1300+ TV Stations

good
key review info
application features
  • TV Channels from more than 110 countries
  • (7 more, see all...)

Even though we are in the era of the Internet, television continues to have a myriad of fans. Internet is indeed indispensable. It provides quick access to hot news, interesting points of view, gazillions of programs designed for trillions of purposes, and it also keeps you connected. But a share of live TV is always a pleasure. Plus all the bloopers of the TV hosts are too damn funny to miss.

So television had to adapt itself to the new standard in order to survive the technological avalanche. And here comes the Internet again supplying a thousand programs ready to bring television on your computer monitor. It is an easy way to access your favorite applications, as you need no expensive hardware or anything else but a good computer and a hell of an Internet connection to get the video running smoothly.

Internet Satellite TV Player comes with an appealing price tag (only $14.95 on it) and set of features: 1300+ TV channels from 110+ countries, bandwidth selector, 24/7 customer support and favorites folder where to place your preferred channels.

The testing version comes as a demo and its restrictions prevent you from running the application for more than 20 minutes and the use of the favorites folder. Other then these, everything is ready for testing.

The interface is quite regular in the sense that it goes by the standard: the channel list on the left and the video window on the right. All the channels are grouped by countries and at the end of the name of the state there is displayed the number of TV stations available. The novelty in this application are the 20 adult stations (it's the first category in the list, you can't miss it, the developer made sure of this). I must confess that this is not a usual feature in such applications and, to tell you the truth, most of them work.

Video window is equipped with the basic play controls "Play" and "Stop" and with a button for switching to fullscreen, one for adding the station to the list of favorite stations, and one for checking for updates of the software. Besides these functions, the player is also equipped with a volume control slider.

In the lower part of the application window, the software displays the details corresponding to the running station. There isn't much, just some basic information like the name of the station, bandwidth and a brief description (maybe too brief as its country is not revealed).

Bandwidth selector is available in the lower right corner of the application window. There is nothing complicated in configuring it. Just drag the slider and adjust it to the right value. It runs from Lowest Bandwidth (32Kb/s) to Highest Bandwidth (8Mb/s). Hovering the mouse over the slider will give you the currently set value.

Bandwidth selector, combined with Buffering time selection, are designed to supply video running with no intermissions, leading to an enjoyable TV experience. Also, these two complete the list of settings available in the software.

Considering the impressive number of countries and TV stations hosted by Internet Satellite TV Player it is only normal to equip the program with a search tool. This is located right under the country/TV channels list and is ready to provide on-the-fly results to your query. Suffice to start typing your request and the search result list will be immediately displayed.

While testing the application, I have to say that the video quality of some TV stations was indeed remarkable and the streaming was fluent enough to avoid any gaps. However, on the downside, I also encountered quite a few stations that did not run at all; others did not have the right extension and could not be played by the application.

Evaluating the software revealed that changing channels without pressing the stop button first will cause the program to generate and error and crash. Usually, switching between stations without stopping the video stream first is possible in most of the applications I have tested, but Internet Satellite TV Player refuses to conform to the standard.

To tell you the truth, I was expecting more interesting stations to be available. I mean Animal Planet, NBC, BBC, EuroSport, ABC News and C-Span (1, 2 and 3) are good channels, but there is no Discovery, MTV (except for MTV Uber), BET, FOX News etc. Yes, there is NBA TV, but it's not working.

The Good

The application works fine and some of the stations have pretty good streaming. There is no hard time configuring it, as you only have to set the bandwidth and buffer time.

The Bad

After closing the application, the developer's web page will open in the default browser.

Many of the TV channels available either don't work or take too long to connect. Though the list of countries and channels is quite extensive, there are few of them of real interest.

When switching from one station to another without pressing the "Stop" button first, the software will display an error and crash.

The Truth

The demo is available for testing purposes. Try it and see for yourselves what it has to offer, although I would not bet that you'll be impressed.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

Review image
Review image
Review image
Review image
Review image

user interface 3
features 3
ease of use 4
pricing / value 3


final rating 3
Editor's review
good
 
NEXT REVIEW: UltraVNC