jonnyscot Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Hi, I would appreciate if someone could tell me what additional equipment I would require to view BBC/ITV iplayer and uktv on my TV screen preferably without first downloading, I have a decent laptop but only 13" screen, a computer workstation, HD TV,an Apacer AL670 media player and DVD player, any advice appreciated along with an idiots guide on setting up. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satcommlee Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 A cable from your laptop to the TV is a good start. But most importantly, iPlayer is not available in Thailand unless you have a clever work around.. are you in Thailand? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrel Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Your TV will certainly have HDMI sockets. Your laptop and/or PC may also have such a socket, depending on how old they are. If they do, it's easy: just use a long HDMI cable. If they dont then you could fit a new video card with HDMI output to your desktop machine, and then use a long HDMI cable. Or you may find that your TV has a VGA socket, in which case you can connect either of your computers to the TV using a long VGA cable (aka monitor cable), though in that case you would also need a second cable for the sound. HDMI needs only one cable and is far and away the simplest way to do it, assuming your PCs are so equipped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonnyscot Posted October 10, 2011 Author Share Posted October 10, 2011 Hi Darrel, thanks for the info, I see both my laptop and the PC have HDMI sockets, I'll pop into the local store in the morning and see if I can get hold of an HDMI cable and hopefully that's me sorted, Thanks again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satcommlee Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Looked up your spec on the Apacer AL670 media center, you do have an HDMI output, if you TV has an HDMI input then you are ready to go. But if you are in Thailand then you will have problems getting iPlayer to work as it is restricted to the UK only, there are ways to get around this but wont be so easy for the media center. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrel Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Hi Darrel, thanks for the info, I see both my laptop and the PC have HDMI sockets, I'll pop into the local store in the morning and see if I can get hold of an HDMI cable and hopefully that's me sorted,... For some unknown reason, HDMI cables are very expensive here. If you have someone coming from abroad, get them to order one from Amazon. It will probably cost half the price. As far as iPlayer etc. goes, you will need some extra bits. Do a search for VPN. To avoid buffering I find it better to download the programme first from the iPlayer website and then play it back in Windows Media Player rather than watch it streamed in real time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossy Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 You may find this thread of interest too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharlieH Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I would say the main thing you need aside from all the connections and cables......IS A DECENT INTERNET CONNECTION which seems to be few and far between in Thailand. I have yet to discover anything anywhere that is actually watchable and doesnt cough spit and fart its way through and is just so annoying to try and watch for more than 5 minutes. If you are in Thailand, hope you are in a city or close proximity because otherwise you'll just end up being very disappointed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrel Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I would say the main thing you need aside from all the connections and cables......IS A DECENT INTERNET CONNECTION which seems to be few and far between in Thailand. I have yet to discover anything anywhere that is actually watchable and doesnt cough spit and fart its way through and is just so annoying to try and watch for more than 5 minutes. If you are in Thailand, hope you are in a city or close proximity because otherwise you'll just end up being very disappointed. This is why I recommended downloading from iPlayer first and playing back in WMP, rather than streaming. It solves this problem completely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossy Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 One nice thing with the UK-TV service http://www.uk-tv.asia/ is that it reads ahead during times of decent speed and builds up a buffer for when the net gets congested, didn't miss a beat when I unplugged my router for several minutes. Provided you have a connection that gets to 2M reasonably often it works remarkably well. One minus I suppose, is that there's a delay (10 minutes I think) on the 'live' transmission to allow the read-ahead to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonnyscot Posted October 11, 2011 Author Share Posted October 11, 2011 Hi guys,thanks for all the info, I have also been using the free trial I noticed a few days back in that thread Crossey and I must say I am impressed, have been using one of the free VPN's for iplayer previous to that,, working ok this morning via the HDMI cable between computer and TV, only gripe I have is the screen of the computer goes to hibernate or whatever the technical term is when the comp screen goes black every 15 or20 minutes and the tv follows suit.