Surely W7 TV is only as good as your ISP?

[billblackhome]

My question is, I currently run XP Media Centre Edition which will run/play fine wether my router is on or off.
As W7 runs the TV option via the internet this must be surley affected by internet traffic, for instance my internet slows down from about 2pm as the American users connect.
So des this affect your viewing or is it subject to freezing/buffering?

 

[catilley1092]

billblackhome, welcome to the forum! I have the XP Media Center Edition installed myself, it is the best version of XP that I've ran. I only wished that I found it years sooner. Combined with XP Pro as it's base, it's a powerhouse!

As far as the TV option in Windows 7, your viewing may or may not be affected, depending on your ISP. If your ISP is cable based service (known as Time Warner in the US), your viewing is most certainly affected. I pay for 7mbps (which is adequate for my needs), but when many users are on, it can take five minutes for a one minute video clip to play. I'm currently running from a wireless modem, but my room is going to be reorganized, allowing me to plug directly into the back of the modem. Hopefully, the speed will improve. But my main priority here is security, if I get some speed too, that will be fantastic.

However, I know some that has high speed service from the phone companies, and they don't complain near as much. If I could afford it, I'd switch to AT&T, but I'd pay twice as much for service, after their dozen or so pages of taxes & surcharges adds up.

So to answer your question, yes, your TV is only as good as your ISP is, as well as what you pay for.

Cat

 

[TrainableMan]

With a TV tuner card I can watch TV through Media Center that is not via ISP - I can watch broadcast channels or hook up cable ... as I also did with XP media center.

But if you watch internet TV then of course it is affected by your bandwidth available at the time. It will try to buffer but if your connection is too slow it will freeze while waiting on content.

 

[billblackhome]

Luckily my ISP is something called talktalk who charge me £23 per month but in that I get all my telephone calls free 24/7 (we call abroad quite a bit so good deal for me) and we get broadband 'free' in that deal, currently speed test shows my broadband is running at over 5MB at the moment (0900) but this will drop considerably later in the day! Was curious whether W7 would be a disappointment for the TV viewing as the XP Media Centre editions works well and as I say even without my router being on!