Sunday 26 November 2006
Thursday 9 November 2006
Tv on Your Pc!
Have you taken a look lately at what is going on in the tv entertainment and related technology field? Well if you havent then take a stroll down to your city centre electrical and tv dealers and you are in for a big surprise.
Tv entertainment and the associated technolgy has moved so fast in the last 5 years or so it is hard to keep up.When i was a youngster very few people had televisions and of course those that had ,at least in the UK , were very boxy, chunky and of course black and white or monochrome to be more precise. They lasted ,it seemed, forever.Usually when a repair was needed it was just "the picture valve" or the "sound valve" becasue of course there were no transistors ,just valves .Tv repair men were all over the place and usually bit was fairly cheap to fix.Our first ever tv a 17" Ferguson lasted us over 17 years!! Of coure as time went on the cabinets became more fancy and furniture like and the screens became available in bigger sizes and of course valves gave way to transistors and finally black and white TV was seen off by the advent of the colour tv..in the early seventies late 60s.You were posh indeed if you had a colour tv.At first it was only public houses that had colour and everyone flocked to watch
"match of the day" in colour.If you wanted to watch the 66 world cup final in colour then you had to go to the game itself or watch the pathe news version on the cinemas which was in colour.
Through the seventies and 80s in general it was the size of the screen and the quality od the sound and pictures which continued to improved until finally we had the "home cinema" phenomenon. Large screen Tvs with cinema sound facilitated through a 5 speaker system and a woofer. Video recorders continued to get smaller and smaller till dvd players came out and practically destroyed the vido recorder industry. Now dvd recorders are more commonplace it wont be too long now till video players and recorders will be a thing of the past.
Lcd screens and now plasma screens have meant that the once bulky box in the corner is now ultra slim..so the screen size has increased again.
Now it is possible to get video streaming on Tv and cable tv has took off all round the world.It is now possible to send tv signals down the phone lines direct to your PC.
A simple piece of software and a video card can now turn your pc into a tv with thousands of free channels from all over the world.New technology means you can now freeze live streaming and continue on when you want to watch.Some ads proclaim over 3000 channels can now be viewed on your pc monitor.Everywhere you look on the internet there are ads screaming out to convert your tv to a pc and view sports events and films and news events from all over the world.Your favourite team isnt on match of the day.No problem just log on to the chinese tv sports channel and it will be probably live on there.
So how good are these software that converts your pc? Well the point is PCs are the future.Televisions now are really nothing more than basic computers any way with their capacitors and transistors and mother boards etc So it is relatively easy to convert your PC to a TV.Costs for the software vary quite abit and the packages they offer usually include hundreds of channels.Sounds great but in fact there are usually a lot less becasue a lot of them just wont download and a lot of them are very poor quality in a foreign language.....to be continued...
Ive looked at a wide range of offers and short of buying them all to test them the next best thing i can do is tell you what i think you should know.Even if the quality of the package is good if your own pc doesnt come up to scratch then you will have probably wasted your money.
If your pc is dial up,forget it..it takes too long to load any of the channels and the picture quality will be poor.Even with high speed broadband there is no guarantee of the picture quality with any channel you link to.Anotherr thing to watch out for is the packages tend to sell on quantity rather than quality.Id rather have 20 quality channels i can watch without distortion or interference than 2000 channels 70 % of which you cant load!
The internet seems to be a minefield in terms of goods to purchase.How do you sort out the genuine thing from the duds?I think this is an unanswerable question.You need to know if the quality of picture is satisfactory.You need to know what channels are available.You need to know if they are available are they downloadable. The only REAL way to know any of this information is to KNOW somebody who already has the package.
A friend of mine recently paid for a package of over 1000 channels.Ok it only cost him $9.95 but he found that a lot of the channels in some countries were not even worth watching .Most of the mainstream channels are missing from the packages. Lots of so called FREE channels that you have purchased as part of the package you will find consist of out of date video streaming.In effect the package my friend bought was only good enough to watch about 30 channels..out of 1000..however he did say it was still good value ..so although not the package he thought he was going to have he still got something he will use regularly.
So i would say to you if you want tv on your pc do as much research as you possibly can.Post articles in public forums asking about specific packages.Ask people you know.Be prepared to be disapointed in some aspects of the package.Dont pay too much for any package.
Using other available hardware and software from proper manufacturers you can direct tv channels to your pc.Seek out specialist shops for this advice.Unfortunately you will find this option a bit dearer but it may be worth it to you.In a very short time i envisage tv and Pc being inseperable..but in the short term i would advocate "buyer beware".
