Streaming Satellite TV Service to Another Country?

streamViewer asks: "I'm planning to move in the near future from the US to Singapore where private satellite dish ownership is against forbidden and all television service is delivered by a state-owned monopoly. However, in this particular country, while English language television programming is limited and highly censored, Internet service is plentiful and for the most part unregulated To get around this problem, I'm considering installing a dish on a friend's house, paying for DSL service there and setting up a computer to allow me to both control the dish/receiver and to stream video to me in Asia. Video could either be real-time, or probably more realistic given the nature of overseas Net traffic, stored using a software-based DVR. What hardware/software solution would you envision for this task? Are you aware of anyone else doing this? Do you have any thoughts on which satellite services would have the most permissible licensing restrictions to allow me to do this? And finally, am I a fool to think this is really a loophole in their regulatory policy? Are there any other reasons why I shouldn't do this? Thanks in advance."

Comments

Legally bypassing Singapore and US copyright law?

[Chris Canfield]

I hate to troll, but...

You're asking us how to send over wire something that is illegal over the air from one of the world's most copyright-oppressive regimes to one of the world's most controlling ones? And you want to do this legally?

Not only that, you want to do this over an Asymetrical DSL line with at most 300k upstream? And you want to do this all for the sake of entertainment? (Obviously not news, or else you would be streaming from Europe)

Go to any "broadband enabled" website, watch a video. It looks like crap, doesn't it? Now remember that they are maximizing their upstream speed for sake of your connection. Cut that video screen down to 25% of its size, and that little postage stamp is what you can expect to be entertained by on your nights in a foreign country where you could be soaking up the culture and learning something, instead of just watching the television like an american.

Without going to a $300 symetrical DSL line, or a $600 T-1 line, The best you could hope for is to cut a divx file on their HD at a reasonable size, and have it saved to an FTP directory on their machine. Then you have to plan your viewing far in advance, and are therefore paying upwards of 100 dollars per month (plus the hardware costs divided by the time you will be in singapore) in order to watch maybe that one or two shows a week that you remember to pre-program. That's about 10 dollars per show. I hope its a really good show, because it will have to be to compare with the culturally beautiful landscape of singapore, and the rest of southern Asia, for that matter.

If it is sports you are after, I'm sure you can get them in bars. That at least would be a social atmosphere, where you would be soaking up something about the people. I'm not sure if Singapore has alcohol (I don't drink myself), but sporting simulcasts must exist.

For that matter, just have the PVR burn to a DVD, and send DVD's over. That would be much cheaper, and maybe you would get outside to pick up the mail.

Sorry, you had asked if this was a bad idea, and it is. Just not for the reasons you were looking for. And it's difficult to not come down on an American for being... one of us, but we keep giving ourselves a bad name for reasons like this.

My god man do you have any idea how interseting a trip to Singapore actually could be? How many people would gladly trade places with you? The people you could meet, the culture you could investigate? The high-schoolers you could interview, the newspaper articles you could write? For that matter, the photographs and other cultural artifacts you could send back home?

Now, if you were talking about streaming TV from Singapore back to the US, that might be something. But, (now that I've officially lost 3 Karma), do you see just how empty and hollow a goal bringing US TV with you to a foreign country is?