So, you’ve got your shiny new smartphone, and now you want to watch some shiny new TV shows. Well, strap in, because this was by far the most frustrating selection of apps, services and hardware I’ve ever had the displeasure of banging my head against a wall over. A couple actually do work—but I’ve learned that this idea is still in it’s infancy, and the baby won’t be learning to walk anytime soon.
SPB TV
Price – Free
Six or less – Lots of channels, none worth watching
This is a free Android app that claims to give users access to 150+ live, streaming TV channels from around the world. I found about half that number while testing. The app is mostly made up of news stations, such as AFP, France 24 and local Fox affiliates, but also has some public access channels, several European sports networks, and some internet-only TV (which is a complete waste of time). There are also several Russian and Asian broadcasters that I couldn’t understand because they aren’t available in English.
Video quality varies considerably from stream to stream, and was mostly watchable without too much buffering, although a few stations didn’t work at all. The app’s layout has the rare problem of being too simple—you scroll horizontally through stations and select whichever one you want to watch, that’s it. Some organization into categories would have been nice, especially since users will have no idea of what the stations are until they start watching.
It’s a good thing this app is free, because you’d be crazy to pay for it, and really, it isn’t even worth the 30 seconds it takes to download and install. There’s nothing worth watching unless you have a Rainman-like obsession with the news, are a huge fan of French professional fencing, or want to keep up with goings-on at the Dallas-Fort Worth flea market.
Vulkano Flow
Price – $99.99 On the street
Six or less – I hate this thing
The Vulkano is a great idea on paper. In practice, it sucks. It’s meant to stream cable over wifi to multiple devices in your home, and to any device (but only one at a time) anywhere in the world over the internet.
The plastic, keyboard-sized unit bridges your cable set-top box and TV. Unfortunately, I have cable, but not a set-top box, and the Vulkano doesn’t have a TV tuner. However, it does promise to stream video from any source, so I hooked it to my Playstation 3. Now, to illustrate how truly awful this thing is, I’ll give you the timeline of my attempts to set it up.
7:00pm – Unboxing. Read the instructions, plug in to TV and PS3.
7:10 – Flip through TV inputs. No picture.
7:15 – Restart everything. See PS3 on the TV. Smile.
7:16 – Wonder why I’m seeing the PS3, and not the Vulkano setup menu.
7:22 – Read instructions again, fiddle with the cables, try the remote. Nothing.
7:30 – Call customer support. I have instructions for the wrong unit. I have to hook it up to my router, then connect it with my laptop, for setup.
7:32 – Unhook everything. Schlep Vulkano, cords dangling, upstairs.
7:33 – Bend over desk to reach router and hook up Vulkano.
7:45 – Back downstairs. Find setup instructions on google. They’re also for the wrong unit.
7:49 – Find software online. Start downloading.
8:00 – Wait.
8:10 – Wait angrily.
8:12 – Sigh loudly, give up, go play squash.
After squash (I lost) it took another 20 minutes—which included a couple more reboots, trips upstairs, and the installation of some software on my computer—to get a screen displaying a feed from my PS3 on my laptop. The device, shockingly, seemed to be working. Then I hit play, and got a response 30 seconds later. The delay made navigating menus impossible, and the video was incredibly laggy. Things smoothed out when I moved to a more powerful laptop, but only got worse once I switched to a smartphone.
There were two apps, one free and one $12.99, in the Android store. The free one, of course, did nothing. Users have to shell out another $13 just to get the functionality promised on the Vulkano’s box. There’s one word for hidden fees like this—sleazy. Plus I had to cut the stream on my laptop to view the one on my phone. THe Vulkano is sold largely on its supposed ability to stream video to multiple devices on your home network, but apparently that feature doesn’t work. Now, that said, streaming to my phone was very smooth—on wifi—although the video was shrunk down to the middle of the screen (an option to view it in HD just distorted the image horizontally). Once I moved to 3G the stream became pixelated, constantly buffered and was basically unwatchable, severely limiting the service’s portability.
