Fred James

Filmon may be acceptable to you, but that doesn't necessarily equate to reasonable quality.

If you have a decent sized HDTV with a full HD signal from a satellite one has to accept that that is the best available picture quality currently available. If you give that 10 out of 10, then BBC iPlayer on a Smart TV, on a decent connection (around 5-10 mb/s) is about 8/10.

Filmon HD gets near to standard definition quality 5/10 but basic Filmon is nearer 3/10.

Acceptability is subjective and depends on the individual viewer, picture quality is objective and can be measured.

Of all the UK TV streams available, Filmon is most definitely the worst. If you find that acceptable, that's fine, but others may not agree with you.

bobd22

Fred I know from previous posts that you use a nowtv box. I have one of them in the UK to use for catch up and the picture quality is excellent. In fact I am so impressed I have now got one to bring over to Spain. Re the Kodi route I don't know how but when using one of the TV guides either film on guide or ivue guide and linking that to film on the quality is far superior to viewing direct from the film on site or all. As I say I don't know why that should be unless of course maybe for some strange reason maybe it is streaming the HD ? It is as I say quite good but admittedly not as good as the nowtv box using iPlayer , itv player etc and as mentioned most sports links are not great quality but I don't realy use them .

tebo53

I have been using my android TV box for a while now and the picture quality is certainly comparable to the picture quality I was getting through Virgin Media fibre optic internet in the UK.

I have a 42 inch HD tv and movistar high speed fibre optic cable internet and have watched HD films streamed at several different times of the day. I think if you have a good internet connection that makes a difference to the picture quality.

Steve

Fred James

Yes, I have a NowTV box, but now I have a recent SmartTV I tend to use the BBCiPlayer app in preference to NowTV. The reason for that is the picture quality is better. The BBC has been playing around with some new compression techniques which vary the quality depending on your bandwidth. I now have a 45mb connection so that should not be a problem, but the NowTV app is not as good as it was as it uses this technology. The app on the Samsung TV does not use it, it gives you a choice of two quality settings. The highest quality setting produces better quality than on the NowTV. I have no idea why, possibly as we are so far away from the server, it takes that into account while ignoring the high actual bandwidth. It gives some really weird effects where most of the picture is sharp, but sometimes the background is fuzzy.

A couple of years ago when all these TV problems surfaced after the satellite changes, I did play around with Filmon and there was definitely a difference in quality between the browser version and the app on the iPad - it was as though the app was giving you the paid for higher quality stream for free which tends to confirm your observations. At that time it was almost as good as the BBC SD iPlayer version, but the BBC has really upped the ante with regard to quality recently.

I have a HD satellite feed from I907 so get perfect quality on the UK channels, so I do have something to measure quality against. As I said the BBC are getting pretty good. ITV still have a lot to learn!

Fred James

Yes, it does, but only up to a point. Taking BBC iPlayer for example, the BBC recommends about 2mb/s for the SD stream and over 3.5mb/s for the HD stream. Bearing in mind that the Internet connection speeds can vary depending on the time of day, you would need some elbow room on this, but anything over 10mb/s is going to be fine - anything higher is unlikely to make any difference assuming you are not sharing the connection around the house to other TV streamers in the family.

The quality of the streams is limited by the broadcasters. There is no point in them providing full HD streams when few people have the bandwidth available. This will, of course, change with time as connection speeds improve.

If you have a recent UHD TV then it is possible to stream UHD quality stuff from Netflix and Amazon, but you need about 25mb/s to do this. If you have the facility the results are truly amazing with regard to quality.

bobd22

That is very interesting Fred I have only used Nowtv in the UK as when in Spain for my needs the Android box and Kodi suit my needs, however although I can get catch up on them I think it is easier and better via a nowtv box. As I say I have been so impressed with the picture quality I get on it in the UK I bought a second one to bring over. It will be interesting from what you say to see if the quality depreciates in Spain. If it does as the box brand new only cost me £10 I won't be too upset. Other bonus with the nowtv (new black boxes) they have a realy good screen cast built in that with an app on a tablet or phone means you can cast films photos videos etc direct to tv, with very good quality results.

Fred James

Let me know what happens to the quality when you try it in Spain - to be fair, it is only a slight reduction and not always that obvious.

The casting option presumably uses a Chromecast box?

If I want to cast other media, I tend to use the Airplay facility on the IOS boxes via an Apple TV. I don't use it often now as all my photos, videos and music are on a hard disk attached to the TV.

bobd22

No it has something called playto as an option on the new box. You then download on to Android the playto app and it links up. You can use it to cast films from showbox on your tablet to the box. Odd thing is you can cast from Android but not to another Android only to a ROKU box which of course the nowtv box is.

Fred James

OK that looks neat. Sadly there doesn't seem to be an IOS app so I can't try it out.

EsuriJohn

We have a 42" Panasonic plasma TV rapid refresh rate full 1080p. We have a Sky HD box, Spanish HD TV, android box with modbro and lots of others installed. The perceived quality is sky box, Spanish digital (TV aerial), lastly Xbox and of that, if I use google for Camposat that's the best then Filmon and then modbro and others. However needs must and sometimes to watch our football team we have to find Fox sport on Modbro and the quality is awful.

MikeJ

I hear that Netflix are going to introduce proxy blocking to protect IPR. Not sure how this works but is it likely to catch on and make the VPN/DNS avoidance of geoblocking irrelevant? What will we do then?

bobd22

John for your sports on Kodi / Xbmc have you tried RoboCop that is quite good and gives good picture quality. This link explains how to add it

https://seo-michael.co.uk/tutorial-how-to-install-operation-robocop-video-add-on-kodi/

Or you can install the blackbox build which has it and others included and is good for TV and films etc here is a link for how to set that up.

http://tutorial-iptv-xbmc.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-black-box-build-wizard-add-on-for.html

I find it very good for most things and with RoboCop you can watch live games or play them back at your leisure.

You will need to copy and post the links to your browser

bobd22

Go the Android Kodi route as you don't need to use VPN and can watch all the films etc that you want.

Fred James

It's possible to block a VPN if you know the IP addresses they use. Smart DNS systems don't seem so easy.

Netflix is now available in most countries, so it is becoming easier to access without a VPN.

Horlics

It'll be interesting to see what they do. If they're successful it'll have a massive impact on the the VPN providers.

I think they'll struggle to do it based on the VPN providers' IP addresses and if that's the method they try then I see a constant struggle between the two.

I'm wondering if they'll insist on the web browser revealing location.

Time will tell.