to Soaps like Emmerdale why not get, as I suggested, a cheap VPN and watch on the various on demand iPlayer services from the BBC, ITV,C4 and UTV? Just checked to find that now (it's early Saturday afternoon}yesterday's Emmerdale episode is available on ITV and UTV Players.

quiltman

Been there, tried that and gave up! Too much buffering when we used to be on Sky and the TV we use is not an internet enabled one so had to move PC into bedroom.. When we have to change it then maybe we'll go back to a paid VPN. I tried tunnelbear for a while and can use Hola on Chrome for iplayer etc which works OK for the very occasional catch up programme. I have in the past connected my tablet to the TV via HDMI and streamed but again the buffering was a pain. i'll stick to what works for us for now even tho' it's a multi-step process - download, burn to USB , plug USB into TV , select USB , select programme - play!

Raffin

Interesting to note two complaints about PLDT feeds. A few years ago they reneged on a promise to come into our provincial subdivision with the result that the local cable TV/Internet service hooked up most of the households who couldn't see one of the local masts.to get their internet. Although there has been some improvement in the last year the internet story here is one of buffering early mornings and evenings, long periods of very poor connectivity, the connection going off and on and frequent weather related and equipment breakdowns. Unlike the UK they don't bury the cables here. Still, it generally works the rest of the time so one soldiers on with it. And the TV is good - often surprising visitors from Manila.
But maybe we didn't miss too much by not having PLDT as similar problems are being mentioned - except perhaps the landline provision.
So it's usually a matter of timing to get my 1MB to produce a reasonable sport and UK TV service on the computer. One adapts eg late evening BBC programmes are often unwatchable live on the BBC site and sometimes even on other sites - but wait an hour or so and you can see them on BBC iPlayer with the VPN..Admittedly not a solution if one needs to leave the house early each morning. Then there is overnight torrent downloading.
And for football it's usually fine for watching matches in the middle of the night, if one so desires.
It seems that with many internet feeds here one can't easily watch UK TV programmes live or even connect to websites at certain times due to the lack of capacity. But going back to the VPN issue it has another advantage in that I have noticed that when my connectivity is poor or even non-existent I can usually connect quite well if the VPN is operating. So I keep it on all the time..
Couldn't get either Hola or Tunnel Bear to work with Firefox and a 0.5MB service last year. Maybe they would now work with Chrome and 1.0MB? But I think I will probably stick with the much simpler and cheap Telly Abroad service for my fairly limited viewing channels.

quiltman

The main complaint I have with PLDT is the DNS lookup can be a pain! some days , never a problem, then even regular sites throw up a "not available' message. I have found that reloading the site a couple of times seems to work.We could ask PLDT to change the modem to direct bind then we could use open DNS instead of PLDT's DNS service as they do not update it often enough. However as it works most of the time it's probably easier to just leave it! Here, streaming seems fine in the morning and again late evening/overnight , othertimes it varies. we are on Fibre in this subdivision and it is definitely more stable than when we were on copper. We have a 6mb connection as we run a business from here, and I've just done a speedtest to UK and got 5.65mb download. I know if I do another this afternoon it'll likely be around 1.5/2.5mb.

Ah well , each to his own.

jeremyb4

Is the bandwidth available from internet service providers in the Philippines enough to maintain good quality streams even if they are in standard definition? What sort of bandwidth do you get at peak times?

Jeremy

quiltman

Just done speedtest to Nottingham UK at 21.30 and got 2.94 down and 1.91 up , so should be good enough for standard definition. There are two others in the house using the same connection and I can see from my download meter that they are using about 2mb download so without them I would probably get 3/3.5mb.

Generally i do not have much problem streaming, but again, other than maybe something on youtube, I tend to download UK Tv and watch it later.

The thing here is - It's the Philippines! - very variable speeds, regular loss of service, for minutes, hours or even days. All I can suggest is talk to neigbours in your area and see what they say.
For me, the change to PLDT fibre is much better than the speeds we had with SKY.

jeremyb4

Thank you quiltman. The information you have provided is very helpful. Are you on the Plan 3500?

quiltman

sorry for delay , been out of town.
No idea what plan we're on! it's my son's house and he has one of PLDT's business plans which includes t'internet and various free calls. I'll ask him when I see him.

jeremyb4

I am using a Dreambox 500HD with an IPTV streaming service on it that provides all Premier League matches from CTH, NBC and TSN feeds. It also has the premium UK and some FTA channels on it. I will bring a box out with me and try it out on some different internet connections to see what quality of service I can get. I am hoping that there will be sufficient bandwidth, even at peak times for it to work on a DSL connection.

Gazza-d

You may need to somehow fool it's IP address because it may be region specific so won't work outside of the UK or Europe.

jeremyb4

That will not be a problem as I am the supplier of the service.

danielspaniel11234

Download app ->Downloads lite

danielspaniel11234

Buy android box with kodi

Stokkevn

An advert that keeps coming up on some sites I visit is TelevisionFanatic claiming free live sport, movies,TV etc. Haven't used it so no idea what they actually provide but for those interested in sport might be worth a punt.