3bb / Samsung SmartTV experience

[turgid]

Recently bought my first new TV in 18 years. Moved to a 4 year old condo but ancient TV in the bedroom only. At the same time I decided to dump all my True services due to some very poor customer service. A year ago I was using True internet, True visions and True mobile. I've got DTAC for the phone so i was looking for a TV, an Internet service and perhaps some IPTV services. I post this because it might be helpful to anyone new, or anyone considering changing. Note I have no connection personal or otherwise with any company mentioned here and have no previous experience with IPTV beyond YouTube.

Internet

For Internet I went to TOT initially because TOT was already installed in the unit. After waiting for an hour they told me that without a work permit I couldn’t have the service. (I'm on a retirement based 12 month extension and have apartment rental agreement, credit cards, bank accounts etc.)

The people at 3BB spoke no English but were charming and helpful (Central BangNa). With a combination of pointing and Google translate I agreed to a 12 month 15 Mb/s contract which included an ADSL 4 port router for 599 per month. I wanted the Fibre plan but it’s only actually available in houses and I assume a few new condos. ADSL Line was connected next day (Sunday) but didn’t work, however they had it working by the following afternoon. Download speed tested with a torrent (ahem) is 1.5 MBs. I was rarely getting more than 1 MBs with True so a little better. Overseas downloads collapse in the evening in exactly the same way as True so I assume everyone is sharing the same international gateway.

TV

I looked at several TVs but eventually went for a Samsung Smart TV 6400 48" HD. I did consider a curved UHD/4K screen but decided against mainly because the price is more than 2.5 times HD. Also because the general advice seems to be that the curved UHD doesn’t add value until you get above 55" and I don’t have the room. Finally all my viewing material is all HD or below and i cant see that changing for a few years. The published price for the TV at every outlet was 39000 Bht . Everyone offered varying levels of discount and I ended up buying it in Big C of all places where the price ended up at 25000 Bht. On plugging it in discovered the reception was shit, however after a couple of days of investigating it turned out the wire in the apartment antenna socket wasn’t connected. Interestingly a previous owner had installed a big ugly commercial TV amplifier to try and solve this and then I assume moved the TV to the bedroom where the socket worked. I now have an excellent TV signal. Piece of advice - run the auto tune on your TV if you haven’t recently. The TV in the bedroom had 12 channels loaded on it. Auto tune produced 70 analogue channels

The new Samsung TV now has 70 free analogue channels with the BBC, Channel News Asia in English, and 30 free Thai Digital channels. Digital TV quality is amazing but only my girlfriend watches it. In addition to a standard remote It has voice control which you have to push a button to use and is frankly pretty rubbish. I played with it for a day and don’t use it. It also has a mouse "wand" that you can point and click at things and works fine except that not all applications currently support it. You can also plug in a USB keyboard if you don’t want to tediously point and click user names and passwords.

Connecting the TV to the internet for the smart stuff was easy. Direct connect or Wi-Fi. They do try and get you to put in Facebook, twitter etc. but the only thing you need to use the IPTV is an email. I set up a new email for the TV account although I assume the first time I connected my phone it worked out who I was and sent the details to the NSA.

I have a Samsung phone and you can use it to browse YouTube content and then display it in the YouTube app on the TV. My problem with Samsung is they often have 10 different half assed ways to do things instead of one great way. So it is with screen mirroring and displaying content from your phone but once you get it working it works very well. There is a browser in the TV but the point and click entry is tedious and voice entry is poor so I don’t use it.

The primary app on the Smart TV side is something called the Smart TV app (beta). The "Smart TV" applications include Doonee, CTH, Doonung, TOTipTV, WiSplay YouTube, Skype. There are probably a 100 other apps you can download for free and some annoying sponsored ad apps but I’ve found no uses for any of them except something called Viewster which shows old movies and Canadian TV series.

With the TV i got a free use offer between 5 and 90 days for most of the subscription apps.

Doonee is a channel offering around 100 British and American comedy and drama series for 179 Bht per month . They are about 3 years behind British TV (Homeland 1) but the video quality is excellent and as far as i can see they are uncensored. They add about 6 series a month. I've seen a couple of stutters and the occasional hang but will admit I’ve watched a lot of stuff in that month. I've signed for this service to catch up on series including some I’d never heard of (e.g. Utopia). Be aware that if you pay by credit card it auto renews if you don’t cancel (hidden in the Thai small print).

CTH. The TV included a 90 day free subscription to the CTH premium service. CTH require a phone number and Thai registration as well as email to use the service and this was the hardest service to setup because i dont have a Thai registration. Quality has been great, no stutters or hangs at all. I just use it for watching UK football and will probably buy a package in September. There is other content under CTH but a lot of it is reapeated elsewhere and none that I want to watch or pay for.

TOTipTV has a wide range of Thai programming but there is nothing there that I would want to pay for, or my girlfriend wants over the 65 channels she already has.

Doonung and WiSplay are Movie channels offering the same kind of European and American movies you would see on True for around 130Thb per month. They also have newer stuff or ala carte at 150 Thb each. But they are all shown with Thai only sound tracks. There appears to be no way to change the sound track to English or select a movie package in English.

For movies I’ve given up with the Samsung Apps and use the monthly Hollywood HDTV movie App on my phone which has Thai subtitles and displays on the TV and I’ve found to be fine.

