Friday, January 2, 2009

Foreign language IPTV

KylinTV Chinese

The premium package incudes dozens of TV channels and access to hundreds of on-demand moves, dramas, children's programming etc. The on-demand offering is excellent and included in the "premium" package. Dramas are indexed and the player can pause and rewind. It will also remember where you left off.

Outside of the US it is available in Paris, Tokyo and Taiwan.

Zattoo offers access to dozens of European channels. The service will become available in the US in 2009. This is sort of lame - the company was founded in the US in 2005. I hope they won't do something as silly as only offer US channels. Unfortunately this is a very strong possibility because of copyright issues etc.

Shift TV - German

I will update this post with all IPTV oferings I am able to find. I would welcome any contributions.

4 comments:

Keith said...

I heard about Kylin TV earlier. Then I found some bad reports about their service. http://kylintv.blogspot.com/

Where do you find the service available outside of North America? I cannot find that information.

Reineke said...

Hey Keith

I can only say good things about them. The first box had wireless that didn't work. They promptly replaced it. The new box works great both wirelessly and when attached through a cable. I have seen the kylin blog before but decided to check it out. I am glad I did.

You will have buffering if you have a lousy connection and someone's downloading stuff etc.

They're pumping souped up h.264 - video on demand looks great on a 40" TV. My guess is that the problems lie with the TV channels. Some of them have a pretty weak picture and sound. We never watch them - VOD is loaded with stuff. A Chinese drama managed to engross my mom and she watched through some 17 episodes. She's as likely to watch a Chinese drama as a Croatian woman in her seventies.

I have read in a couple of press releases that the service is also available in other countries. It's possible that it's marketed under a different name. I'd simply send them an email. If you can get it, go for it.

Keith said...

I don't understand why you have KylinTV. And now we all want to know how much Chinese your mom acquired!

The thing that worries me about the KylinTV service providers in the US is that it seems difficult to cancel the service. If it is offered in Japan, the story may be different.

Reineke said...

Mom now knows what Chinese sounds like. The TV approach as far as learning Chinese is concerned will likely prove the 10,000 hour rule. The FSI students require about 4,000 hours (self-study hours included) to reach level 3. It looks like level 4 would require another 4,000 hours. There is no course that will take a student that far. Level 4+ is close enough to a native speaker. In order to reach or just get close to level 5 I believe 10,000 hours will indeed be necessary even if one is following a "fast" approach. That's beyond what any reasonably large DVD collection can provide.