Tv entertainment and the associated technolgy has moved so fast in the last 5 years or so it is hard to keep up.When i was a youngster very few people had televisions and of course those that had ,at least in the UK , were very boxy, chunky and of course black and white or monochrome to be more precise. They lasted ,it seemed, forever.Usually when a repair was needed it was just "the picture valve" or the "sound valve" becasue of course there were no transistors ,just valves .Tv repair men were all over the place and usually bit was fairly cheap to fix.Our first ever tv a 17" Ferguson lasted us over 17 years!! Of coure as time went on the cabinets became more fancy and furniture like and the screens became available in bigger sizes and of course valves gave way to transistors and finally black and white TV was seen off by the advent of the colour tv..in the early seventies late 60s.You were posh indeed if you had a colour tv.At first it was only public houses that had colour and everyone flocked to watch
"match of the day" in colour.If you wanted to watch the 66 world cup final in colour then you had to go to the game itself or watch the pathe news version on the cinemas which was in colour.
Through the seventies and 80s in general it was the size of the screen and the quality od the sound and pictures which continued to improved until finally we had the "home cinema" phenomenon. Large screen Tvs with cinema sound facilitated through a 5 speaker system and a woofer. Video recorders continued to get smaller and smaller till dvd players came out and practically destroyed the vido recorder industry. Now dvd recorders are more commonplace it wont be too long now till video players and recorders will be a thing of the past.
Lcd screens and now plasma screens have meant that the once bulky box in the corner is now ultra slim..so the screen size has increased again.
Now it is possible to get video streaming on Tv and cable tv has took off all round the world.It is now possible to send tv signals down the phone lines direct to your PC.
A simple piece of software and a video card can now turn your pc into a tv with thousands of free channels from all over the world.New technology means you can now freeze live streaming and continue on when you want to watch.Some ads proclaim over 3000 channels can now be viewed on your pc monitor.Everywhere you look on the internet there are ads screaming out to convert your tv to a pc and view sports events and films and news events from all over the world.Your favourite team isnt on match of the day.No problem just log on to the chinese tv sports channel and it will be probably live on there.
So how good are these software that converts your pc? Well the point is PCs are the future.Televisions now are really nothing more than basic computers any way with their capacitors and transistors and mother boards etc So it is relatively easy to convert your PC to a TV.Costs for the software vary quite abit and the packages they offer usually include hundreds of channels.Sounds great but in fact there are usually a lot less becasue a lot of them just wont download and a lot of them are very poor quality in a foreign language.....to be continued...
Ive looked at a wide range of offers and short of buying them all to test them the next best thing i can do is tell you what i think you should know.Even if the quality of the package is good if your own pc doesnt come up to scratch then you will have probably wasted your money.
If your pc is dial up,forget it..it takes too long to load any of the channels and the picture quality will be poor.Even with high speed broadband there is no guarantee of the picture quality with any channel you link to.Anotherr thing to watch out for is the packages tend to sell on quantity rather than quality.Id rather have 20 quality channels i can watch without distortion or interference than 2000 channels 70 % of which you cant load!
The internet seems to be a minefield in terms of goods to purchase.How do you sort out the genuine thing from the duds?I think this is an unanswerable question.You need to know if the quality of picture is satisfactory.You need to know what channels are available.You need to know if they are available are they downloadable. The only REAL way to know any of this information is to KNOW somebody who already has the package.
A friend of mine recently paid for a package of over 1000 channels.Ok it only cost him $9.95 but he found that a lot of the channels in some countries were not even worth watching .Most of the mainstream channels are missing from the packages. Lots of so called FREE channels that you have purchased as part of the package you will find consist of out of date video streaming.In effect the package my friend bought was only good enough to watch about 30 channels..out of 1000..however he did say it was still good value ..so although not the package he thought he was going to have he still got something he will use regularly.
So i would say to you if you want tv on your pc do as much research as you possibly can.Post articles in public forums asking about specific packages.Ask people you know.Be prepared to be disapointed in some aspects of the package.Dont pay too much for any package.
Using other available hardware and software from proper manufacturers you can direct tv channels to your pc.Seek out specialist shops for this advice.Unfortunately you will find this option a bit dearer but it may be worth it to you.In a very short time i envisage tv and Pc being inseperable..but in the short term i would advocate "buyer beware".
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