Television via ADSL: All solutions from slow to fast connect

TV for everyone on high and super high speed connections
No one is surprised these days in being able to receive good quality audio streams. With fast internet connections, watching TV channels in a continuous stream is also a possibility that is becoming more widely known. You can almost get rid of a TV Tuner card or external tuner box! Either on low speed or high speed, numerous possibilities are available so as to receive TV channels in standard or high definition quality. All ADSL subscribers with Free, Orange, SFR (Neuf, Club Internet, AOL, Tele2), Alice and Bouygues Telecom are eligible for a TV service with multipost options so that they can watch television on any computer (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).

Most internet providers make life easy to get TV working on the PC or Mac, either through the simple VLC Media Player or the excellent ADSL TV. You simply have to add your M3U playlist and the list of available channels will appear! The only carrier for which this is a painful operation is the service provider Orange.

TV on low bandwidth computers or those connected to cable
There are still internet users out there that don’t have access to high-speed connections. For those that have a connection speed of between 1 and 2 Mbps, we have demonstrated in this article that nothing is impossible. A lot of sites offer low bandwidth streams of French and foreign television channels. A web browser or third party application is all that is required to be able to view TV programs in a window. Even if cable providers provide speeds that are fast enough, at times even better then fibre optic, they don’t have a multipost service… This is unfortunate, as you certainly have enough bandwidth available to you! Due to this you will have to use TV via Internet solutions that are running at low bandwidths.

Pay TV on the computer?
Zattoo used to offer average quality channels (350 x 288 pixels). Since the 18th of June 2009, through a subscription service you can now view some High Quality channels (HiQ). In total there are 29 channels running television resolution (576 x 528 pixels) available on the PC, Mac and Linux that work with their downloadable software. This service is open to all and works even if you have just a 2 Mbps connections.

The other pay service for internet television is on offer from AB Groupe, with their BIS TV Online. Numerous offers are available with their integral pack ($7.10/month), cult pack ($7.10/month), integral + cult ($7.6/month) or on demand ($2.20/month). The list of channels available is detailed here. Among others you will have the standard French digital channels, general channels, cinema (Cine FX, Cine First…), themes (Animals, hunting and fishing, Manga, Action, Encyclopaedia, history, XXL and Canal XXL).