nowork114 Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 Hi guys, I mentioned that I was buying MAIGE TV and got many questions and requests for more info so I'm opening this topic to share my experience. At home I have PSI satellite which is good only for Thai channels, but for many programs (including WC2014) you need to pay extras. I tried to watch it on analog, but the quality is very poor especially on 50" HDTV. By accident I came across an article talking about Maige TV and after a bit of searching i found few web sites selling this product for various prices. I ruled out buying from local resellers after reading complaints and discussions on TV and other portals and bought directly from http://www.maige-tv.com. Total price was $329 ($319 for TV Box + $10 for WiFi adapter) got $15 discount for sharing their WWW on my Facebook - post which I deleted after checkout). Total price was $314 (10,540 THB). Payment by credit card via their PayPal service. This price includes 1 year fee. Renewal is $85. You can get it few bucks cheaper from www.aliexpress.com. Price of local resellers you can google yourself. Ordered last Monday mornig, DHL arrived Friday morning to my office without any duty or tax. Mailed them MAC code to activate and got reply about 2 hrs later that my TV was activated. Arrived home Friday evening and connected to TV First I tried to use the WiFi antenna, but the signal was not good. Connected it by cable to my signal repeater and result was much better. It took me few minutes scrolling through Chinese menu trying to switch it to English. Not a big problem, if you want to save time see this pic (don't forget to save and reboot): After the box connected to internet it started downloading upgrades and restarted 2 or 3 times (took about 10 min). After that the box was ready to roll. I only had one weekend to play with it so I may not discover all things yet Approx 80% of programs are Chinese, Korean or Japanese, some of them in original language, some (sometimes) in English. The rest are international programs. I'm not going to list all programs - google is your friend. Regarding quality and connection, scrolling through channel list is fast and east, switching takes between 2-5 sec. Some channels marked with * are in trial, and were not working all the time (NBA HD), Quality of HD programs is very good, I'd say quite close to DVD, quality of SD programs may vary. Watching AFP on Australian Network in SD was OK, but on 50" screen you can see the picture is not clear. Cons of the system is that sometimes it freezes or the channels don't work. I had problem watching HBO Sat. evening when the pic was freezing every 10 sec. Other channels like Universal or Discovery were OK. The next day HBO was smooth but MTV was freezing ... May be problem with internet (7 MB TOT) - will need few more days to check on this. WC2014 - watched last night Holland and Mexico, on ESPN the pic was in HD but freezing, after few min scanning i found ESPN rebroadcast in English on one of the Japanese channels (totally there were about 6-7 channels broadcasting live. I don't really need English commentary so I can even watch it on Japanese or Korean channel - I just want clear picture and that was what I got. Also someone might be bothered by Chinese subtitles, I'm fine with that... Pros: The best pro is the price, 2,700 THB a year for a cable TV is a good deal. Large library of movies (1000+) and series (complete seasons) on demand. Search function does not work, so you will need to scroll page by page if searching for something. Hope this will help and if any questions, PM me or ask in forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longball53098 Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Sounds very similar to the issues I have with the HD2 box I bought from them back about 8 months ago. I believe the TOT connection I have here in Rayong at 7MB is not stable enough to fully support this system 24/7. I would guess that 80 to 90 percent of the time the Maige box works very well. The picture quality is very good on my new LED 40 inch TV. The channel choices in English content are good for the cost. I most likely will renew the service when it comes due. I wish the VOD screens had English titles as choosing a movie is very difficult. If I had waited a few months I could have the same box as you. Correct me on this if wrong but on your box all the channel screens are in English? As mine it can be difficult at times as most things appear in Chineses except the numbers and the actual channel like "ESPN" or "Fox HD" or "NBC" This system works as good or better than iLikeHD which I also pay 500B/month Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IMHO Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 MaigeTV works flawlessly on my 20mbps connect - according to my router, it uses anywhere from about 2mbps to low-5mbps range while watching a HD stream (the bitrate constantly moves). Check to see if your router has any quality of service (QoS) or media priority type controls you can set to give the Maige bandwidth priority. And If you have the option to reserve bandwidth, I'd say give it 6mbps. Pretty much all text is in Chinese - the only time you'll see English is in artwork (which isn't searchable), or the odd channel name/TV show name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildfootball Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Ok after reading about maige tv and cable streamer,I've done a lot of research online trying to come up with cheaper solution. Here is what I did: 1. Bought my own android tv box for B3500 at fortune. 