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PattayaParent Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Hi guys,thanks for all the info, I have also been using the free trial I noticed a few days back in that thread Crossey and I must say I am impressed, have been using one of the free VPN's for iplayer previous to that,, working ok this morning via the HDMI cable between computer and TV, only gripe I have is the screen of the computer goes to hibernate or whatever the technical term is when the comp screen goes black every 15 or20 minutes and the tv follows suit.. You can set the hibernate timing to 'never' in Settings>Control Panel>Power Options Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bartender100 Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Just use Google, you will get all the help you need, much easier. http://www.google.com/search?q=connect+laptop+to+tv&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharlieH Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 (edited) Cant seem to use the UKTV.....downloaded installed and thats it, dead....only this something in German Edited October 11, 2011 by CharlieH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petedk Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Your TV will certainly have HDMI sockets. Your laptop and/or PC may also have such a socket, depending on how old they are. If they do, it's easy: just use a long HDMI cable. If they dont then you could fit a new video card with HDMI output to your desktop machine, and then use a long HDMI cable. Or you may find that your TV has a VGA socket, in which case you can connect either of your computers to the TV using a long VGA cable (aka monitor cable), though in that case you would also need a second cable for the sound. HDMI needs only one cable and is far and away the simplest way to do it, assuming your PCs are so equipped. I connect my laptop to the TV with a 2 meter long HDMI cable whenever I want to watch films. Is it possible to buy longer HDMI cables , say about 5 metres? Then I could have my PC permanently connected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petedk Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Cant seem to use the UKTV.....downloaded installed and thats it, dead....only this something in German yeah i just downloaded it and i get the same screen. Something about it being demo?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossy Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Cant seem to use the UKTV.....downloaded installed and thats it, dead....only this something in German yeah i just downloaded it and i get the same screen. Something about it being demo?? OK since people are having problems. Click X on the banner to make it go away. The automatic trial doesn't work for some reason. Go to Support on the website and ask for a trial password, they will email you a 30 day trial password. Once you have your password click Options, Enter License Informations, put your trial password and username in the boxes and enjoy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PattayaParent Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I'm still waiting for them to email me a username and password. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derifo Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Hi guys,thanks for all the info, I have also been using the free trial I noticed a few days back in that thread Crossey and I must say I am impressed, have been using one of the free VPN's for iplayer previous to that,, working ok this morning via the HDMI cable between computer and TV, only gripe I have is the screen of the computer goes to hibernate or whatever the technical term is when the comp screen goes black every 15 or20 minutes and the tv follows suit.. Go into the display settings and set it to external monitor only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharlieH Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 (edited) Cant seem to use the UKTV.....downloaded installed and thats it, dead....only this something in German yeah i just downloaded it and i get the same screen. Something about it being demo?? OK since people are having problems. Click X on the banner to make it go away. The automatic trial doesn't work for some reason. Go to Support on the website and ask for a trial password, they will email you a 30 day trial password. Once you have your password click Options, Enter License Informations, put your trial password and username in the boxes and enjoy Enjoy what ??, this has to be the most annoying interface I have ever encountered, played with it for over an hour and couldnt watch a dam_n thing !!! Having messages popping up in German added to the frustration, good job it was free. The principal is fine, the practice is crap confusing and annoying. Edited October 11, 2011 by CharlieH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrel Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I connect my laptop to the TV with a 2 meter long HDMI cable whenever I want to watch films. Is it possible to buy longer HDMI cables , say about 5 metres? Then I could have my PC permanently connected. Certainly. I used a 10m HDMI cable for all my TV watching in Europe. You do need to be a little bit careful about longer cables if you want to get the very best HD quality from them (only really applies to BluRay use and similar). There is a pinned topic about the different standards of HDMI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossy Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Enjoy what ??, this has to be the most annoying interface I have ever encountered, played with it for over an hour and couldnt watch a dam_n thing !!! Having messages popping up in German added to the frustration, good job it was free. The principal is fine, the practice is crap confusing and annoying. Interesting, have you received and entered your trial password? Only ever saw one German message that was the one that appears on first run. It just worked for me with no issues whatever, watching BBC 1 right now Move your mouse the the right hand side of the window and you should see a list of channels, click one to watch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharlieH Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 (edited) As said, couldnt get ANYTHING to work, tried to record something, it downloaded 47mb in 15 minutes of something but the progress said that was only 3% ???? of a 