Realiptv Down

[Arleen Jerdee]

Irecently subscribed to Real IPTV after JC Media went down (Portal Home - RealIPTV). So far, this is the best service I have ever subscribed to, having cut the cord over 10 years ago. No buffering, all the channels, movies, series etc. They claim there gamma app has a built in VPN as well. They even have a refund policy. Anyone else tried these guys?

You can use RealPlayer to create playlists from media on your computer, streamed from the internet, or a mix of both. A playlist is a special set of bookmarks that RealPlayer uses to play a list of media (videos, music, news clips, whatever you choose) in order. For example, you can download several vlog(a blog, or web log, with video entries instead of written ones) entries or other multi-part videos and watch them continuously in order. You can also use settings to Shuffle or Repeat All of your selection.

A true 120Hz refresh rate can improve the picture quality a bit by reducing motion blur. It's not a massive factor for most viewers, however, which is why 60Hz TVs like the TCL 6 series and Vizio M series can still rate excellent image quality in CNET reviews.

On the other hand, true 120Hz makes a TV more expensive to manufacture, so it's rarely found in budget or even midrange TVs. And even higher-end TVs, like Samsung's QLEDs and Vizio's P series, use numbers higher than 120Hz to seem even better with motion.

In the US, our electricity is 60Hz, and our TV system is based around that rate. In other areas, it's 50Hz. If you live in Australia or the UK, just read "100Hz" and "50Hz" when you read 120 or 60.

TV is a series of still images shown fast enough that your brain thinks there's motion. How fast those image are shown -- their frequency -- is measured in hertz (Hz). Matching the 60Hz of our electricity, TVs historically had a 60Hz refresh rate. For this discussion, you can think of 60Hz as 60 frames of video per second.

Nearly all current TV content is 60 frames per second, or far less. Some TV shows are 60 half-frames per second, or essentially 30 frames per second, while nearly all movies are 24 frames per second. Getting different framerates to fit into 60 is a whole other topic, which you can conveniently read about here: 1080i and 1080p are the same resolution.

For now the important part to take away is that the stuff you watch matches, or is less than, the 60Hz of a normal TV. Unless you have a computer or an Xbox One, nothing you have will put out more than 60Hz. There are no 120fps movies or TV shows available. Yet.

So if 60 is enough for nearly all modern content, where does 120Hz come from? A 120Hz model creates it, converting the incoming signal to that 120Hz. The main reason is to reduce motion blur. You can read more about the what and why in What is refresh rate?. The short version is that by increasing the number of frames (or another method we'll talk about below), there's a reduction in the apparent blurring of moving objects. You might not have noticed this issue, but many do. It's inherent in all LCD TVs, and LG's version of OLED TVs.

One of the most common ways for a manufacturer to bump the refresh rate is using a feature called black frame insertion (BFI). This rapidly turns off an LCD TV's backlight. Or in the case of OLED, turns off the pixels. This means your eye/brain sees an image, then nothing, then an image, then nothing, and so on.

In theory, this is done fast enough that you can't see it. More advanced versions might "scan" the backlight so only a portion of the screen is dark at a time, though functionally this is the same.

BFI can be quite useful. It's a way to decrease motion blur without resorting to processing tricks like the despised/beloved Soap Opera Effect. If you've ever been to a movie theater that projects film (a rare breed these days), they used this exact technique. A shutter placed between the film and the projection lens, synced to the 24 frames per second of the film, would blank the image on screen while the next film frame slid into position.

An illustration of black frame insertion. The original video would have 60 images per second of the friendly fish. A TV with BFI would "insert" 60 black images in between the real images. How long this black image is shown varies depending on the refresh rate of the TV and other factors determined by the TV's designers to create the image they want you to see.

However, BFI is not without its negatives. As you can imagine, "adding" black means the whole image is darker. That in itself isn't a huge deal in today's age of super-bright TVs. Of more concern is the potential for flicker. The TV is now flashing on and off very rapidly, and even if that kind of thing doesn't literally give you seizures, it can be noticeable at best and annoying or fatiguing at worst. It largely depends how a TV implements the BFI, and the TV technology itself. You'll probably be more likely to notice it on a 60Hz TV than on a true 120. That said, at what rate someone sees flicker depends hugely on their brain and the overall light of the room and TV.

