Dear all, Thanks for all the posts. I have been using BETV to watch TVB Jade and have been very disappointed with the recent development. One thing I don't understand: why does TVB crack down these websites while NOT providing a channel for us to watch heir programs, even for a FEE? I mean TVB can charge us for their myTVB LIVE and myTVB, like commercial radio does where you be come a paid member and listen all their programs? This will be a WIN-WIN situation for the viewers and TVB. We can have a reliable virus-free sustainable way to watch the programs in high quality and high peed without knowing all these tricks they may or at not work. They should put All their programs, jade, jade hd, j2, news, and paid tvb on the web..live and recorded.and have people sign up and pay for it. If they charge USD 50 for a month ( or have different levels/packages of services depending on the fees), I bet many people will go for, rather than relying on those illegal ways that don't last long and may have virus. Why don't they do that? There s no conflict either TVB USA because it is not available everywhere (unless ur in San Francisco, NYC,or Vancouver Toronto ) Aso the clientele will be different: people watching TVB USA tend to be older and have family. If you are a student living in a dorm, even if u r located in San Franciso, you can't with TVB USA. People that will pay for TVB live or recorded programs at tvb.com will be students, young professionals, and people throughout the world who have no access to tvbi cable or satallite subscription. Do you guys agree with me? Either TVB should turn a blind eye to BETV or tudou or others...or provide a legal alternative once they are cracked down... If you agree with me,we should caller write to TVB to voice our opinion.
Hey I tried it out but im getting an error when trying to run it... dunno if im using the wrong links but im using the url address from the WLTV.txt file.. EDIT: Nevermind.. Something was wrong with my phone haha.. everything is working! Thanks
I don't know how TVB operates in general so I can't give a good argumentated opinion. Long long time ago, we had a TVB-Europe (from here on: TVB-EU) subscription before but TVB-EU wanted to broadcast more channels, but the local television companies didn't want to or couldn't provide more space for TVB-EU. So TVB-EU ended cooperation with them and asked clients to buy a sattelite receiver. The reason that we did not buy it, was 1) costs of the sattelite receiver and the monthly fee to be paid upfront (this was much more compared to what we paid in the past) and 2) our house owner does not allow any sattelite receivers to be installed because this will ruin the image of the house/neighbourhood. TVB-EU provided another solution: watching TVB-EU via the internet. However, as I posted earlier, my internet connection is very bad and does not allow high quality streaming without lag and I was not prepared to downgrade the quality and still pay the same amount of fee.
@Normal, I totally agree with you and I even mentioned this in one of my previous posts already. Playing the devil's advocate for a bit ... from the business point of view, I might see a problem though. TVB does not want to or cannot compete against itself. I'm sure they have some contractual obligations to their partners or even internal divisions like TVB Pay Vision (http://www.tvbpayvision.com). I guess those DirectTV and satellite contracts are signed for a few years as well, so they need the income. If they start providing such an online service for international customers, then how are they going to get enough customers to keep those other offerings profitable ? So maybe we have a too simplistic/selfish view on the issue. As Kenny mentioned as well, in the past we also had TVB-EU through cable which was still reasonably priced, but since the change to satellite it has become too expensive. Furthermore even they told me once that they do not recommend the IPTV option since the satellite one has much better quality. Actually I don't know if the IPTV even exists anymore since the links for IPTV do not work anymore (see http://www.chinese-channel.co.uk/en/cs_1.php). All I can say guys is to enjoy all this while it lasts This thread has been here for the last 3 years and TVB streams were available even before that, so there will always be a way. @deadsniper: Glad to hear that it worked. I assume you are also based in the US like hawai since you are not complaining about any stuttering/hanging of the stream. I just hope you are not going to watch TVB while driving though
I am also a former TVB-EU subscriber. I stopped the subscription for the same reason as mentioned by Kenny. Currently, I am just downloading the news and drama's for my parents and play it on a mediaplayer. If you really want to watch myTVB LIVE and myTVB, you can try to find a hk proxy that offers unlimited bandwith. I am really waiting for the new HK public channels to arrive later this year. More drama's (I read that some famous TVB scriptwriters went to the new channel), variety shows and more for the chinese viewers. I am hoping someone will put the streams of these new HK channels online. It would be even better if the new channels can be seen abroad at a low rate (by working together with the local cable companies just what TVB-EU did in the past), but I doubt that is an high priority for them.
I think that those people who are willing to watch TVB online for a fee are very different people than those who subscribe to TVB USA or other local Chinese cable or satallite TV channels. The former tend to be younger (students, young professionals...) the latter tend to be older people with family. In fact, it is a TREND that people (everyone, not just overseas Chinese who want to watch TVB from abroad) are moving toward internet based TV or apple TV from the traditional cable/satatille tv. So the trend will probably be inevitable that TVB will one day put all their programs online for people to watch for a fee, not just for people abroad but for those who are residing in HK... I remember in 1990s in Vancouver or Toronto, there used to be Hong Kong newspapers printing special Canadian or US versions for their papers...these are dying down because now, you can read HK newspaper (perhaps for a fee) online...probably at 3:00 am HK time, even earlier than your family/friends in HK who are still sleeping... Those I think what I proposed will come into being at some point...but I think perhaps it should come sooner.. Anyway, SOPCAST works great...I am praying that it won't get cracked down...BTW: A question: over the past few years, did the sopcast address change frequently to avoid being cracked down?
