chmod777

I finally found a great program guide for Sling TV.

http://streamingtvguides.com/

Picked up a Fire TV on recent trip to the USA,  big improvement over the Roku for this purpose since DNS can be set in the device.

Has anyone here with a Thai Netflix account checked to determine WHERE the content is being streamed from? Have they hosted/mirrored it in country via a CDN, or, it's being pulled from abroad?

Sweden is the what the ip geolocates to, but the latency would suggest it may be closer. I'm a little surprised, it works so well I thought maybe they had one of these bad boys in Bangkok:

http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592590450

So if the GPS issue seems to have been solved with the latest OS update based on various posts here, are there any other downsides/problems associated with this model now?

I have been happy with mine, and the wife loves hers. It performs much better than you would expect for the price.

I've had better cameras in phones, but then again those phones cost three times as much.

No regrets here...

Legal Netflix offered in Thailand at a fair price! Great news, Netflix joins a short list of companies that treat us like legitimate customers (NFL, MLB, Steam).

Sure, the catalog is limited - but it just started and is sure to grow. There will always be a place for "alternative" downloads for the latest or less mainstream shows and movies.

The performance is fantastic. I can select a Netflix program on my Roku, and it will start playing faster than Plex can start it from my NAS.

If nothing else, it will minimize my need to maintain a cartoon library for the kids.

Hopefully this will help every expat in Thailand, subscribers or not, as it should take some load off the international links.

Tested the AIS 4G trial on the IQ II today, and wow it works. Pretty sweet, fastest speed test results I got were 72.33 Mbs, and that was to Singapore.

I am tempering my hopes BUT it looks like GPS and navigation are now WORKING FINE on my IQ II. I don't know if it was the 6.0.1 update, or a Google Maps app update or what, but it is working as well as any other android device. Hoping that continues.

I bought this phone as a cheap replacement for a broken S5.

Just a warning to anybody thinking about buying this phone, it is a little slow, that's expected from the spec's it has but its still very use able.

The GPS however is hopeless. Forget about a position lock when in your house or car.

GPS toolbox app agps data download doesn't really help.

Bit of a bugger really because other than that the phone could have been a winner.

Currently running Android 6.0

Sent from my i-mobile IQ II using Tapatalk

I've been needing to replace my crap phone and following this thread. This is first reference to quality of gps. Navigating Thai roads is critical for a phone for me. Anyone else have any gps experience to report??

The GPS performance is poor on this phone in my experience too. If navigation is important, this is probably not the phone you want.

Others have mentioned GPS issues in this thread:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/864017-i-mobile-iq-ii/

The IQ II is a great phone for the money, but they cut some corners to get there: GPS is poor, camera fair, no gyro, and no compass.

Thank you chmod777. Nice report.

Quick question: how did you rebooted your phone?

Hope the info helps.

I powered it off and back on to reboot it.

After a few days with Marshmallow I have a couple comments, although I have not had time to go through the features much. It's a nice upgrade with some useful improvements.

1. Battery:

The new options to improve and extend battery life look pretty good. I haven't played with the per-app optimization, but I have turned on "battery saver" before sleeping and it works. I mean you could leave that on all day if you wanted and get some pretty amazing battery life. Of course, if you are actually actively USING your phone you would not want it in that mode.

For example, I charged the IQ II Friday evening, turned on battery saver that night, turned it off Saturday morning, back on at night, off in the morning - and on Sunday at noon I still had 50% battery. Of course, as soon as I started taking photos, using mobile data, etc, I was down to 33% within a few hours.

The Marshmallow battery settings let you get some of the battery advantages of a "dumb phone" with a smart phone. You just tell it to be dumb when you don't need the smarts and you can get DAYS of battery life out of it.

2. SD card:

The best micro card I could find out here in the boondocks is a Sandisk Ultra 32 GB. Marshmallow immediately detected it, and asked what I wanted to do with it - so I picked internal. It warned the card might be too slow, which is not what I wanted to hear - but I proceeded and have not noticed any problems with the card speed. When it is done, it does not tell you to REBOOT your phone, but as noted above YOU NEED TO DO IT.

As far as the internal/portable pros and cons, I think the only reason to choose "portable" is if you are familiar with using an SD card that way and want to remove it sometimes, or mount it like a camera or usb drive when you plug the phone into a PC port or something.

What REALLY is happening is that android has an emulated SD card (storage/emulated/0). If you also have an external SD card, it is sdcard1 (storage/sdcard1) - you had no choice in the past. With Marshmallow you can decide if you want the new card you plug into your phone to be one or the other - it can be sdcard1 in the old style or it can take the place of the old emulated SD and become storage/emulated/0. It is just a change in where the card is mounted in the filesystem.

Marshmallow includes a file explorer (finally) that lets you look at your SD card either way you do it. It is true that this built in explorer will not look at the rest of your phone storage, but ES Explorer and similar apps sure can, even on a non-rooted device. You can even copy files from anywhere in your phone to your SD card whether you have made it "internal" or not.

In my opinion, you do not lose any "seamless access" or "visibility" to your internal storage by selecting "internal", but if you are familiar with how SD cards worked in the past and want to keep using them that way then I suppose "portable" is the way to go.