Support

I had to reset the TV after it hung when I tested one of the of the apps and I lost my accounts even after i'd logged back in. The apps are under the Smart TV branding so I wasn’t sure if you call Samsung or the App vendor. CTH were friendly but seemed to have no idea that they even offered an IPTV service and tried to sell me satelite. Samsung were even more charming but without exaggeration called me ten times over two days before someone was able to log into my TV and see what the problem was and reset my various subscriptions.

Summary

I’m happy with 3BB. On the TV, picture quality is excellent and the TV side is well thought out and easy to operate. The "Smart" Internet side does not appear to be well thought out. The Smart TV interface is pretty poor and clunky and is an odd mixture of Thai and English. Each of the apps has a slightly different payment method and terms and support channels are uncertain. On the viewster app the volume control doesnt work. In terms of content its clearly a work in progress. By combining services and devices I can get better for less than I had on True for coverage of TV series, Sports, and Movies but the non Thai news, business and information side is completely lacking. I suspect this is Thai regulation but it does seem odd that True can offer CNBC, CNN , Nat Geo etc. when you cant get them on the "legal" IP services as far as I can see.

It would be nice to see someone offering some "legal" IPTV packages that echo or improve on the cable packages True offer.

[mikebell]

An excellent & informative post, thank you.

[aglae4]

I just had posted yesterday asking about add-ons to use IPTV because I cannot get european channels. No need to say your post was very interesting for me. Thank you for taking the time to do that

[Ghostnigel]

Wow, good story, but a little long....what did you have for breakfast? Lol

[Likener1]

Thank you for this as its one of the declining number of topics on TV (Thai Visa) that is interesting, informative.and well written.

[kwaussie]

Bravo to you, a very interesting and informative post, i wish this forum had more like this.

[scotsman]

http://help.unotelly.com/support/solutions/articles/31574-setting-up-unodns-on-your-samsung-tv-and-blu-ray-player-smarthub- If you would like to change the region of your smart hub along with this DNS server web company then it works Great.

Or use hola on the browser.

Alan

[KittenKong]

The people at 3BB spoke no English but were charming and helpful (Central BangNa). With a combination of pointing and Google translate I agreed to a 12 month 15 Mb/s contract which included an ADSL 4 port router for 599 per month. I wanted the Fibre plan but it’s only actually available in houses and I assume a few new condos. ADSL Line was connected next day (Sunday) but didn’t work, however they had it working by the following afternoon. Download speed tested with a torrent (ahem) is 1.5 MBs. I was rarely getting more than 1 MBs with True so a little better. Overseas downloads collapse in the evening in exactly the same way as True so I assume everyone is sharing the same international gateway.

The 590B package is for 10Mbs. 15Mbs costs 900B. Both plus VAT and with a discount for paying in advance. http://www.3bb.co.th/3bb/product/product/en/adsl/select.php

So not too sure exactly what package you got.

What I am sure about is that my 900B 15Mbs package does provide well in excess of 10Mbs download speed from abroad on a regular basis and it never drops below about 4Mbs (assuming a robust remote server).

My DSL sync speed rarely varies from this:

Upstream Speed: 1146 kbps

Downstream Speed: 17919 kbps

You should check yours.

By the way, after the first full year with 3BB you qualify for free DTAC wifi, worth 99B/month.

[turgid]

The people at 3BB spoke no English but were charming and helpful (Central BangNa). With a combination of pointing and Google translate I agreed to a 12 month 15 Mb/s contract which included an ADSL 4 port router for 599 per month. I wanted the Fibre plan but it’s only actually available in houses and I assume a few new condos. ADSL Line was connected next day (Sunday) but didn’t work, however they had it working by the following afternoon. Download speed tested with a torrent (ahem) is 1.5 MBs. I was rarely getting more than 1 MBs with True so a little better. Overseas downloads collapse in the evening in exactly the same way as True so I assume everyone is sharing the same international gateway.

The 590B package is for 10Mbs. 15Mbs costs 900B. Both plus VAT and with a discount for paying in advance. http://www.3bb.co.th/3bb/product/product/en/adsl/select.php

So not too sure exactly what package you got.

What I am sure about is that my 900B 15Mbs package does provide well in excess of 10Mbs download speed from abroad on a regular basis and it never drops below about 4Mbs (assuming a robust remote server).

My DSL sync speed rarely varies from this:

Upstream Speed: 1146 kbps

Downstream Speed: 17919 kbps

You should check yours.

By the way, after the first full year with 3BB you qualify for free DTAC wifi, worth 99B/month.

Yeah apologies for that - I messed up and wrote the cheaper package price . I should have also made it clear that I paid 12 months upfront

For paying upfront the pricing was slightly discounted at 828Bht per month plus free WiFi for the year from day 1.

I did buy the faster package and recent testing show 1.7 Mbs .

While im happy with 3BB my condo seems to have finally got on the ball after their annual owners meeting and are offering attractive wired packages from AIS and something called World Internet WiFi for the whole building.

As part of the same upgrade we've now gone from 30 to 105 Channels of free digital which includes Channel News Asia, Euronews and Russia Today but nothing from West of Calais .

Over the last month the list price of HD TVs appears to have dropped dramatically my TV is now being offered at 25K and I would assume you can get further discount on that and there are some decent UHD deals around. Definitely a buyers or waiters market.