Hi Hawai, Sorry for my late response, I was out of town. Well, I bought it placing an order through the website (two months ago) and I paid UDS$ 169.00. There is an option to pay by Paypal, so I felt more confortable to buy it. I used the google translator to translate the form and asked my mom to translate some address field. It was kind of easy actually. You can update the firmware, but I have never seem a newer version available for download. It always says that I am up to date. All TVB channels work fine and never gone down since October. Because I am using wireless connection, I got some lag once in 5-10 minutes. I think you won't have this issue if you connect you network cable directly.
New channels ??? What new channels ??? Those channels are not listed here ? ... http://www.tvbpayvision.com/channel/ Well I am definitely not young anymore and I do have a family, so I kinda disagree with that I think it has more to do with the older generation that are not used to work with computers, they have no clue how to work with a PC, let alone how to stream a channel. But if you provide them with a media player like TVPad or what I have done in the past ... XBMC on the old XBOX1 (modded) ... then they don't care whether it's streaming from the Internet or not, as long as it's dummie proof The main thing is that they will depend on someone to set it up for them or to troubleshoot it for them when there is a problem. As another example, in the past a friend of mine has setup a Windows desktop shortcut for TVB through PPTV (aka PPLive) for his parents. They just double-click on it and they can watch. I hope so, but I am not too optimistic for the same reasons that I mentioned earlier. They are probably not going to compete against themselves for the next decade or so. I'm sure they have invested millions in their current infrastructure, so they will milk it out before they resort to worldwide streaming TV. Hmmm, yes things do change frequently. I have more or less seen it all. SopCast links or TVB channels in general have even disappeared for months causing major panic ... LOL. At times we have had to move to direct links (RTSP, MMS, HTTP) or other peer-to-peer streaming networks like PPTV/PPLive, PPStream, TVAnts, etc. It's a constant battle basically.
Hmm, my reply needs approvel??? Now I have to write it again... Basically, TVB and ATV are now the only channels that are free to watch in HK (I know TVB also has pay channels). The HK government is proposing a plan to allow more companies to air free television content (so more public (free to watch) channels are arriving). It's not sure yet which companies will get the license, but several companies are in the race for the licence. Now TV (currently a cable provider in HK) is one the companies that wants the license. Several news articles mentions that Now TV is approaching (ex-)TVB artists, TVB scriptwriters, etc. to go over their channel for an high pay. I can't wait for that to happen, so we can watch more free content.
He is talking about the free channels from NOW, i-Cable, and CTI that are going compete with TVB and ATV.
For those who want something more fancy to play these channels on their Android devices (there is also an iPad flavor), then check out the following app ... [video=youtube;wFz0VdE0srs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFz0VdE0srs[/video] With this you can do much more than just watching these streaming channels. I can basically use it as a remote control for my XBMC (media center) and watch the SopCast channels and movies with it. The only drawback is that it obviously only supports stereo sound, unless you invented a smartphone/tablet that has home cinema speakers built-in It has an experimental feature which allows you to connect to your PC from everywhere by logging into your GMail account, but I have not tried this. Oh actually another drawback, it's not for free.
Hi All, Just want to confirm with you guys just before I purchase a tvpad 2, can it receive as of today TVBJ? And also the other TVB channels? Thanks, K.
No there isn't one. So you need to run SopCast on your PC and then create a .strm file which contains the link to the stream. Then play the .strm file using XBMC. So it's similar to the instructions that were provided for using an external player, see my previous post. If you plan to use XBMC on the original XBOX1 instead of a PC, then make sure you have the latest version, otherwise these streams will not work.
Some members have mentioned in this topic not so long ago that all the TVB channels are still working. This should be still the case, since I don't see any info about it in the chinese tvpad forum. The question is whether you want to take the risk with this machine. You don't know how long the tvb channels will be working. I have read in the tvpad forum that they (company) are looking for distributors for this machine and they are also looking for international local chinese newspapers to advertise this product. Can you imagine seeing an ad that mentions that you can watch tvb channels with this machine in areas where the international branches of TVB are active? If this happens, I predict the tvb channels would be closed very soon.
Thanks For the reply. Another question, if I used tvpad are the tvb channels in widescreen or in 4:3? SOmeone posted links for sopcast via filesonic, when I tried all those channels are in 4:3, is this correct? Also TVBJ seems to be choppy when viewing it... Are you guys experiencing this too? Thanks, K.
See my previous post about using external players. EDIT: I think it's about time I make a FAQ in the main post
