Paphos People

I know that buffering is an issue because of the sheer number of people using the Internet to stream television. However, a new idea (at least new to me, so I apologise if it is "old hat") is to use P2P Streaming, which is an XBMC addon, in conjunction with an app called Acestreams. Not very complicated to set up, because I managed it, but it does enable people to watch Sky and BT Sports channels in high quality, and the more popular the match, the more people seed (downloading and uploading), and the less buffering. I was watching something last night and there was buffering because only a handful of other people were using the system and so there were insufficient people seeding. But when I switched channels, the number of seeds was in the hundreds and the channel played all evening without a pause.

I suppose it is the same as downloading a film from a torrent site. The more people seeding, and therefore uploading and downloading, the faster the download - which is to everybody's advantage. For those must-see matches, it offers a welcome relief to the irritation of buffering, which always seems to happen at a critical part of the game.

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Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim.

Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you. (Ovid)

We have used Acestreams (you can use it without XBMC if you want) it is better that most, but we've still not had the best quality when watching the 3pm (UK Time) kick offs, we assume it's because there are multiple matches playing at the same time. But single matches sometimes the quality is close to HD stuff.

We have XBMC for a other stuff as well.

Both are free to download and use. There's some helpful YouTube videos to watch to help to set up.

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Alison - Ali for short

Acestreams are definitely an option. Bloodzeed's is particularly good. The problem I had with them was that sometimes they had too much traffic and the live delay was just too great. The quality was pretty unbeatable though. In the end the stability wasn't great so I switched to paid IPTV.

Having recommended P2P Streaming, I eventually found that it was not reliable enough. Sometimes worked brilliantly, but at other times it was glitchy. Looked at all the alternatives, I first settled for getting my sports' channels via Mashup. But live sports' streams came and went, and it was frustrating. I would look forward to an international rugby match and find I spent the first half looking around for other streams of a decent quality.

In the end, and when Filmon went to pot for a considerable time, I decided to subscribe to NTV. That was that. Switch the tv on and select the channel and it works brilliantly. For €14,50 for thirty days' access it is hard to beat. Free is great but ...

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Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim.

Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you. (Ovid)

MacManiac, that is what I settled on as well. NTV is reliable and just works and for the price you don't get much better value for money that I've found anywhere else for IPTV services.

Are you using it here in Cyprus blindpet?

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Dave
Moira And Dave

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Yes, over the summer and during Christmas and New Years when I visit my family there. The connection I use it on is Cyta, the 8 or 12 megabit connection and it just works with the laptop I bring or emulate the set top box using Android. There is a review with more detail of NTV here.

im using a 6mbps service from cyta and its fine for both mag250 ntv and the android ntv... plus for every premiership game a UK service via facebook and the smoothstreams addon on xbmc (only £50 per yr) easy to setup and use the quality is HD and absolutely top notch no buffering... and every prem game plus all boxing cricket tennis - all sorts of stuff

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2684291 ... 0/?fref=ts