30 minute program, couldnt watch anything else at all, tried all sorts and nothing seemed to work for me other than being able to look at schedules. Did get what looked like adverts at point but stopped after 6 seconds, waited another 3-4 minutes for buffering and then stopped again after 6 seconds and so the cycle repeated.......sod that !! just not worth the hassle. Emailed the support but yet to receive any reply. Think it would be better to just dump it and forget it. Edited October 12, 2011 by CharlieH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrel Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 Streaming just doesnt work properly for most people in Thailand. I wouldn't even consider it as I get really annoyed if the quality isn't perfect. The way to use iPlayer without any problems here is as follows: Get some sort of VPN. This could be ExpatShield, or some pay or free VPN service like the one that sponsors this forum. The only important thing is that it should have a UK node. Nothing else matters. Connect the VPN to the UK node. Navigate to the iPlayer website. Find the programme you want to watch. Do not attempt to view it, just click on the "download options" link and download the WMV version. (Optionally, if your VPN service has a bandwidth limit etc., you can pause the download, disconnect the VPN and then restart the download.) Once the download has finished, with the VPN connected, open the file in WMP. Once playback has started you can disconnect the VPN. No buffering issues at all doing it this way, even in HD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonnyscot Posted October 12, 2011 Author Share Posted October 12, 2011 Same here too Crossy regarding that UK TV Asia I only saw that German message first time I viewed the site, I obtained my login details and from the options i selected the English language, then selected license to enter the login details, I've probably watched about 6 hours TV from it so far in these last 4 or 5 days and I would say I've only had it stop for no more than 2 or 3 seconds of buffering maybe 4 times during those 6 hours or so of viewing, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tutsiwarrior Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 (edited) Your TV will certainly have HDMI sockets. Your laptop and/or PC may also have such a socket, depending on how old they are. If they do, it's easy: just use a long HDMI cable. If they dont then you could fit a new video card with HDMI output to your desktop machine, and then use a long HDMI cable. Or you may find that your TV has a VGA socket, in which case you can connect either of your computers to the TV using a long VGA cable (aka monitor cable), though in that case you would also need a second cable for the sound. HDMI needs only one cable and is far and away the simplest way to do it, assuming your PCs are so equipped. on the subject of cables, both my laptop and my new, Samsung 32' LCD TV (*twinkle*) have got HDMI and VGA connections...if I download a film to the laptop via a torrent which is the best way to view the film on the TV? Edited October 12, 2011 by tutsiwarrior Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossy Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 As said, couldnt get ANYTHING to work, tried to record something, it downloaded 47mb in 15 minutes of something but the progress said that was only 3% ???? of a 30 minute program, couldnt watch anything else at all, tried all sorts and nothing seemed to work for me other than being able to look at schedules. Did get what looked like adverts at point but stopped after 6 seconds, waited another 3-4 minutes for buffering and then stopped again after 6 seconds and so the cycle repeated.......sod that !! just not worth the hassle. Emailed the support but yet to receive any reply. Think it would be better to just dump it and forget it. How fast is your connection? Try the Thaivisa speedtest to Singapore (for international speed), you need better than 2Mbs for it to work. Leaving it alone to build up its buffer (press pause) could help with a slow connection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonnyscot Posted October 12, 2011 Author Share Posted October 12, 2011 Hi tutsi, I have the HDMI cable running from my laptop directly to my TV as advised and no probs with that, I got a 12 foot long HDMI cable purchased from the IT shop on the top floor of the Nasa mall in Suphan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tutsiwarrior Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 Hi tutsi, I have the HDMI cable running from my laptop directly to my TV as advised and no probs with that, I got a 12 foot long HDMI cable purchased from the IT shop on the top floor of the Nasa mall in Suphan hey!...dat boy he's a homie! now, we're talkin' about a torrent download from laptop to TV with associated formats an' stuff? and the HDMI cable is OK? Nasa mall is the same one with Tops supermarket in the basement? we've bought all of our computer gear for the nieces from the top floor shop with no probs...there's also a stall with some young guys offering computer services who do good work installing Windows and etc...I'll be checking it out soon for the HDMI cable next time we go up for our usual shopping in Suphan town... many thanks for the great info... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonnyscot Posted October 12, 2011 Author Share Posted October 12, 2011 That's the same one Tutsie we're just about half a kilometer from there right now ,,,,,just about as local as can be,, hehe,, maybe some of the experienced techie minded guys here can advise better re the torrent downloads, I have an apacer al670 media player I bought from the local tescos along the road that apparently can deal with bit torrent downloads, but trying to find my feet with it still, as far as other file formats It seems to support quite a decent range, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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