Monday 22 February 2016

IPTV providers

Here is a list of IPTV providers, I am mainly focusing on providers who provide Kodi integration.  You will find links to them and some headline facts which you may find useful when trying to integrate IPTV with PVR functionality in Kodi for example:



Provider Name
1 Month Cost
1 Year Cost
Number of Channels
Kodi app
Free trial available?
Trial limitations
Notes
$13
$132
500+
Iptvsubs own
1 day

$12
$105
833
N/A

€15
€100
1200
PVR IPTV Simple
3 hours


€90
2000+
PVR IPTV Simple
VLC only, 24 hours

€24.95


NTV plugin
N/A
Not available in UK
£10.99
£84
266
StreamTVBox from Xunity
N/A
£4 for 2 days

$299
230+
N/A
Needs MAG box
£17
£160
1200+
MBOX HDTV plugin
N/A

$20CAD
$204CAD
458+
N/A
Canadian provider
€15
€120
240+
PVR IPTV Simple
36 hours

€1
9
€95
600+

N/A
Offer of lifetime access €99
£20
£50
175+
Sports Donkey own
N/A
1 day pass £5, 1 week £10
£17
£175 (13m)
780
Ruya own
N/A
1 day pass £2 (Mon-Thu)
£9
£104
~400
Dexter own
N/A

£10
120
228
Stealth
 Streams own

24 hours
Sports only £7/month   



Feel free to share your experiences of any of the providers and their services on this blog!

Welcome!

Welcome to my Technology tips and news blog!




I'm going to be posting about technology trends e.g. Kodi, Computers, Media Centres, IPTV, Nintendo, Xbox, CCTV, Security software, Raspberry Pi developments, gadgets and anything that interests me, in the hope that it interests someone else too!


I am based in the UK so please bear that in mind when reading the blog posts.  Some of the items will be tailored, for example if certain services are region blocked against the UK I may not even mention them.  All views are my own

Sunday 21 February 2016

Advantages of IPTV over traditional TV

I wanted to list some benefits of streaming IPTV as opposed to using traditional methods such as satellite (DVB-S and DVB-S2) and terrestrial Freeview aerial (DVB-T and DVB-T2).


  • No satellite dish
    • Saves installation cost
    • Often against mortgage rules and covenants, especially on new estates
    • No unnecessary holes drilled in your house
    • Gets around the fact that some areas are not covered by Satellite reception, e.g. cannot see the satellite due to trees and the location of your property
    • Cleaner having no wires visible on the outside of your house
  • Portable technology, meaning you can view the channels anywhere you have an internet connection
  • More options for devices
    • Not stuck to a proprietary set top box
    • Many media centre / hardware possibilities for viewing.  
    • Android, Amazon Fire TV boxes and sticks etc
    • Can put the STB (Set top box) device anywhere in your house through wireless (of course ethernet cabling is best if you have it)
    • Variable prices for different viewing devices, i.e. you could buy an expensive, fully featured box to use on your main TV, and a cheap viewer in a room you only watch TV in occasionally.

Saturday 20 February 2016

Review of AlphaCS IPTV service

The full IPTV service from AlphaCS was tested using the trial subscription using Kodi.  The hardware used to test was the Amazon Fire TV box (not the Fire stick)

AlphaCS uses the Kodi inbuilt PVR IPTV Simple Client, which is available by choosing System -> Settings -> Addons -> My Addons -> PVR IPTV Simple Client and then entering the URL which AlphaCS provide you from their website.

There is no EPG data out of the box, and this wasn't attempted to be fixed.

The quality of most of the channels was good, at least SD, and some were in HD, however some which are labelled HD didn't seem to actually be in High Definition 1080p.

There is an enormous amount of channels and VOD (Video on Demand) links available from the Kodi IPTV client using Alpha and it represents a good value way of subscribing to IPTV services, however it would benefit from a full EPG and a more obvious labelling of true HD channels

Wednesday 10 February 2016

How to fix "Daily Limit Exceeded" error on Youtube Kodi plugin

This is taken from the Kodi forums:

Go to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/

Click on Credentials, then New Credentials, then API key, and select Browser Key, give it a name and click Create (this creates the KEY)

Then back to Credentials
Click on Credentials, then New Credentials, then OAuth Client ID, select Other, give it a name and click Create (this creates the ID and SECRET)

At this point you've got 2 sets of credentials

Verify that the Youtube API is enabled

Go to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/enabled
Verify that you see YouTube Data API v3 in the list

If it is NOT in the list go to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/library

Click on the link for YouTube Data Api
Click on Enable API at the top

Go back to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/enabled

Verify that YouTube Data API v3 is now in the list

Locate the file - login_client.py
(On Windows it's located here - C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\plugin.video.youtube\resources\lib​​\youtube\client

Within the file login_client.py find the section that corresponds to the version of KODI that you're using in my case I'm running version 15.2

youtube-for-kodi-15': {
'system': 'Isengard',
'key': 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa',
'id': 'bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb.apps.googleusercontent.com',
'secret': 'ccccccccccccccccccccccccccc'

Set the Key to the Browser API key you created first
Set the ID to the OAuth Client ID you created second
Set the Secret to the Client Secret shown in OAuth Client ID

(Make sure that you're copying and pasting these between the quote marks)

Save the updated login_client.py file

Then launch KODI
Select the YOUTUBE Addon
Select SIGN IN

Then do the 2 x activation thing where you go to
youtube.com/activate

Enter the code from KODI, click NEXT then click ALLOW
Then enter the second code from KODI, click NEXT, then ALLOW

And that should be it