Performance wise, I shot video and took "burst mode" photos and they were instantly recorded to the card, I didn't notice a difference between that and the IQ II internal memory.

3. Misc:

You can now set default apps for each action without resetting them all. Nice for when you install a new browser then decide you hate it.

You can also modify what shows on the quick settings panel which is pretty slick.

Per app permission settings is nice, and long overdue.

You can swipe left from lock screen to access voice search instead of the dialer, nice for those of us who rarely us our phones as phones.

Update went fine for me, haven't had time to play with the new features much but looks good so far.

Got the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update this morning on my IQII.

I guess this phone can be considered a "poor man's Nexus". After playing with one I bought for the wife, I think it beats my antique Galaxy Nexus on everything except the camera quality. It also lacks a gyro sensor, so the camera can't take a photosphere shot. I don't think it has a noise cancelling mike either.

Just about everything else seems pretty nice - it charges quickly, battery life seems fine, very responsive opening apps and menus, speaker volume is fine.

I-mobile is not a brand I normally would consider, but this model seems like a winner. Guess we'll see how it holds up over time, and how well Google holds to the upgrade promise.

Nice to be able to watch some college basketball on ESPN. Streaming quality is poor at times, but not much worse than other services with US based content servers.

Has anyone tested any of the Disney channels or the ABC Family channel? I can't get them to load, even using different VPNs and DNS unlockers. The error message leads me to believe there is a more stringent geographical check on just these channels.

]Here's what it looks like:

2.jpg

3.jpg

1.jpg

Is this for real?

Two Dollar notes?

It's all about the Jeffersons...

Here's another good reason to buy a Kindle that not many people seem to know about. Although I buy Kindle books from time to time, most of the stuff I read originates as PDF files. They could be free books or any kind of document. You can open a PDF on the device but the text will usually be too small because it is formatted and word wrapped for a printed page. When you buy a Kindle you have an account and a personal kindle email address. If you want to read a pdf on your Kindle, you just email the file as an attachment to your Amazon email and write "convert" in the subject line. In a few minutes you will get the file back when you do a sync, properly formatted and word wrapped for the Kindle screen. And it's a free service. You just have to put the sending email address into your preferences in your account as an approved sending address. That's obviously to stop just anyone sending a file to you. You can have as many addresses you want, so it would be possible for a friend to send you a document.

You don't even need to buy a Kindle to do this - it works on the Kindle tablet and phone apps.

There is also a "Send to Kindle" browser extension that let's you put web content into your Kindle library, very useful.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle

Kinda like an expensive Chromecast then.

Although I do have the Roku dongle.

Chromecast and Roku overlap a lot in content available and each has its own advantages. One nice thing about Roku is you don't need another device - just plop down with the remote and pick what you want to watch from the TV screen. The new Google Nexus Player might be a better comparison to Roku in that respect.

Just curious: anyone know what will happen with your U.S.-sourced Roku if AFTER you've totally set it up using a U.S. IP and U.S. account address, you later switch to using it with a Thai IP address???

In my experience, you just lose the ability to watch region restricted video. The channels don't disappear, the Roku looks and acts the same, the US-locked content just won't play, or may give an error message.

I have some extra Steam keys for these indie games. If anyone is interested, PM me the game you want and I will send you the link, first come first served. One game per person unless interest is low. The games activate on Steam through Humble Bundle, don't worry it is 100% safe - just follow the directions.

Thomas Was Alone (I have two keys)

Risk of Rain (I have two keys, need to be used by 25 November)

Monaco

Nightsky

Surgeon Simulator

The Bridge

Orcs Must Die 2

I had to factory reset the 3 several times before returning it, and the hassles you mention with entering subscription information was huge PITA to keep repeating.

That's an interesting, thought-provoking comment. I believe, my HDMI stick arrived with about 30 apps pre-installed. And then after deleting some of those and adding others, I ended up with about 50 apps in total, at least in the early going for testing and trying.

A lot of those have some form of verification / linking / registering. And then of course, I spent some time trying to organize the icons for the apps I have into some kind of logical groupings in my Roku display (like putting the movie, sports, news icons next to each other in groups).

And I guess while I'm fortunate I haven't had to factory reset or RMA my HDMI stick after two days use, your post makes me wonder: Is there anyway to backup one's Roku profile/apps/settings so it can be flash reinstalled if needed? Or is a factory reset or RMA going to require manually re-doing all the app installing / registering / organizing process?

I doubt you will need to worry about the factory reset - my Roku 3 was a lemon. I've never had a problem with the other two Rokus I have.

After a factory reset (or if you buy a new Roku), it will remember the channels you have linked to your account and download them automatically, but you will have to reorganize them and log into the ones that require it. Pretty similar to Android without clockworkmod I guess.

I forgot to mention the offical android Roku app is region restricted in the google play store - but the apk can be easily googled up. The latest version is 3.1.4.2117542. Using the app makes it easy to type in forms and fields, and has some other pretty cool features. There are a lot of garbage Roku apps on the play store, I just use the official one.

