Hey, Vernon here.
If you found this page it probably means you’re in the same position I was several weeks ago: I was no big TV fan anymore, but I guess sometimes I still need it for live shows and sports events. I really wanted to KILL cable bill, so one day I was wondering if I could stream live television over the Internet so that I could watch the news, sports, and lots of TV shows on my computer.
But when I searched for “watch TV online” or “Internet television” or “live stream television” or “TV through Internet” …… all I found was either websites with a lot of non-working links, attempting to stream very limited channels in very poor quality, or some crappy review sites/articles which only care about their sales regardless of telling the truth. I highly doubt if the writer even bought the product themselves.
What I want is live TV shows and sports events, not old ones, so big networks like ABC or Fox is not an option. And also sites like Hulu and Veoh are loaded with all pre-aired material.
Then I stumbled upon something called satellite TV to PC software, which turns out to be a very good choice! In case you don’t know about it, it works by converting satellite TV signals into a live feed and sending them over the Internet. My first thought on this was like: is it legal? Then I dig deeper and found out it’s 100% legal because these are FTA (free to air: check at wikipedia) satellite stations, which are being broadcast worldwide 24hrs a day. The software just allows you to get all the stations without a satellite dish or receiver.
I think maybe I should give it a try. So I searched all over the net and found three choices:
(1)Satellite Direct
(2)Satellite TV for PC 2010 Elite
(3)Satellite TV for PC 2010 Titanium
I didn’t find very useful “reviews” out there. Actually I didn’t want to risk my money even it’s just one-time payment, so I was pretty happy that each one of these three comes with a 60-day money back guarantee.
“Titanium”and “Elite” are made by the same company, the only difference is that “Titanium” comes with 1,000 more stations. Both “Satellite Direct” and “Elite” come with 3,500+ stations, which are enough for me. Then I went through all the ads like: “No Spyware, Adware”, “24 Hour Tech Support Via Email”, blah blah blah… Finally it came down to money:
- “Satellite Direct”: $49.95
- “Titanium”: $99.95
- “Elite”: $49.95
Since SatelliteDirect looks more promising, I went for Satellite Direct.
I was able to download the software immediately after completing my purchase and the installation only took me about 2 minutes.
The lovely screen shot goes here:
Lovely Screen Shot
As you can see, the interface is neat and user-friendly, with several smart features you can easily get what you want:
- When you hover your mouse over the channel name it gives you a pop-up description of the channel.
- The search tool will help you to find specific content quickly instead of having to channel surf.
- You can browse channels by country, language, or category.
- The automatic TV station updates will make sure that every channel listed works
P.S. Make sure you are on a high speed Internet connection speed such as DSL or cable. This won’t be a problem for most of you guys.
