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Is IPTV worth it?

J

Jaffa

Newbie
Hi,
I've been thinking about IPTV for a while. I know all the usual pro/con arguments, reliability, costs etc, but I was wondering about the provision of sources. We have seen Sly channels being locked down, and with VM channels also being locked down, is there a risk that the IPTV providers will run out of sources for the channels they provide. I know VM has been a big source of IPTV for channel providers, where will they turn next?
 
With sky going down the IPTV route and not using dishes in the future,there are some very clever people about,surely it's only a matter
of time before someone finds a way round it.Lets face it they have been trying to stop file sharing for years but it will never happen.Also
Kodi,they have made it harder but it is still as good as it ever was.They blocked uk sat,then we had IPTV and the story continues.
 
iptv, like most tech, has come on leaps and bounds over the last few years.

a lot of streams are barely indistinguishable from regular sat and cable now, in some cases better.

there are some great usa channels in 1080p available with a high framerate and as mentioned a couple of posts above many people are capable of capturing direct streams from legitimate boxes :)
 
Compared to paying sky or virgin obviously it’s worth it, The is not and never will be better than having a cable or satellite hd box and just because a stream says it 1080p doesn’t make it so. The image is compressed and encoded on the fly so it’s just not feasible given the bandwidth available but it’s ok and definitely preferable to sd. If virgin get to the point where all hd channels are gone then there will be a problem, using official boxes to cover the sports channels is a hell of a lot different to covering every hd channel but that’s a while off.
 
a lot of the usa streams are 1920 x 1280 50fps and look immaculate.

most hd uk sports streams are 25fps.

makes a lot of difference.

one point to note when people point to iptv not being live, nothing is live, not sky, not cable, its physically impossible.

one thing i notice when watching "live" games is that a lot of the time sky have not reported a goal in a match that im watching before it goes in on the stream.
 
If you're a football fan, you should also consider that Sly and Beetee are not the be all and end all of PL games. You can get all the same and more games on foreign channels, like Bein and TSN, which a decent eyepeeteevee provider will include in their package. ;)
 
JustDanYK said:
We no longer use VM but use original VM boxes. Well my supplier does. He uses original VM boxes to supply channels
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lamblamb said:
iptv, like most tech, has come on leaps and bounds over the last few years.

a lot of streams are barely indistinguishable from regular sat and cable now, in some cases better.

there are some great usa channels in 1080p available with a high framerate and as mentioned a couple of posts above many people are capable of capturing direct streams from legitimate boxes :)
Click to expand...

Sorry to have to disagree with you guys - evidence shows that is not a viable medium term solution, let alone a long term one, imho.

The media providers are starting to use watermark technology - it allows them to find out exactly which "legitimate box" is being shared in real time, so as far as the sharer is concerned at best the box/card gets disabled/cancelled, and at worst gets prosecuted (with literally no viable defence), as seen in a recent court case: https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/joshua-boxing-facebook-sky-klitschko-14127413

Some watermarks are visible, but some are not, as in:
https://www.kudelskisecurity.com/sites/default/files/files/Kudelski Security_The New Face of Pay-TV Piracy and How to Fight it_White Paper.pdf

Of course technically speaking with enough trial and error, despite prosecutions, even sophisticated watermarks can be defeated, but any such strategy can also be identified by analysis of offending streams, and potentially nullified.

Because of the above, I suspect uk iptv programmes will end up only being able to offer what is available on what is remaining of uk sly cs, and whatever else that is available from international sat cs or streams which are poorly protected.
 
lamblamb said:
watermark removal is easy, if expensive.

make of it what you will.

:D
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Typically what is easy is not expensive, and what is expensive is not easy.

I am no expert, but the subscriber id can be encrypted, and the watermark can easily be coded with e.g. time, which changes, and numerous other potential changing parameters known only to the media provider. The watermark can be hidden within a pixel, or as a wave form within the signal which will not be removed by video conversion, etc. Easy to remove? I doubt it.

Expensive to remove? Sure.
 
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