Comments on: ITVN Announces Setanta Sports Availability

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:56:00 +0000

Now how about getting Dish Netowrk to carring this channel, would that be hard to work out?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:12:00 +0000

Thanks for the reply- I’m prepared to sign up but have only 1 worry – If as customers increase the quality may decrease and bufering will increase, and If I want to cancel my service,**the will bill my CC for $100US** ahhh!! it is pittiful really! That’s my only avoidance for now.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 17:28:00 +0000

Responding to above…
My bandwidth result at http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/ varies 1100-1300 kbps. I have only watched up to 20 minutes at a time of…well, I think it was Aussie Rules Football, it wasn’t Rugby or Footie…and I did not get any rebuffering after the first few moments.

Bring on the start of the EPL!

I am still going to try and encourage Comcast to carry Setanta, as the ease of using their DVR, and the multiple tuners on the cable box, allows for a much nicer viewing experience. I am not sure if there are any copyright issues, but I will need to bust out the VCR to record the early Sat games, and this is nowhere near as convenient as the DVR.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 13:37:00 +0000

Have you watched any matches yet, or TV for extended periods? How is the buffering? What speed do you get when testing your internet connection here: http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Thanks so much!!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:57:00 +0000

Just got my itvn box setup tonight, here are my first impressions...

The menus are clean, but you have to navigate at least 3 or so screens every time you turn on the box, which takes 30-60 seconds for me. It would be an awesome improvement if it remembered your channel so power-on would take you right to Setanta.

The picture quality is definitely acceptable. I am still so happy about getting to see Liverpool's games that even if the picture looks a little more contrasty, and somewhat less sharp, than digital cable, I am very happy with this service. I did increase the stream quality to 1000kbps.

I only have 1.5Mbps DSL, which averages 1.2Mbps on most bandwidth speed tests. I tested simultaneous browsing and downloading while the itvn is on, and browsing was unaffected. Downloading did cause the itvn stream to rebuffer. I am not certain how much buffer the itvn stores, this might be good to know. In any case, I share my connection with my family, so I will definitely be turning off the itvn box when not using it. I also wonder if my service provider will complain if I were to leave this on for extended periods of time.

Small note-- for some silly reason, I expected the itvn box to be wireless network ready. It only has an ethernet input, which will accept an ethernet wireless adapter if you have one.