I can see a lot of bright-eyed dads unwrapping Vulkanos on Christmas morning, smiles drawn wide with sugarplum visions of free NFL games on their new iPhone. And I can see the rapid descent into madness they spend hours setting up the device, shell out $13, and slump into utter disappointment upon watching the final result on their mobile device. As such, I can’t recommend the Vulkano for anyone.
Slingbox PRO-HD
Price – $329.99 OTS (plus a $49.99 receiver, plus a $29.99 app)
Six or less – Wow, that is… really expensive
This basically has the same functionality as the Vulkano. It’s a bit larger, seems to be better constructed, and came with the right instruction manual. But it still had to be hooked up to a router for initialization, so back up the stairs I went.
Setup went a bit more smoothly, although I was irked to find out the unit doesn’t have built in wifi. Instead you have to shell out another $49.99 for a pair of “SlingLink Turbos.” One connects to a router and the other a Slingbox, and they both plug into a wall to somehow send an internet signal through electrical wiring. It works, but is a bizarre, pointless idea in the world of ubiquitous Wifi, and can’t get a signal if you plug it into a powerbar That’s a problem for anyone living in an old house with few outlets (like me).
Regardless, after about 90 minutes of setup, several false-starts, resets, and trips up and down stairs, CBS’s “The Talk” was streaming on my computer (my girlfriend was watching the TV last, I swear). The picture looked great, and I was able to switch channels with only a half-second delay.
Then I moved to my smartphone. Now, I thought it was crazy that Vulkano would charge for an app, but Slingbox puts their sleaze to shame, sticking it to the consumer with a $29.99 mobile player (the web interface won’t work on your phone). It’s a shady business practice, but at least the app works. After logging in with an email and passwords users will be greeted with an impressive-looking feed that’s surprisingly unhampered by buffering or lag. The quality is reduced when you aren’t on wifi, but it’s still watchable.
The Slingbox works, but the total cost to get it running on your smartphone is somewhere north of $400. I certainly wouldn’t pay that to watch Sharon Osbourne and Leah Remini gossip while I’m on the streetcar, but someone else out there might.
Rogers Live
Price – Free for subscribers (premium content available for cable subscribers)
Six or less – What a mess
Full disclosure—Rogers is my service provider, and I already have one of their smartphones (a Sony Xperia Arc), so I figured this review would be easy. I was wrong.
Rogers has a streaming app, but I was told by their PR people that it’s only for special live events like Jays games or select concerts (their website advertised a Coldplay show). Subscribing to it will add a $5 monthly premium to your bill, and from reviews I’ve read online, is only worthwhile if you’re a hardcore Blue Jays fan with no access to normal TV. However, Rogers does have an on-demand service that includes full TV episodes.
I was under the impression that there is a Rogers On Demand app for phones, but couldn’t find it on the Android Market. So I called customer service. Starting with a wireless agent, I was put on hold, then sent to cable, then back to another wireless agent, who put me on hold for 10 minutes while he spoke to his manager. Another transfer, another recounting of my problem, and the agent responded “that’s like… TV and stuff, right?”
At this point I figured I was in trouble, but was not expecting a full hour of arguing, re-explaining the problem, and begging to talk to someone else. Eighty minutes into the call I was finally transferred to a woman from tech support, who was baffled at first but quickly figured out that the Rogers Live app is actually used to access On Demand service. I also found out that, despite what I had been told, the app has a live TV streaming service with channels like NBC, CBC and CNN as well. I downloaded it but, of course, it didn’t work, even though my model of phone (a Sony Experia Arc) was officially supported. So, after an almost two-hour call, I still couldn’t watch TV on a Rogers phone (I later found out that although Rogers Live works with my model of phone, it doesn’t work with the firmware I have installed).
One more call, this time to Rogers’ PR people.