In CNET's TV reviews, for example, reviewer David Katzmaier notices flicker when engaging the BFI modes on many TVs, and he often turns it off -- in effect sacrificing motion resolution to get less flicker and a brighter image.

And while true 120Hz TV using BFI would perhaps have less flicker, but would probably be called "240Hz" by the company. It isn't, anymore than a 60Hz with BFI is 120. It could be less fatiguing to watch since its flashing would be far beyond most people's flicker fusion threshold.

Another way to bump up the "motion rate," or whatever a manufacturer is calling their inflated refresh rate number, is by including whatever processing is also going on at the same time. Instead of BFI, a TV can look at two video frames and create an entirely new frame to go in between. This artificial frame has the effect of smoothing out the motion, causing the aforementioned Soap Opera Effect.

So a company with a 120Hz TV might use BFI and claim the TV has a 240Hz "motion rate." On another TV of theirs that is also 120Hz and uses BFI, and also has the fancy Soap Opera Effect motion smoothing, they might claim the TV has a motion rate of 480 or 960? Sound ridiculous? It is. These numbers are largely meaningless.

Sony's MotionFlow XR 1440, for example, has a 120Hz refresh rate. I call them out because the number is huge, but it's worth noting that on their TV's tech spec page, they do list the actual refresh rate. So does LG on its Super UHD TVs. Not all manufactures do.

Since this processing requires a 120Hz TV to begin with (to insert the new frames between the real ones), this is really just an issue about the marketing, not the TV itself. You can nearly always turn off the Soap Opera Effect, if you hate it, or at least dial it down to something you don't mind as much.

As with any TV spec, it's buyer beware. When a high-end TV has a popular feature, every company would like their budget TVs to seem like they have the same feature, by any means necessary. If refresh rate is something important to you, and if you hate motion blur, don't take a company's numbers at face value.

Annoyingly, one company's "240" could be a 120Hz TV, while another company's "240" could be a 60Hz TV. Some companies will loudly promote their artificial TruMotion/MotionFlow/MotionBlahBlah number, but in the spec chart will list the actual refresh rate. Others will only list their "fake" number, requiring you to read TV reviews to determine what's going on.

Got a question for Geoff? First, check out all the other articles he's written on topics like why all HDMI cables are the same, TV resolutions explained, LED LCD vs. OLED and more. Still have a question? Tweet at him @TechWriterGeoff, then check out his travel photography on Instagram. He also thinks you should check out his best-selling sci-fi novel and its sequel.

The report was done by Sandvine in Waterloo, Ont., a broadband equipment company that tracks home internet usage. It studied anonymous home internet traffic from thousands of Canadian and U.S. internet providers during the month of September.

Sandvine spokesperson, Dan Deeth, says because these pirated TV services demand a fee, they pose "a real threat" to Canada's cultural industries. That's because if Canadians are paying the pirates, they may have less money to put toward legitimate TV services.

Chandrasekar says his company has lost close to $4 million in revenue over the past five years, and he blames a good portion of the decline on lost subscribers who have turned to piracy, including black market live TV services.

To combat the growing pirated TV trend, Deeth says it needs to be tackled on many fronts. Besides targeting the people who operate the services, he says authorities can also work with payment companies used by the pirates.

When Netflix cracked down on people who paid for unblocking services to access content restricted to other countries, PayPal disallowed at least two unblocking companies from offering its payment services.

I know there are few other options like watch it online or using XBMC, but that would be an overhead for my mom. I want something simple for her, like she can change channels thru remote easily (not browse websites for watching her favourite shows). Till now, I have heard about the below options.

I use Yupp TV on my Samsung Smart TV through their app. Video quality is pretty good (similar to other providers I have seen). Have a look at their offerings online and if it suits you then go for it. I got an annual subscription (pretty cost-effective) of their Diamong package very cheap for $100 when they ran a promotion earlier in the year.

PROS:

App for Samsung Smart TV which makes TV channels easy to navigate.

No need of extra device (or set top box). This saves you from the risk of getting your hardware failed after 1 year (like in RealTV).

24x7 Support

Live Channels

Free Hindi Movies Subscription for 1 Year (though I would hardly use that)

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