Internet TV on my laptop. Anyone got a good "How To"????

[Mike]

I've actually discovered Google Chrome, which among other things has quite an array of TV extensions.
I've added one or two TV viewers and am able to get streaming CNN USA and Bloomberg USA which appear to be
slightly lagged live feeds, so I'm reasonably good with that as an answer for access to News and Business channels,
although I find the CNBC and BNN stock and commodities tickers easier to decipher than their Bloomberg equivalent.
Chrome itself isn't too bad, and it has lots of "apps" for laptops and phones, but I still prefer Firefox for general
web browsing, and overall functionality. I may use Chrome for TV on the laptops on the road, and Firefox for
everything else.

[SusieQ]

I would like to add hulu.com to this information about free tv on the internet. I have used it to watch all the free movies and shows but if it has a plus (+) sign beside it you have to pay a per month fee to watch those shows. I just search for only free full episodes and it does have ads even if you pay the fee.
I use to watch old shows free on my cell phone at classictv.com and there were no ads on it if you like star trek!
I do like my Netflix also.

[Mike]

Hi and thanks for your input. I had forgotten about this thread, it's been so long.
I pretty much stuck with local over the air TV, and my diy satellite rig for our entertainment TV when we're on the road and stopped for the day. I get free streaming (almost real time, unfortunately) stock quotes online from my FI, so that took care of that requirement, too.
I'm looking into getting a smartphone with online TV capabilities (they all do it, don't they?) to get out of the '90s, and into the brave new wireless world, so that might be as far as this project goes. I plan on using it to replace our laptops, since I'm told these little handhelds can pretty much do the email, web surfing, and everything else that a laptop can do, except print, although they can be tethered to my home router to do that.
So I think I'm covered until the next great television technological advance.........

[SiennaGuy]

See the discussion about the Slingbox. It may do what you want fairly easily. It has no subscription fees.

SiennaGuy
DISCLOSURE: I used to write their manuals and online Help. I no longer have any connection to the company.

[markopolo]

Slingbox topic: http://www.classbforum.com/phpBB2/vi...hp?f=42&t=1157

[johl]

I use satellite direct. 29.95 for lifetime coverage. will never run out of channels

[SiennaGuy]

Does Satellite Direct give you anything other than a list of websites?

[johl]

Satellite Direct has all sorts of channels from all over the U.S. abc, cbs, nbc, fox, cnn , espn channels, must be 300-400 channels. also you can get channels from other countries

[Mike]

Originally Posted by SiennaGuy

See the discussion about the Slingbox. It may do what you want fairly easily. It has no subscription fees.

SiennaGuy
DISCLOSURE: I used to write their manuals and online Help. I no longer have any connection to the company.

To recap (I just looked and I started this thread in 2011???) my desire was to have real time TV channels just like I get at home with our Shaw Direct satellite receivers, on the road, in an easy to setup and use medium. Like a laptop or smartphone. Shaw allows me to take one of our dishes and receivers with us wherever we travel, but it's a PITA to set up and tear down when we arrive, and then when we decide we need to move the van to run errands or whatever. We also use OTA local TV stations, which generally takes about 5 minutes to set up (takes a few minutes for our digital TV to scan for in range stations).
So, while both of these solutions do what I want, it would have been nice to find a faster, less cumbersome, way to view a full range of our satellite channels on real time TV, with out the hassles of setting up a dish and receiver, or being out of range of anything besides the weather channel and some religious OTA networks. Another option we've considered is a small, portable, automatic Shaw Direct compatible dish rig, like the VuQube or the Winegard models, but they are pretty pricey, and I was told by at least one manufacturer that they only work north of the 48th parallel. They said the paddle they use as a dish, inside the igloo, is too small to pick up a decent satellite signal in the lower 48. Maybe that's BS, but I didn't want to take a chance and buy something that won't work where I need it to.
Is Slingbox real time TV? My main objectives are real time business news channels like CNBC, Bloomberg, or BNN, and real time local and world news channels, which will vary, as I watch them all, depending on what they happen to be covering at the moment.

