Pros: Channel list update helps find more content without doing google.
Cons: Few attractive channels. Terrible user experience in on-demand "channels."
The Bottom Line: Not worth the money. If you are Internet savvy, it's probably not worth the time to try it even for free. Try a free program such as Miro instead.
valleyman's Full Review: Smith Micro DTV4PCBX2 for PC (717103140648)
The promise is big: View what you want, when you want, where you want - sounds familiar from our Slingbox friends? Then DTV4PC folks up it a notch: Without paying a monthly subscription or per view fee.
Enticed? Make sure you try it (for free) before you buy. It could be the product for you. But it may not.
. How it works
You install the software on your MS Windows based PC. (I'll not burden you with requirements and other boring stuff.) Installation is as smooth as you would generally expect from a shrink wrapped software. The first time you use it, it will ask you for the license number printed on the CD sleeve. (They don't seem to be able to decide what to call it. So don't be surprised if you can't find what the program asks for. Just type in the whole string, printed in two lines - even longer than MS Windows activation code.)
Then you can watch "over 1,000 live television channels" from all over the world on the computer. Or can you? Good luck with that. (Of course, you'll need high speed Internet.)
The program window has two components: a channel guide panel on the left hand side, and the main panel to the right. You can view video either from inside the main panel (which also contains navigation menus) or in full-screen mode.
For whatever is provided in the channel guide, DTV4PC works just fine. After all, the program is but a wrapper for Flash. More precisely, the main panel embeds an MS Internet Explorer window to display the video.
Because I almost never read manuals, I had a few initial bumps in navigation. But the user interface isn't terribly complicated so you can still figure it out. (And unless you haven't used many consumer software, I can guarantee you that reading the manual wouldn't help smoothen the initial bumps.)
. How it doesn't work
The problem is in what are provided in the channel guide. Certainly not over 1,000 channels unless Smithmicro's marketing department has some creative math that schools around the world forget to teach me. By my count, the guide hardly provides 100 channels in total. For U.S. and Canadian users, no major network channel is included. There are a handful of cable channels you can count as "major": CNN, C-Span, etc.
If your main purpose of purchasing the program is entertainment, here is the entertaining part: C-SPAN2 is the "most popular" channel as of today.
. On-demand mess
In the main panel, there is a tab titled "On-demand". Essentially this provides plain hyper links to on-line video program providers such as Hulu, ABC, NBC, and CBS. The reason I use the qualifier "essentially" is because contents of linked pages are displayed from inside the embedded IE browser window.
I can clearly see the concept behind this design: this way, tech unsavvy users will not realize that they can go to those providers' Web site directly, without having to pay the $25 or whatever the vendor charges.
Brilliant plan. Except the execution comes short. When you display another on-line provider's Web pages, the embedded IE window is most often too small. The user would have to use scroll bars from inside the main panel to view the content. In most cases, you'll need both vertical and horizontal scroll bars. You can see how much pleasure you can get from this. The fixed size of the main panel makes it nearly impossible to enjoy whatever you can find under the "on-demand" tab.
To be fair, generally you can still switch to full-screen mode after you launch the video (if supported by the content provider). But even getting to the switch button is no small hyke even for me, with all those scroll actions, not to say the tech unsavvy users this product tries to target.
. Illegally uncoordinated
To make things worse, they sometimes even place content provider's Web page in a frame inside the embedded browser, then displays advertisement in a parallel frame.
First of all, the embedded browser window is already too tiny for the provider's content alone, placing two frames in the window simply worsens the experience.
Secondly, framing another content provider's content for the purpose of displaying advertisement is illegal, at least in the U.S. as several precedences in the late 90's have shown.
This is about the dumbest business idea you can find today.
. What is DTV4PC?
Technically, the product is a graphical user interface with an embedded IE browser to aggregate freely available content from the Internet. The vendor has agreements with some content providers to embed pure video content in the embedded browser. These contents make into the product's channel guide. (To the vendor's credit, channel guide is updated online, and new channels are being added.) For those content providers who do not have an agreement with the vendor, their entire Web sites are displayed in the embedded browser.
The number of licensed channels is evidentally far less than promised 1,000+. There is some possibility that licensed and unlicensed "channels" combined can exceed 1,000.
If the vendor stops here, DTV4PC remains a brilliant idea executed with flaws. (Inflexible size of the main panel is a major flaw.) But the vendor pushes the envelope further, into advertising using unlicensed contents. This is illegal while further worsens user experience.
. Conclusions
For me, this is not a worthy product, at least for now. All the contents you can view in this product can be viewed for free on the Internet. No doubt there is some value-add in channel update the product provides. However, given the current number of licensed channels, even this value-add is minimal.
Besides, I'm pretty sure there are (or will be) video content aggregation Web sites that don't charge a penny. (I'm not that much into video to start with.)
The only reason why I gave it a try is because I got it for (nearly) free: Fry's was giving out a $25 rebate to make the product "free" (+tax). I must admit that I had been enticed, as there is a whole stack of "free" software in Fry's, and I usually walk straight past them.
[Updated 2009-11-13] If you really want some free entertainment on your desktop, absolutely free (and open source) Miro aggregates many high quality, high definition (HD) videos. This program has its own quirks if you use ancient hardware. But it's free, contents in Miro are worth viewing, and the HD videos are stunningly good. Unlike DTV4PC, It allows you to view content in full screen mode[/Updated]
. Disclaimer
I have only used the product for a short period. The observation that the vendor is displaying advertisement on the side of unlicensed content is based on casual observations and may be inaccurate. (After all, there is no side advertisement in licensed channels. Advertisement is embedded in the programs themselves.)
If you have a host-intrusion detection (HID) program running on your computer or a paranoid firewall policy, you would notice that DTV4PC attempts to contact various servers on the Internet. These attempts are unrelated to the Internet content you are trying to view. And I doubt if they are for the purpose of "channel update." The only logical conclusion for me is: they are related to advertisement.
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