Satellite TV Reviews

Free Satellite TV on PC Scam?

Too Good to be True? You’re Right!

My quest to get TV on my PC started with my purchase of a TV antenna for the PC. After the subsequent death of my computer, I was determined to find a solution with small, if any effect on my operating system. My conclusion? YouTube, a fair to poor solution as one is at the mercy of the person who uploaded the video – sometimes parts are edited or even absent. Nonetheless I got through the holiday season watching literally all of my favorite videos and some new ones too. I also had found Hulu TV, which has a limited selection but very short commercials. Then I started seeing ads for “Free” Satellite TV. I looked at a lot of these websites and finally found one with a free trial. Here’s what I found out.

Scamware
Software packages named “PC Sattelite TV”, “Satellite TV Elite”, “Satellite TV on PC”, “Satellite TV for PC 2008 Elite Edition”, “TV on PC Elite”, “TV 4 PC” are all scamware. You pay anywhere from $15 to $50 and in return you’ll get software that uses a fancy interface to link to online content that is free in the first place.

Satellite signals dont communicate with internet signals. You cannot stream a TV broadcast signal to your internet connection; This is the only way this kind of software could work, and it’s not possible.

What this software (when it works) provides is a searchable list of websites that offer streaming video, sites that you could find for free with a quick search on Google or Yahoo. Or their software incorporates a search engine that finds movie and TV sites on the internet. You can make your own “software” by using a search engine query, and then bookmarking your favorite sites. If you buy this software, you will find that most of the stations listed are foreign, and that the list contains numerous obsolete or non-working entries.

Want proof? Download the demo version of Satellite TV for PC HERE The free trial will get you five minutes of searching to find which station actually works and does not require you to download realplayer. Then it will ask you for an activation code.

Here is an EBay forum where most of the people reported terrible experiences with this kind of scamware. The ones who had good experiences reported that although some “channels” didn’t work, there were thousands to choose from. They didn’t realize that the program was just linking them to what they could have found with a little bit of work.

Now the fun part – there are dozens of sites that tell you don’t buy satellite software before you read their expose of that software, but guess what? They aer selling their own satellite software that does – you guessed it – the same thing as the software they are reviewing.

Here are some “free” sites that are advertised via Google Adsense (or even by folks on HubPages) – note that they are not links, so you can’t click them.

tvforpc.com: I didn’t dare click the links on this one – every other one was “adult”

watchtvonpc.com: this one wasn’t reveiwed anywhere other than promotional ads, so I didn’t visit. The best I can tell is that it is a toolbar that enables you to find stuff that already is on the internet. One site listed channels, and they were the same as the ones on the Satellite TV on PC software.

www.worldtvpc.com: This one is all adsense and clicks for cash – my guess is the hubber that put up this link owns the site. You can click on the links to get to your favorite shows, but as I said, you can do that yourself without lining someone else’s pockets with google pennies.

DONT SIGN UP FOR JOHNQ TV! It is advertised via adsense… HERE is why: it is not streaming video – it is links to YouTube and if you say you are over 18, links to pornography!