If you have an NBA league pass subscription, I would be interested to hear if you try it on the Roku and how it compares to the PC streaming.

Many of the flaws you list are the reason I ended up with a Roku in the first place - my Dad bought an XD unit, got frustrated and threw it in the closet. I relieved him of it on a visit a couple years ago, and it took me a while to figure out how to make good use of it.

Funny you should mention 60 Minutes because that is the exact show I started off with trying to watch before I gave up. It wouldn't be so bad if all the clips weren't out of order - you could just hit play all and at least get some idea of the story. Pretty worthless as is, but I guess CBS is now selling their own monthly subscription so the whole thing may disappear anyway.

A big Roku problem is that you find a channel with good stuff, up to date, etc - and then it just dies. It either doesn't get updated, or quits working. That is the reason I gave up on XBMC - too much trouble to fiddle around finding and updating the sources when I just want to sit there and watch TV without hassles. The Viewster channel is a good example - oddball content, but quite a bit of it - it just quit working on Roku for some reason, while it still works on the PC.

I've used media players, HTPC, XBMC, Chromecast, Android TV boxes, and "Smart TV" apps and found for my purposes Roku is the best option. I ended up buying a Roku 3 as well (and then a Roku 2 when the 3 had to get RMA'd). One thing I like is that they keep updating things, and the user interface (believe it or not) has improved - but is still pretty rough. I had to factory reset the 3 several times before returning it, and the hassles you mention with entering subscription information was huge PITA to keep repeating.

There are some pretty good apps that let you use your phone as a wifi remote, that is the best way to type into it when you have to.

Thanks a lot for mentioning the Google Play channel, I missed that news. Let's hope they keep adding new and better channels!

Check out "Nowhere TV" - it is a private channel, which just means it doesn't show up in the official Roku channel store. This channel has done a good job of seperating the wheat from the chaff. For example, under the "International" section you can find true live streams of CNN International, BBC, etc including CNBC Europe. This channel has is kept up to date, and is easy to navigate to find things like full episodes of Conan for example. You can find it at http://thenowhereman.com/roku/

If you google for Roku private channels, you will find that most are garbage (as are most of the "official" Roku channels), but there may be some that fit your interests. You can even make you own private channel, which sounds interesting https://www.roku.com/developer

The HTPC will runs rings around the Roku for flexibility, but in some cases I think the Roku beats it for quality. For example NFL Gamepass, MLB.tv, and others use browser plugins on the PC that can be glitchy.

Roku also is a great PLEX client if you are into setting up a media server at home.

Looks awesome The new Civ is only ฿899

I was a bit half hearted about getting it or not (Since I love the Civ series, but Civ in space seems weird....), but if it's cheap, then why not lol

My thoughts exactly - that's the first game I checked with the new pricing.

Steam now shows all pricing in Thai baht. At first glance, this looks to be a great deal for those of us buying games here. It seems most titles are cheaper in baht than dollars, in some cases almost half the price. For example, some big new pre-releases that cost $60 are around 1100 baht. This carries over to the sale prices as well.

Also, if anyone who is into pc gaming has not yet checked out humble bundle, do so. Some amazing deals can be found there sometimes.

That system should work fine for the purposes you stated.

Is your TV Panasonic? If not, you may want to consider a sound system from the manufacturer of your TV to ensure best compatibility since they will communicate over HDMI CEC (Panasonic calls this VIERA link). Not a big deal, this system will work with any TV - but would work best with a Pansasonic.

Finally received the Chromecast through Lazada. It was shipped from Singapore, shipping included for 1600 baht. Plugged it in t the TV and it upgraded itself first and then went though the setup step by step. Very easy, elegant really. I downloaded the extension that the Chrome browser uses to Chromecast and pulled up Youtube and...it worked, perfectly. Then I downloaded and installed Plex Media server. I showed Plex where my downloads were, fired up a Daily Show episode and that worked perfectly. So, I originally asked how do you stream video over wifi? Chromecast is inexpensive and works well. There are other features that I haven't got into yet. VLC should have their app working soon which will probably be easier than Plex but it's not an issue.

 

One thing is that the picture on the computer is ahead (synch wise) of the TV. That doesn't effect anything and you can be browsing the internet in another tab while the video is streaming to the TV. Sound is only on the TV. 

 

Thanks for all the additional info and suggestions. I plan on getting another Chromecast when I'm in the US next month for another TV. It's less expensive there, like $35. 

You may want to check out the chrome extension "Videostream for Google Chromecast" while you are waiting for VLC to update.

Truevisons cares nothing about the NFL or its fans here. They have dropped the NFL three times that I remember, the last time in the middle of the season. Once in the late 90s, they advertised it up until the day of the first game, then...nothing! They had tried to play contract hardball at the last minute and lost, and did not show the NFL at all that season.

Even when True/ASN does show games, you are limited to their choices - which admittedly are better than nothing.

Bottom line, if you care about watching the NFL here, take matters into your own hands - go with online streaming. NFL Gamepass works great, or check into what is mentioned in the posts above.

If you love lost causes and beating your head against a wall, go ahead and try to get True to pretend they care.