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Ask Slashdot: IPTV Service In the UK?
New submitter OlivierB writes "I am moving to a new house in the UK. The house will have very fast broadband but there is only one TV/cable aerial to plug into which is also very inconveniently located in the property. The cable TV provider can move it (for a high fee), but the biggest issue is that their channel packages are just too expensive and not appealing to me. Ideally, I would like access to the UK Freeview channels, and maybe a few extras such as Discovery Channel, Eurosport etc. All of this content would be available via IPTV, which I could watch from an HTPC or simple set-top boxes. Do you have any ideas to share with me?"
www.tvcatchup.com streams, I think, all Freeview channels as long as you access it from the UK with a UK ISP. HD for HD channels.
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Its legality is being challenged, unsuccessfully so far, according to wikipedia. As a side note, you're still supposed to pay for TV licence.
Get a FreeSat package, put up the dish and cabling, and ditch the receiver, and get an Elgato Netstream Sat from http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainmenu/products/tuner/netstreamsat/product1.en.html
It'll do all the tuning, and basically takes a LNB on the input, and a network switch as the output. You pick your channels from the M3U playlist, and it does the rest - like magic. Works with MythTV, XBMC, VLC, etc. Fabulous kit
I don't really care about TV (I don't have one), so I'm not up-to-date, but I did work on a DVB/IPTV project for a major electronics company a few years ago.
I had a Linux PC with a DVB-T card, which rebroadcast the DVB stream over IP multicast. This is very simple, since the DVB stream is just an MPEG transport stream (including the video, audio, subtitles, text pages, EPG etc). An embedded Linux system (a development set-top box) took what it needed and sent it to the TV.
I'd be surprised if there isn't a small open-source project that does the same thing. A little embedded computer could sit near the aerial and broadcast the stream over your LAN. Ah, I see someone has mentioned something commercially available.
DVB-T, DVB-S and DVB-C are all essentially the same from the point of view of the computer, which just receives the MPEG transport stream. Get whichever is more convenient. IIRC the "Freesat" (Freeview) satellite broadcasts in the UK have more channels. (I had a boring afternoon in a house owned by an Iranian, who had an analogue satellite decoder. There were about 2000 channels available between Hotbird and Astra satellites. About 5 were in English, I never found the Freeview channels.)
If he has cable (Virgin Media) or one of the newer FTT(H/C?) services the speed should be pretty much as advertised.
Yeah, that's doable. The extra Myth layer will handle the tuning selction of input card and will function as a network based PVr to boot. It will support DVB-S and C too (though you'd be pretty much on your own in getting DVB-C to work in the UK as Virgin Media are basically the only provider here and they keep things locked up).
Freesat is a good choice, but doesn't have channel 'Dave' which is on Freeview.
I mean, how hard is it to tap into where the cable comes into the house and re-route it as necessary? Can he not simply run cable through the house attic, and drop down into the wall where he wants it without cable company interference?
Can he not put up his own external antenna in addition to cable wherever he wants it?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I don't think there's any parcticular need for a special package if you already have fast broadband. Most of the decent free TV is on iPlayer, which covers all the BBC channels and now has content from the major free to view commercial rivals:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/
You might also want to check out the ITV Player, 4od and Demand 5 sites (I rarely bother).
You can grab BBC (only) programmes from iPlayer with get_iplayer, which generates standard mp4 files you can play anywhere (finally a use for that Apple TV!):
http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html
Some US TV sites can be accessed by methods like this (or get a VPN):
http://xtremisreaction.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/how-to-watch-the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-in-the-uk/
http://xtremisreaction.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/how-to-watch-hulu-and-us-television-in-the-uk/
You can still go Satellite without paying the Murdoch tax.
Install a motorised dish at £300 buy a DVB-S STB at anything from the Eagle-HD at £60 to the Dreambox DM800 £400 depending on features required.
You will get all FreeSat channels plus literally thousands of overseas channels and more with software cams.
These are both Internet enabled and can view BBC iPlayer, YouTube, etc and support CAS emulation.
All cable services in the UK are supplied underground and tend to be terminated at the closest point in the property to the road / path outside. Unless you pay more / chat up the installation engineer that's going to be a ground floor front room.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"