XMBC sky sports help please

[stoop]

Yes but without Mikey's add on it won't work on Apple TV. Unless someone else has added one?

Price went up after they had major problems with their card collection service. In short they found out they were collecting money for an illegal service and everyone had to re-register. Some got money back and others, like me, didn't.

I'm I'm letting the dust settle before I look at OSS again.

XBMC is a great media tool but is not without its problems.

[Sleuth]

Can someone enlighten me please ?   We were told bt a friend to watch a video clip of an  MX2 ANDROID TV BOX XMBC  ... It all looks so impressive and the box cheap to buy, but it all seems to good to be true ?
Looking on e bay there are 5 / 6 similar  boxes (xmbc)  all priced between £50  to £90 ish pounds.
All professing to give you access to hundreds of tv channels with perfect  picture quality etc

I  would like to purchase one on the strength of what I  have watched and read about them and take it to Turkey, but you know the saying and it worries me   " if it sounds too good to be true  it usually is "

Some of you guys on here seem to know quite a bit about these latest `tv gadgets` and I  would appreciate comments and advice please.
At the moment we subscribe to UK TV ABROAD   which for £6 per month and  80% of the time decent picture quality is good value.
But if there`s something better out there I am willing to try.
Any advice please ?

[billy3107]

Had one for about 6 months,my experience is that the android boxes do not Wi-Fi very well they need to be hard wired to the router Apple tv 2 unteathered jailbroken wi fi great but are expensive you need at least 3meg download speed to work all the devices and although some of the stuff on the devices does not work loads of it does.Never looked back use it in the UK for all the latest films tv series live sports uk tv and sky however you need to search a little for sky tv programmes.When I go to Turkey I just unplug it and take it with me.My android device is a G-Box Midnight The devices should come fully loaded with all the apps got mine off e-bay .Hope this helps and makes sense.My IT  knowledge is a little limited Oh and they update themselves The more you play with them the more things you find.

[Sleuth]

Thanks Billy,  all taken on board  :-)

[hamilton]

 I have a mini pc for about a year now.

 There are loads on ebay and amazon, different makes, but the chips are the same. I believe that there are only 2 different chips the RK3066 (dual core) and the RK3166 (quad core). If they are not loaded with xbmc its easy to do. Recently xbmc have posted an idiots guide on the net of there latest update, that even I could follow.

There is a learning curve with these devices and there not absolutely perfect, but they do the job, and once you have paid your £60 or so, all steaming is absolutely free. They are also 'google play' compatible, that allows you to down load 1,000's of aps as well as Filmon, BBci player etc.

Through xbmc you can download 1channel, icefilms, navi-x etc. Basically you can watch live or stream in virtually every film or TV programme that's ever been made (most of the time). They are not perfect, have to be re-booted at times and take some getting used to, but on the whole well worth the £60.

I have a Trosmart MK 908 (RK3166 quad core) comes fully loaded with xbmc and loads more.

Gary Goody is installing similar devices, and I believe he is loading them up with all the aps that each individual requires.

[Sleuth]

Thanks Hamilton for your comments


Billy ?  if we buy one ( same as yours )  we are not technically minded.. can we  /  do we just literally plug it in and away we go ?
also is there any or much downloading to be done ?

Basically our main interests on tv are    BBC 1 BBC 2  ITV  ITV PLAYER  BBC I PLAYER  and for me ANY FOOTBALL CHANNELS   like sky sports 1 / 2     BT  football   the new one.. and Al jazeera   channels for saturday football   .

Movies would be nice.. but not important ...  we can get the latest ones at  ten for a tenner when we are in turkey :-)

Any answers would be greatly appreciated from   Billy or Hamilton  :-)

[hamilton]

You have to set it up with your internet address, as you would any computer. To get BBCi player you have to have a VPN, the same goes for 'catchup'

 I find that BBCi player buffers more than 'filmon', 'notfilmon' is even better

 If you want to stream through 'filmon' or navi-x you can get live UK channels, there are many other ways as well without a VPN.

Sky sports is a bit unreliable, but is improving.

Probably the best thing you could do to get the hang of it all would be to load xbmc onto your laptop first and have a play with it. Or if you wanted you could use your lap top on its own, or connect it to the TV using a hdmi cable. The xbmc set up is on the net as I have said before. That way you will know if this is really what you want without spending any money.

[billy3107]

My G Box midnight came fully loaded I don't use BBC I player but I just plugged the box in connected it to the internet HDMI cable to the TV and it was ready to go film on and ex pat TV for English bbc itv etc and free view channels sports devil app for live football mash up ice films and 1channel for films and TV series.The more I played with it the more I found.Have a look at the g box midnight on you tube it will explain everything

[SteveJ]

and once you've got XBMC installed on your laptop then just take your laptop to Turkey. As Hamilton advises, you can run XBMC from the laptop or connect it to your TV with a HDMI cable and you've still got the laptop for emails, web surfing, games, music or whatever you want and you haven't had to spend £60 - £100.   

[Sleuth]

Thank you Billy, Hamilton, and Steve for your advice and comments ( printed off )  for now though we might for the moment just `sit on the fence` and see how it all develops with XMBC etc ..........as I mentioned we subscribe to `view uk tv abroad` for £6 per month.... works out for the seven months we are in Turkey  at £42 ... with generally with little buffering and often no buffering
Also occasionally ( for football ) I  subscribe through `view uk tv abroad` for `sky go`...  they charge £13  per month and I  must say again that generally the picture quality is watchable

It all comes down to picture quality for us .. and if XMBC  is through the internet, then the picture quality is not going to be any better than our current set up....if it was  proved better and more consistent then we would go for it

In fairness... we are really not interested in hundreds of channels  :-) just BBC 1  BBC I player  ITV   and ITV player, channel 4 , 4OD, and  sky go occasionally when I  dont feel like watching footie at the local bars

thanks again for replying everyone