AFANA would very much like to hear from fans who have subscribed to ITVN. Please post your experiences in using the service. What about the picture quality? Easy of use? Ease of installation? Tech support? etc. Thanks. Just reply with a comment to this post.
-Rob
RE: My ITVN experience
I'm personally satisfied with the quality but I have used an S-video hookup to a fairly modern widescreen TV. I have noted that quality suffers if the bitrate isn't high enough. The other thing I would add is that they have added a second server to the Setanta service (based on the east coast of Canada) and that has made a world of difference in the reliability of the connection and the quality (due to the higher bitrate).
Had a small problem that the first box they sent was DOA and then the replacement wouldn't auto-configure thru the router here. However, the router is an older model and owned by a housemate so I am stuck with the router. Once the right port was opened on the router and it was manually configured, the service works great. It is pretty easy to use. I have it set to one of the alternate inputs on the TV and just switch to that if I want to watch it. At the high bit rate setting it does s**k bandwidth which can be a problem on a multi user house or with some ISPs however no problems here and there are 3 PCs connected to it. Tech support is US based and was good in my opinion. Worth the money personally.
ITVN
Travis Tarrant
I have just ordered the service and I am waiting for it to arrive. I hope it will be worth it for it is the only way I will be able to watch footy or rugby, for that matter ,as our apartment community will no longer allow satelite dishes to be installed. It would be nice if the service was HDTV compatible.
ITVN, Satellite dishes, etc.
Welcome to afana.com . I am constantly amazed at the number of apartment owners and housing developments, etc. which ban satellite dishes. Particularly given that is generally against federal law. The rule is called "OTARD" -- an acronym from the letters in the regulation. For more info see:
http://www.sbca.com/otard/
As for ITVN, I think you will be pleased. The service isn't perfect, but it works and is vastly better than the AFL online service with a 12 hr delay (this season). We are also expecting Setanta to offer improved coverage this year, or at least, based on what we know, they will. Do stop back later and share your experiences with the fans here.
Cheers,
-Rob
ITVN questions
Perhaps, I should have asked this earlier before ordering the service. My ITVN converter is due to arrive on the 23rd and I was wondering if those who use the service could answer these questions for me.
1.) Does your computer have to be running the entire time you use the service to watch any programming?
2.) Does it come with cables and wires long enough to reach from your modem to your television set? In other words, will I have to move my computer close enough to my television to be able to connect and operate the service?
Thanks,
Travis Tarrant
ITVN Q & A
Here are some answers:
1. No it does not. ITVN does not connect to your computer, it connects to your router and your TV.
2. The cables provided are short however if you put the box on your TV the cables may be adequate to connect it to the TV. You will likely need a longer cable depending on where your router or the nearest connection to the internet for your house or apartment is. You should have no reason to move your computer or even touch it unless you need to configure the router in any way.
-Rob
ITVN
I use a wireless broadband service called Clearwire. Their modem connects to the back of my computer and their is no other outlet on the modem to connect the ITVN box if this is the case. Now, I do use Time Warner Cable Digital phone service with a broadband router, could the ITVN box be compatible with that?
Is there anyone on here who subscribes to the Setanta broadband service? Maybe that is what I will have to do.
Travis Tarrant
ITVN: use the broadband
Use the broadband router. That is exactly the right choice. More than likely, unless you have a "g" or "n" wireless connection, you would be taxing the wireless connection by using ITVN with it anyway. You probably wouldn't want to connect ITVN to a modem even if it were possible, for technical and security reasons. The ITVN box comes with a decent manual with installation instructions. Their tech support is good based on my personal experience.
Setanta Broadband is NOT a choice. They will not have footy since the Internet rights are controlled by the AFL and Telstra.
-Rob
So far, it has been a complete horror
I finally got the ITVN box today and found that I had to go buy a broadband router just to be able to get a connection. So, after paying big bucks for the router, I come back to hook everything up and I can't even get power to the ITVN box. So, now, I have to send everything back and wait for a new one.
Travis Tarrant
In fairness...
Sorry to hear you have had problems. You'll note that I wrote on this site in several places that my box was DOA (though I am the only person to report that problem prior to yourself) but they replaced it and even shipped the new one in 3 days. That happens.
As for the router issue, I am not sure how you could not have known that. I think that I mentioned that in this thread several times. A router was needed and it is a broadband service... so broadband router. So, if that wasn't clear where did the confusion occur? It concerns me that it wasn't clear from this site or ITVN's site and if so, we want to fix that.
