Pirate TV: if you really want it, then you can

I remember there was a time when educated people discussed in all seriousness whether television would displace theater and whether it would eventually replace books. Today these discussions seem a little naive, although it is impossible to say that television plays the same role in people’s lives as it did thirty years ago. It has changed and no longer means as much as it used to. Trust in television as a source of information has been lost.

The goal of most “accessible” television channels is to impose their point of view, to present news events from a certain perspective, with the benefit of one or another political force. Television has long lost respect among the thinking population, who are watching less and less “zombie box”, preferring digital TV - thematic television channels broadcast by satellite or via cable networks. On alternative TV there is no 24-hour politics, terrorist attacks, endless “cops” and “teams,” stupid talk shows and soap operas. Instead, the viewer is offered sports programs, educational programs, documentaries about scientific discoveries, stories about life in different parts of the planet, and so on. The percentage of “garbage” is very low, and the viewer has the opportunity to choose what he wants to watch.

Unlike the channels of regional and state television companies, which are included by default by cable network operators in “standard” and “minimum” service packages, all interesting things like “24 Techno”, Discovery or Nat Geo Wild are hidden from digital TV users behind higher tariffs. If you want to watch something other than what is being forced on you, pay.

There is nothing wrong with the fact that such channels are more expensive. Any work must be paid, including the work of television channel employees, who, in theory, should receive deductions. It would seem that everything is simple - buy and enjoy a quality product. But in practice, not everything is as smooth as we would like. We are used to buying software and paying for mobile services. But television is a completely different kind of product. Where is the measure that can be used to evaluate the consumption of television programs?

Anyone who works or studies a lot simply does not have time to watch TV. And if such a person buys a month of TV airtime, in practice he only gets to watch TV shows for a few hours or a couple of days. This probably deters many from purchasing additional channels.

In addition, cable network operators are accustomed to “push” packages of television channels. But what is the point of buying a person the whole package if out of the hundreds of channels on offer he watches only two sports ones? Logic dictates that you would have to pay less to watch one channel. In general, this is a very controversial issue, which will probably be resolved somehow in the future. In the meantime... for now, you can, without suffering from remorse, look for alternative ways to watch interesting television. Moreover, such a possibility exists.

At the moment, there are three main ways to watch TV over the Internet: low-bitrate streaming, IPTV and torrent television.

⇡#Low bitrate streaming

Some television channels can be watched online. As a rule, this opportunity is provided by television companies that are present in the above-mentioned “standard” digital TV package. There are many programs that unite dozens of freely broadcast channels behind a common shell (Super Internet TV, Online TV Player and others). Unfortunately, the image and sound quality of such broadcasting is very mediocre, so streaming cannot provide a real alternative to digital television.

Online television: the best services and sites

The review presents the largest and most popular online platforms representing the majority of Russian TV channels, some foreign TV channels, as well as official online services and websites of leading Russian television projects and channels.

On these platforms you can watch almost all live broadcasts of popular TV channels online: news, programs, shows, as well as films, TV series, content for children

Online TV - popular services and TV channel aggregators

Official online services and websites of popular television channels and television projects

⇡#IPTV: all channels in digital

Internet providers and cable operators are often the same companies. IPTV technology, depending on the capabilities of the network and the services offered by the provider, can be implemented using various protocols. For example, RTP, UDP, HTTP, RTSP and other protocols can be used to broadcast video.

IPTV technology allows not only to achieve good image quality, but also to implement a lot of additional conveniences for the viewer. For example, a provider may present the possibility of receiving an information menu with a TV program, a time shift in broadcasting, and so on. The image quality when using this technology can be very high (depending on the speed of the transmitted stream), high-definition video and multi-channel audio are supported.

Standard definition vs high definition

Depending on the image resolution, digital TV is divided into SD (“standard definition”) and HD (“high definition”).

SDTV is a type of television broadcasting standard based on the 625/50 (576i) and 525/60 (480i) active frame resolution standards. Standard definition television uses a 4:3 screen format, close to the classic cinema format.

HDTV is a television broadcasting system with a resolution increased by 2 times compared to the standard one. The HD standard is a screen aspect ratio of 16:9 and a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. High-definition television allows you to keep the line structure of the image invisible and the details clearly visible, thanks to which you can view the image from a closer distance or use a larger screen. In addition, multi-channel audio is expected to be transmitted in Dolby Digital quality.

⇡#How and with what to watch IPTV

There are not many applications for watching IPTV. Most of them are built on the popular VLC media player engine.

To watch IPTV channels, you will need a playlist with television channels provided by your provider or (if you don’t have remorse at night) an alternative list of channels from another provider found on the Internet.