2. Searched online for few iptv services in Thailand and they are a few which most of them shows EPL thru astro and k+,kpc etc (Vietnamese channels). Few VOD movies. (Price range B250-350 pm) 3. Found an iptv service in China who would provide apk for 85 usd per year. (2 day trial). The channels are very similar to maige tv and cable streamer except it doesn't have VOD and Japanese channels. It has astro supersport 1-4 and also sky net sports which is a Burmese cable tv and commentary in English. 4. Cloud tv service has few good channels too. All in all, there's no perfect iptv. I find Ilikehd the best but the channels sometimes goes missing. Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nowork114 Posted July 1, 2014 Author Share Posted July 1, 2014 Ok after reading about maige tv and cable streamer,I've done a lot of research online trying to come up with cheaper solution. Here is what I did: 1. Bought my own android tv box for B3500 at fortune. 2. Searched online for few iptv services in Thailand and they are a few which most of them shows EPL thru astro and k+,kpc etc (Vietnamese channels). Few VOD movies. (Price range B250-350 pm) 3. Found an iptv service in China who would provide apk for 85 usd per year. (2 day trial). The channels are very similar to maige tv and cable streamer except it doesn't have VOD and Japanese channels. It has astro supersport 1-4 and also sky net sports which is a Burmese cable tv and commentary in English. 4. Cloud tv service has few good channels too. All in all, there's no perfect iptv. I find Ilikehd the best but the channels sometimes goes missing. Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand It's cheper in up-fron investment but coming up more expensive for yearly payments12x250 for Thai IPTV (the cheapest option) with $85 for Chinese IPTV without video and series on demand and the price comes up to almost 6,000 per year. If you really want to save more, you could get someone to buy it for you in China (www.maige.tv) because their website is not accessible from outside China... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IMHO Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Ok after reading about maige tv and cable streamer,I've done a lot of research online trying to come up with cheaper solution. Here is what I did: 1. Bought my own android tv box for B3500 at fortune. 2. Searched online for few iptv services in Thailand and they are a few which most of them shows EPL thru astro and k+,kpc etc (Vietnamese channels). Few VOD movies. (Price range B250-350 pm) 3. Found an iptv service in China who would provide apk for 85 usd per year. (2 day trial). The channels are very similar to maige tv and cable streamer except it doesn't have VOD and Japanese channels. It has astro supersport 1-4 and also sky net sports which is a Burmese cable tv and commentary in English. 4. Cloud tv service has few good channels too. All in all, there's no perfect iptv. I find Ilikehd the best but the channels sometimes goes missing. Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand It's cheper in up-fron investment but coming up more expensive for yearly payments12x250 for Thai IPTV (the cheapest option) with $85 for Chinese IPTV without video and series on demand and the price comes up to almost 6,000 per year. If you really want to save more, you could get someone to buy it for you in China (www.maige.tv) because their website is not accessible from outside China... VOD has turned out to be about 75% of our Maige's usage now - I'd never trade it for live-only streams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildfootball Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 Maige TV is based on linux and once the service stops the box is useless. Whereas, android box is like a mini pc, you can use it even after the service stops. VOD can also be watched on XBMC for free. Just saying theres much cheaper solution than maige tv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IMHO Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 Maige TV is based on linux and once the service stops the box is useless. Whereas, android box is like a mini pc, you can use it even after the service stops. VOD can also be watched on XBMC for free. Just saying theres much cheaper solution than maige tv Yes, true, but It's been going for 4 years now, and only getting more and more content.. never can be sure though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fvw53 Posted July 9, 2014 Share Posted July 9, 2014 I have 30 Mbps connection but of course this high download speed applies only if the server is based in Thailand and there are ups and downs. I have done a lot speed tests at different times of the day and to different servers mostly in Europe and in the USA It is obvious that after 4 p.m. Thai time the download slows step by step...even to a third or less of what I got before. Also the ping to the servers is a strong indication of what is coming ... - about 10 p.m. a test to the server of a major IT company in Silicon Valley shows a ping of only 33 and download speed of 10 Mbps and more. - a test done at 10.03 p.m. to a server not far away from Silicon Valley shows a ping of 230 and a download speed of 2.5 Mbps... Does somebody know where the servers of MAIGE - TV are located so that I can do tests in that direction? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now