In an effort to reduce my cable tv bill to almost nothing, I decided to try out Zazeen TV’s IPTV service. They are offering their skinny basic tv package for $10/month (compared to $25/month the other cable companies are charging), and it included all of the ‘regular’ channels you’d expect to get, outside of sports and movies. The other benefit is with their basic package, you don’t have to also subscribe to their internet package, so I was able to continue using Rogers while I evaluated their service. It also meant that I could keep my free Rogers Gamecentre subscription so I wouldn’t lose out on watching hockey.
Once I subscribed, the set top box arrived in about 4 days. I plugged it in to my router and TV and powered it up. After a quick boot-up I was watching TV over my internet connection for only $10! I was pretty impressed with the technology until I started flipping between channels. Some looked and sounded great (like I was used to with Rogers) but others had visual artifacts and sounded like I was listening to a Skype call circa 2005 (like everyone was underwater).
Since most shows I’d want to watch were all streaming fine I thought I’d be able to live with it. I decided to try out the PVR functionality. It was as easy as plugging in a USB hard drive, rebooting the box and it was ready to start recording. I recorded a couple of shows, and it performed pretty much how you’d expect: recorded the show, played back normally.
In the end though, I ended up sending the box back and cancelling the service. The set top box itself was a bit flakey; it would occasionally just play static out of my speakers and would only stop if I rebooted it or it would reboot itself. This is a problem if you’re recording a show on another channel and your recording just stops because the box goes wonky. Also, the internet here can be a bit flakey as well, and while watching tv a couple of evenings it would just cut out and stop working, while my Rogers TV box kept working.
It’s those couple of things that make it seem like ZazeenTV just isn’t quite ready for heavy TV watchers. While reading through their user forums I came across a lot of posts where people referred to watching TV as something they do once in a while. So for the time being, I’m going to stick it out with over priced cable, and hope someone else starts up a reasonably priced live TV streaming service with higher quality service. Maybe something that works as an AppleTV app so I don’t need a separate box? That would be nice.
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