If you open the finished playlist in a text editor, for example, Notepad, you can see links that look something like this - https://XXX.XXX.XXX:1212/udp/YYY.YYY.YYY:1234 or udp://@ XXX.XXX.XXX:1234. If you know the address of the broadcast server, you can select the “Media → Open URL” command in the VLC player, paste one of these links into the appropriate field, and then click on the “Play” button. Of course, you can also just open the playlist file itself.

Some Internet providers themselves provide a modified IPTV client with the ability to automatically download a list of channels and configure the network. You can also use the IP-TV Player utility to watch channels. This is one of the shells for the same VideoLAN VLC media player.

⇡#What to do if IPTV is slow

Lists of IPTV channels obtained on the Internet are not always convenient for viewing. Very often, when watching a TV show, you can see an image disintegrating into squares, which is interspersed with color artifacts. This can usually be observed in networks where broadcasting occurs over the UDP protocol. Remember the joke “I know a great joke about UDP, but I’m afraid it won’t reach you”?

The problem is that UDP broadcast uses a transport model that does not guarantee packet delivery to the recipient. As a result, the digital stream with a television signal may contain large losses, causing failures in TV reception. You can slightly correct the “brakes” during playback using the caching settings. When adding a channel to VLC media player, on the Network tab, check the Show advanced options checkbox and increase the cache size.

It is also worth keeping in mind that for comfortable viewing of IPTV (especially channels broadcast in HD quality), only networks with high data transfer rates (at least several megabits) are suitable.

Digital television: what is it?

Digital television is a television broadcasting system in which the transmission of video and audio signals from the transmitter to the receiver (TV, computer, telephone) occurs in a compressed digital format.

An active transition to digital TV standards began in Russia in 2009, when the federal program “Development of Television and Radio Broadcasting in the Russian Federation for 2009-2015” began its operation. The basis for a unified broadcasting standard was the European DVB-T2 standard.

At the moment, DVB-T2 digital transmitters operate almost throughout the entire territory of the Russian Federation. 20 free channels are available for users to receive and watch.

⇡#macChange: I’m a cloud, a cloud, a cloud, I’m not a bear at all...

Another useful tool that may come in handy for those experimenting with IPTV is a small utility for changing the MAC address. Some providers provide their services linked to a unique network adapter identifier. For various reasons, sometimes it may be necessary to connect the network to another PC without a router. In this case, you can quickly change the MAC address using macChange by setting the desired parameter value. Just select the desired network adapter from the list and write a new MAC address value.

⇡#Torrent TV: watch and share

The technology of data exchange via the Bittorrent protocol is familiar to many. However, not everyone knows that the p2p network technology has a continuation.

If you paid attention to the statistics for downloading large files, you probably noticed the high data transfer speed. Such a comfortable speed of information exchange is possible thanks to the distributed structure of the torrent network, where there is no central node. The more users are involved in the process of downloading and distributing a torrent, the higher and more stable the download speed for each participant. The same principle can be used not only for downloading applications and movies from torrent trackers. Nothing prevents the same users from exchanging packets, maintaining a stable broadcast of the channel. This is what formed the basis of torrent television.

How to watch torrent TV

The first thing you need to do to watch torrent TV is to install the ACE Stream or Torrent Stream software. This application is a media platform that allows you to receive torrent channels and distribute them to other participants in the p2p network. The program installs add-ons for some browsers.

After installation you have a choice. You can use one of the browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox, or Ace Player, a slightly improved VLC media player, to watch torrent TV.

To watch broadcast channels directly in your browser, you can use the appropriate service. With it, you can quickly select one of several hundred channels and start watching it. All channels are sorted into categories, so finding the right topic will not be difficult. After launching, you should wait a while until the player connects to other users and starts showing the picture. The player in the browser can be switched to full screen mode.

In addition, you can use the Ace Player. Each torrent channel has its own identifier, which looks something like this: 3dead4c7264b5fb152b6fb63f30650acc4fe3372. If you know this identifier, you can start browsing. To do this, select the command Media → Open Network Stream in Ace Player, insert the identifier into the field and click on Play. This identifier can easily be “snatched” from any broadcast on torrent-tv.ru by right-clicking on the image and selecting the Share → Copy Content ID command in the context menu. As you might guess, IDs can be easily shared with friends.

After spending some time, you can put together a convenient playlist from the necessary torrent television channels.

Another option for watching torrent television is the popular XBMC shell, which turns your computer into a media server (for more details, see the material “Free media centers: the first step to a smart home.” If you don’t mind experimenting with the XBMC media platform, you can install the official Torrent-TV XBMC add-on and watch torrent channels in a comfortable environment, almost like on smart TVs.