-Rob
the router
My broadband phone service router has two connections for ethernet cables in the back, so I assumed that I could use that to connect the ITVN box for service, but that didn't work. So, that was why I had to go out and buy a new router. I fI have problems with the next box, I am just going to subscribe to the AFL replays on the internet.
Travis Tarrant
The reason that you needed
So Far, Not Bad...
Setup is advertised as being very easy. Well...not so much. I've got the router already, so I plugged the ITVN receiver in to an open port on the router. (BTW, a word of advice: the box comes with a 6 foot ethernet cable, so if your TV is more than a little way away from the modem, plan on visiting your local Try 'n' Save to get a longer cable...) First plug-in to the router was at about 1:00pm on Wednesday. The ITVN box could see the cable with no problems, but it was never able to find the Internets. After a half-hour, I had to leave for work, so I left it until I got home at 1:00am.
At that point, I started messing with settings in the router; turning the firewall off, turning off security settings, allowing the box's MAC address to come through unfiltered. Everything I could think of. I even tried changing the router's IP address to be identical to the image on ITVN's support page. Nothing worked. At that point, I was starting to suspect it might be a bad box, so I unplugged from the router and plugged the ITVN box directly into my DSL modem. And that did the trick--when I allowed the ITVN box to obtain all of its settings automatically, it was able to get online and download updated software. (And when I unhooked it and plugged it back into the router, it continued to work without a hiccup. So, perhaps a hint to anyone reading this who has trouble getting the box to get online--try plugging directly into your modem to get online once, to let it build settings on its own, then go back to the router and see if that will help...) All in all, about 3-1/2 hours of setup time. (I probably could have gotten it done sooner by calling ITVN, but I'm too proud to call for help...:-) )
So...impressions on picture quality. When I first started it up, I wasn't very impressed. Pretty ugly, lots of artifacting, lots of low quality stuff. Then I realized I was on the low-bandwidth setting. I pressed up a couple of times on the remote to bring it up to highest quaity. At highest quality, it's really not bad. I think I'm willing to be more forgiving because it's the only way I'll be able to watch footy (thanks, Dish Network!). It's certainly not "DVD quality", it's not even "compressed to hell" DSS quality. But it's certainly watchable at the highest bandwidth, and assuming Setanta can get a deal struck with the AFL, I'll keep it for the year I signed on for. (And it might get better--I'm watching on a 30" Philips HDTV (CRT), and for the moment, the box is plugged into the front panel input with the low quality video cable; eventually I'll hook up an S-video cable so I can run it into my DVR and record games, so the quality will go up slightly once I do that.)
But here's hoping to Setanta making an announcement before my month-long free trial expires...:-)
Other thoughts:
-The remote really, really s**ks. No other way to say it. I've lost track of the number of times I've pressed the power button, and when nothing happened, pressed the power button again, only to have the box still be processing the first command. And as a result, I'm not trained to be shy on pressing buttons; when I turn on the box with the remote's power button, I usually wait 5 seconds before pressing it again. An LED or two on the front of the box would have been of immense help.
-The bandwidth usage isn't terrible--I've got 3 meg DSL, and I've had mixed results when trying to watch ITVN *and* surf the 'net at the same time. One time I started getting buffering on the ITVN box, but this afternoon I was able to surf to some high-bandwidth sites (break.com, ebaumsworld.com) and had no issues with the ITVN feed. (It helps that I'm not very far from the phone company's switching office, so YMMV.)
-I turned on Setanta early this morning (Saturday the 24th, about 3am), just to see what was on, and there was a graphic saying "Coverage of Rugby suspended per Setanta Sports' request.", along with Setanta's e-mail address and phone number. Is this something new? If not, is it frequent? I'm assuming it's some sort of blackout from Setanta; for what reason, I don't know (the Setanta Premium schedule didn't list any PPV events), but did this sort of thing happen during last year's AFL season?
Thanks for the thoughtful review
You would have saved much time by calling their tech support. More than likely it is that either the router needed a port opened or for the box to be manually configured and they will walk you thru that. But good going on finding a work around!
I've found that the quality does need to be on at least some intermediate bandwidth level to be decent. S-video will help, too, from my experience. There is also likely going to be some variation according to the load on the ITVN servers.
I agree the remote could be better but the real problem isn't the remote -- it is, as you noted, that the box takes a while to process commands. I am guessing that this is a firmware or processor issue. An LED would help. This "IP TV" thing is still new and I imagine their will be changes as things go along.