They didn’t have another phone available to test, but sent me a tablet instead. The Live app didn’t support this device, but a mobile version of the On Demand website does, and it works well, although the site is a bit slow to load at times. It had the best picture of anything I tested, even on 4G, and even though the tablet’s screen was much larger than a smartphone. And there’s a solid variety of content. You can view by network (there’s a lot, from CBC and Global to AMC, YTV and Bite) or browse TV shows by genre or alphabetical listing. The problem is that while there are hundreds of listings, you never know how many episodes of a show will be available. There were 119 shows listed in the comedy section and some (Dead Like Me, Dilbert, I Dream of Jeannie) had a couple dozen available, while others only had two or three (22 Minutes, Modern Family, American Dad). Other genres, ranging from drama to history to “leisure,” has similar listings. I also tried out the mobile website on my smartphone, and it didn’t work.
Getting Rogers On Demand working was a chore, but from what I’ve read most users will normally be able to get the Live app working without any trouble—as long as they don’t change their firmware. And while the content is a bit hit or miss, the service is well worth a download if you’re already a Rogers subscriber.
Bell Mobile TV
Price – $5 a month
Six or less – Thank God, something actually works
This was the first service I tried that was actually functional out of the box. The TV and Radio app was pre-installed on the phone’s homescreen. Clicking it opened a slick interface with a scrollable list of 24 channels, plus two scheduled NHL games. Highlights included CTV, TSN, CBC news network, the Comedy Network, YTV, NHL mobile TV and MTV—real channels with real programming that people will actually want to watch. The streaming was a bit laggy at times and the audio was fairly low quality, but it was watchable.
There is a catch. Not all the channels broadcast all the time. Seven of the 24 (including CTV and TSN) were off-air while I was testing. Turns out they only work when their most popular programs, such as the Daily Show and live sports games, are being broadcast.
The app also featured an underwhelming selection of on-demand offerings. There was a handful of random episodes from HBO series like the Sopranos and Sex and the City, as well as a fairly large choice of children’s and Comedy Network shows. But most of the channels only had a couple of videos available. There was one real standout however, a bizarre section titled “Babes and Hunks.” The titles ranged from “Hot Blonde Washes Car,” to “April is the Month of Sexy.” A lot of the videos were broken, but the only one in the “Hunks” section, titled “Chocolate Hotness,” worked great—it was a one minute clip of a muscular man in ripped jeans sitting on a couch. He gazed, unblinkingly and without breaking eye contact, into the camera while beckoning the viewer to come closer. Then he adjusted his shirt, and the video ended. Adding diverse content is admirable, but this creep-fest shows Bell is stinkingly guilty of padding its lineup.
All in all, it doesn’t work as well as the advertising would lead you to believe, but it does work. If you want to watch MTV in a waiting room, or keep kids quiet with some Treehouse TV, the $5 a month may be worth it. Just make sure children stay away from the Babes and Hunks category.
Virgin Mobile TV
Price – $5 a month
Six or less – Exactly the same as Bell’s
This uses the same service as Bell’s, so the experience is identical.
Telus Mobile TV
Price – $15 a month
Six or less – Couldn’t get it working
Telus has a mobile TV app, which from the sounds of it is similar to Bell and Virgin’s but comes at the cost-prohibitive price of $15 a month. I say “from the sounds of it,” because the app didn’t come pre-loaded on the phone I was sent to test. It also isn’t in the Android app store, so I visited Telus’ website to figure out how get it installed. The website directed me to a page for the model of phone I’d been sent (an HTC Amaze), which had no such instructions. I looked around a bit more, and on another phone’s page found out you’re supposed to download the TV app from Telus’ mobile website. I tried opening this in the phone’s browser—didn’t work. So I called customer service, was pleasantly surprised to get an agent within three minutes, and had the problem resolved in another five—turns out the service isn’t yet available on the HTC Amaze (the phone they sent me for the express purpose of testing their TV app). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to remedy this problem before publication. But the fact that Telus isn’t able to offer it’s advertised services on its phones as they’re released (and is apparently unaware of the problem) should tell users all they need to know about the service they can expect to receive.
Wind
Wind doesn’t have a dedicated service for streaming TV, but it does offer unlimited data plans. This makes it perfect for streaming with the Slingbox, but since there aren’t many viable, non carrier-specific options out there, not much else.