Viewing options

Watching channels on your computer is sometimes a good alternative to watching TV. IPTV, on the other hand, provides the benefits of high quality sound and image, as well as the ability to record the content being watched or stop playback.

There are such ways to watch Rostelecom on a computer: using the IPTV player application, the Zabava application and the online portal itv.rt (interactive TV). Let's look at how to use all of these methods and what their features are.

IPTV player

To watch Rostelecom interactive TV on your computer, you can install the IPTV Player program (IP-TV Player). This application is not an official product of the company, but is intended for viewing any IPTV. There are paid and free sources.

After downloading, you need to run the file with the exe extension. Next, the installation window will open. Everything there is intuitive. It is only important to carefully read what is proposed to be installed additionally, for example, Yandex Browser components. If you don't need them, just uncheck them.

Next, you will need a very simple setup of Rostelecom IPTV. To do this, after launching the player, you need to select your region and provider (Rostelecom). Now a window will open to view IPTV.

There are no particular difficulties in watching IPTV. On the right side of the window there is a list of channels. You can switch from one channel to another by double clicking the mouse. This list can be hidden when you need to expand the image to full screen.

Sometimes you need to restart the IPTV player to update the list of TV programs

When installing this software, some problems may arise:

• The antivirus may perceive the program as malicious. In this case, you will need to change the antivirus settings or you will have to disable it while using the player;
• The DirectX graphics library may not work properly with the application. In this case, you need to change it to OpenGL in the player settings.

Zabava application

To view Rostelecom interactive television on a computer, the provider has developed its own application. This is an online Zabava program, created on the basis of the zabava.ru portal (currently, when going to this address, the user will be redirected to the updated version via the link https://itv.rt.ru/).

It should be noted that this name is already outdated, and the application can no longer be found under this name, but many users know it by this name. More recent products are released under the name “interactive TV”, but for a computer it is better to use the online portal.

For Rostelecom subscribers, using the Zabava application is free, others will have to pay for use.

To watch Rostelecom TV on your computer through this software, you first need to register. To do this, you need to enter your email and password. After this, you will receive a link by email, by clicking on which you can take advantage of all the benefits of the service. The application automatically detects the region of your location. So if it is not correct, change it manually.

To watch something on interactive TV, the user will need to select one of the proposed tariffs. If the user is already a Rostelecom subscriber, then you will need to enter the appropriate login and password.

Online portal itv.rt.ru

Currently, you can access the interactive TV portal from Rostelecom via the link https://itv.rt.ru/. This resource contains online TV and many licensed films in good quality at affordable prices.

At the same time, if you have an account, you can watch Rostelecom television, as well as TV on your computer.

To register, you need to provide your email and password. After you confirm your registration by opening the link that will be sent to your email, you need to indicate your region.

Further, if you have an agreement with Rostelecom, then you can choose one of the options: “Interactive TV”, “Interactive TV 2.0” or “Home Internet” and “There is a TV-online promotional code”. After this, you will need to enter the activation code for the set-top box. This completes the registration process.

To use interactive TV, it may take several minutes after registration until all account data is generated

Interactive TV and Interactive TV 2.0 differ in the necessary equipment. Therefore, you can use ITV 2.0 only if you have the appropriate set-top box. The main differences of the ITV 2.0 receiver: it is possible to connect via WI-FI, it can work with any Internet (the desired minimum speed is 3 Mbit/s). The set-top box can connect to any TV and can be easily reconfigured.

Subscribers connected to ITV and ITV 2.0 can use . That is, you can watch IPTV on any devices (up to 5). For mobile devices you need to download the Interactive TV application.

Although the ITV 2.0 set-top box works via WI-FI, the first connection must be made via cable, otherwise an error may occur when turning on

Users who are not Rostelecom clients can subscribe to have access to the site's services.

Now, when you access the Interactive TV portal, you are offered to use the Wink service. This is the company's newest product, which includes a web resource (located at https://wink.rt.ru/), as well as mobile applications and software for TVs. Thus, you can log in using one account from different devices. Wink features are the same as ITV 2.0:

• All kinds of domestic and foreign channels;
• Film products from all over the world;
• Collections of subscriptions;
• Availability of bonuses and promotions;
• Parental control (limiting content viewing by children);
• Ability to pause, rewind or record video.

Registration is the same. You need to indicate your email or phone number to which the confirmation code will be sent.

There are many packages, so the user can choose the one that suits his preferences. Now this product is the best in its field on the Russian market.