As for the question of the blacked out rugby matches, that is a recent contractual issue unrelated to Aussie rules. It won't have any impact on AFL coverage. Blackouts have been rare and to my knowledge have occurred only with this current series of rugby matches. The only schedule that matters is that on Setanta Sports (not the broadband or premium schedules). IF there would ever be any difference, AFANA will let you know well ahead, but we do not expect any. Keep in mind that the internet rights to the AFL are held by Telstra however since this is a subscription service not a general internet service and a relay of a satellite channel, no blackouts should ever occur.
AFANA expects the contract announcement very soon.
-Rob
ITVN
After all that I had posted on Friday, I thought I would give the box another try by moving my computer and my router and modem downstairs and plugging the converter to my tv ste in the living room. Instantly, everything seemed to be going along just fine. It loaded, it updated, but it would deny me access because it said on the tv that it wasn't updated. So, I would hit the update button and would get a message saying it was allready updated. I called tech support and got a message saying that they were open on Saturdays from 9 to 8 Pacific Standard time. Well, that must not be true, because no one would answer the phone when I was calling at 3:00 PM our local time which would have been 12:00 PM there. So, I turned off the ITVN box and went out for awhile and came back to try again. I turned on the ITVN box and it wouldn't even power back on. I am just going to send it back and get another box and if that doesn't work, then I will just ask for a refund.
Travis Tarrant
Sorry you haven't had a good experience
As for the hours of the support. I've often found the opposite. They answer even in off hours if someone is there. However, being a small company they might well have not had someone there at the time you called. I have noted your report and may try myself to call next Saturday just to see what happens. Sometimes I can't answer the phone even during business hours. AFANA is even smaller, relatively speaking.
I think you should try again to reach them on Monday and see if they can help you out. If not, by all means, return the box. Not every solution is right for every person and from your posts here, it seems that much about this wasn't clear to you at the outset and you have had a bit of bad luck. New technologies are like that sometimes.
-Rob
Weird! Very weird!
On Monday, I had packed up the converter and drove to the nearest FedEx Kinkos to ship the box back to the company. The very next day, FedEx showed up at my door with another box. I had thought that maybe tech support had went ahead and shipped me a new box when I had called them on Friday evening before they had even received the original box. But, when I opened the package, I had realised that this was the same box that I had shipped out. FedEx sent me back my package. So, out of curiosity, I hooked everything back up to see if it would work and I was watching Setanta within minutes with no problems (knock wood). So, hopefully, footy will be on next month and I can enjoy
Travis Tarrant
So far,it's not too bad.
Well, to date, I have been pleased with the Setanta channel and my ITVN box. At times, the picture quality is nothing special but the rest of the time, it's pretty good. My broadband provider gets its signal via satelite and radio towers, so when the weather is bad, the reception can effect the quality of the ITVN reception.
The only complaint I have against Setanta is that they have black out every Super 14 Rubgy match so far this week, and that is my favorite rugby to watch:-(
Travis Tarrant
ITVN
We're running cable modem from Comcast into the house, into a Linksys 802.11g wireless+4 router. The new equipment I needed to pick up was a 802.11g gaming adapater (which has an ethernet output on it), as recommended in the booklet that came with the box (but which wasn't mentioned on the website that I could find....)(oh well).
Connection and configuration with our wireless network (and it's security settings) took about 45 minutes, mostly due to futzing with our security settings. Once it was up and running, it was very smooth. Just follow the instructions in the booklet. (of course, your milage may vary).
While at BestBuy I picked up a set of component cables to maximize picture quality (composite is lowest, S-video above that, and component above that) from the box to the TV. Running at the highest bandwidth settings, and hitting the 'display' key on the remote to show me the bitrates, we're consistently running a little above 1100k, so the picture is certainly acceptable. It would be nice if in the future ITVN is able to increase their bandwidth, but that's probably a ways down the road.
We watched some Rugby last night, and Gaelic Football this morning. No complaints. Just waiting for our Footy to start in three weeks.
Scott
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I received the ITVN kit a few days before the AFL G.F., and had no problem setting it up behind my Netgear router and connecting to my TV. I had visitors arrive from Adelaide on September 28, and another Aussie arrived from Sacramento on September 29 - so 5 of us got to watch the G.F. live.
While the picture was certainly watchable for the G.F., I didn't think it good enough to watch on an on-going basis. It just wasn't near regular TV (non-HD) quality. I have a good broadband connection, and no other activity was taking place on my network during the G.F. I should mention that my TV is quite old, and has only composite video input - no S-video or compnent video - so that could well have been a factor.
Any way, I decided to return to kit under the 30-day money-back guarantee. This was accomplished without hassle.