[avanti]

A Slingbox will let you watch anything that you could watch if you were at home. Think of it as a long wire back to your house. The interface includes a remote control that lets you change the channels and otherwise control the DVR in your cable or satellite box. The disadvantages of Sling are: (a) you need to keep stuff turned on at home; (b) depending on your Internet connection, the picture quality can be less than great (although it uses what bandwidth is available very well); and (c) the remote control can be awkward to use, due to lag in responses from your box. Other than that, I think it is what you are looking for.

[Mike]

Is Slingbox performance also based on home internet speed, and does it create an upload/download crush on your monthly bandwidth usage? Those 2 items will be the coffin nails for Slingbox for us. Thanks for your input, it explains some of the features of SB, in layman's terms. For me, simple usually works best.

I think as pricing on the satellite roof mounted, or portables, improves (read as drops over time) we will probably revisit it as a future way of dealing with quick set up/tear down of our home/road satellite access. It's probably the easiest solution, in spite of the price and potential installation headaches. I'd probably go for the portable "bubble/igloo" type that can either be set on the ground or the roof of the van. The hardest part of setting my rig up is hitting the birds, and these portable automatics are supposed to simplify it a lot.

[SiennaGuy]

A Slingbox sends compressed video out to the Internet, so its performance is capped by the upload speed of your Internet connection at home. Usually, this is much less than the download speed, so check with your provider to find out what your speed measurements are.

On the other end (wherever there's an Internet connection), a Slingbox does its best not to hog bandwidth when it's sending you video. You don't download a monster-sized movie file to your computer and it's much more efficient than directly streaming uncompressed video. In any case, the absolute maximum it can use is equal to the upload capacity of your home Internet connection.

The video that a Slingbox uploads is sent in real time to your computer or smartphone. It compresses the video on the fly. You can watch your hometown's 6 o'clock news whenever it's 6 o'clock at home. If you connect a Slingbox to a DVR, you can watch whatever you've recorded on the DVR. So, if you've recorded the 6 o'clock news, you can watch it whenever you want.

If you want to see what watching a Slingbox on a computer looks like, there's a photo of a computer screen in action near the bottom of this PC Magazine review of one of the Slingbox models. I'd repost it here but I'm sure that it's copyrighted. Here's a link to the article:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410815,00.asp

As Avanti said, on your computer screen, you'll see a representation of the remote for your particular DVR, cable box, etc. You can use the virtual remote to change the channel and do some of the other things you can do with your real remote. You can hide the onscreen remote when you don't need it. If you want to watch a program in full screen, without the remote and the controls in the way, you can do that, too.

SiennaGuy
DISCLOSURE: I used to write the manuals and online Help for the company that makes the Slingbox. I no longer have any connection to the company.

[Mike]

Hi, and again, thanks for taking the time. I understand the technical functionality of the Slingbox as described by you and avanti. That said, the concerns noted in my previous coffin nail comments, are that it's video presentation speed is limited by the maximum home internet connection data transfer upload rate, and the target locations download limitations, if any, and it does consume billable bandwidth on the home ISP data plan. We have the lowest speed home internet package available, and it's also the lowest included bandwidth amount available. We also don't have a mobile/portable ISP plan, and primarily use free public wifi for internet access, so receiving the transmitted data would be limited by that. So, I don't think it's going to gain me much over my current rig in terms of price/performance. I might as well just set up my satellite rig at the remote location, because I'm already paying for it. If I had an inexpensive home and mobile ISP data plan, with unlimited upload/download at high speed, Slingbox might be worth a look. Budget/price or value for money are always factors in any decisions we make, and perhaps I didn't make that clearer in my previous comments on this, and other threads. If money wasn't an object, I'd already be driving a newer RV with an automatic in motion satellite rig in it, and have a smartphone with a Slingbox, or some other direct real time TV app for portable personal viewing. Satellite Direct, and Rabbit TV and the like, are also not on the radar for us. For the reason you suggested in a previous post.
Thanks again all, for the suggestions.

[lightspeed]

I just ran across this on youtube . it's called xmbc what it actually is , is a listing of streaming places to watch tv shows .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITl00InGqNY

this link tells a person about downloading it and how to set it up on a pc . one of these video's (don't remember which one ) had a lot of dirty language against the cable companies , so just beware I mentioned it) .
anyway it looks fairly easy . I don't know that this will work on older xp pc operating systems .