I've been meaning to write this for some time now, but
couldn't find the time. Any how, to the benefit of all those who are planning/thinking of buying Peo TV, I'm going to break it down to you here. The goods, the bads and the hidden facts. I will try my best to make this analysis as objective as possible, but .........one never knows how it will come out.
First my setup. I brought the SLT Megaline Platinum package and with it came the Peo TV Gold package + adsl entrée package. A UTstarcom Set-top box, and a ZTE adsl router was installed free of charge with this. I later upgraded the ADSL to unlimited Home package (512kbps) as I wanted to download torrents frequently.
The Good Side of Peo TV
I don't want to go in-detail in to this as SLT Visioncom already has a good marketting campaing. A quick list of facts would suffice.
1.) "Timeshift TV " on the local channels let's you watch any program within the "past 48 hours" anytime you want.
2.) Some interesting programs on following channels
a.) Discovery
b.) Fox History and Entertainment
c.) Nat Geo
d.) Star World
e.) Star Movies
3.) Clear pictures without any distortion for all the channels.
well, that's about it.
The Dark side (and the hidden facts)
There is a lot to talk about here. Especially the things that are not obvious for the average user reading a Peo TV broacher. I'm going to list each problem with how sever it is to the viewing experience, so that you know how much it would affect you.
Occasional hiccups - Low severity
First of all, there are times when the Peo TV service stops function w/o any apparent reason. But that happens occasionally and a quick restart of the set-top box fixes the problem. You will also find that sometimes the set-top-box doesn't respond to the remote. Very annoying!!!
Takes ages to change channel - Medium Severity
Those of us who are used to quickly browsing through different channels to pick one of interest, PeoTv is a nightmare. It takes approximately about 5 seconds to change from one channel to another, and sometimes the channel doesn't change at all. The menus are equally frustrating. Now I know that this channel changing delay is due to the inherent limitations in IP TV technology, but there are ways to overcome these difficulties. SLT simply chose to ignore these for profitability, I guess.
Loss of time shift TV Service - Medium Severity
This has been happening more often recently, and it is very irritating when this happens. This can happen in two different ways. First some past programs simply refuse to play. (I'm NOT talking about programs older than 48h. These are should be accessible programs in local channels). When you select these programs from the menu, all you get is a screen indicating "system Error".
Then there are time when the program title disappears from the content selection menu. This usually happens to the only international channel offering TS TV- star world. All the programs are displayed with a common title and therefore you have no way of knowing which which one is the program that you want- thus effectively making the TS TV service useless.
Repeated Program Content - Medium to low severity.
There are two English entertainment channels in Gold package. "Star Movies" and "Star world". Both these channels have about 20% new content per day. The rest is just repeat of the same content. They usually play the same episode of a tv series 4-5 times a day. Each movie is repeated for months, and at least 5-6 times. So most of the time, these tow channels are useless
Lied about program content - High Severity
SLT makes a big hype about the number of channels that comes with each package, but most of these channels are useless. One VERY IMPORTANT thing that people don't realize before buying Peo TV is that most of the channels are taken from Indian content providers. Most of these channels are customized for an Indian audience. Following are just some interesting examples.
a.) Discover India - The discovery channel is actually not Discovery International channel. It features about 20% of programs custom made for India, and are usually of no interest to us. NatGeo and Fox History is just the same. They seems to be coming from the same Indian content provider, as these channels share content and advertising.
b.) Nickelodeon - I'm a BIG FAN of cartoons!!! (so What?). And I hate to see PeoTV lying to us about cartoon channels. The Nickelodeon in PeoTV is actually Nick India. At about 80% of the cartoons are Indian cartoons, some of which are even dubbed in Hindi. There are 2 or 3 other cartoon channels but they also offer the same useless content. (MAN I'm sooo pissed about this)
Actually, take a good look at the programs under offer in different Peo TV packages. You will see that about 70% of those are useless Indian channels.
Adult Version of Sinhala Classic Movies!!! - Severity Very High (as you might die laughing)
I'm not kidding. There are a very limited number of on-demand content on offer, and if you go to the sinhala classic section you will find movies like "Gehenu lamai" , "Gamperaliya" and "Beddegama". Following screen is what you see when you select anyone of them.
Classic !!!! right..?
Advertising on Pay TV - Medium Severity
Free-to-Air channels survive with advertising and that's just fair. But why should we see advertising on channels that we pay for. The rental for the Gold TV package is about 1600/= monthly and that's that. No advertising please!!!. Besides, SLT is not earning a cent out of the advertising that appears in the international channels. So why on earth are they NOT taking some action to spare us the stupid ads ????
Peo TV with Internet - Criticality Very, very very severe.
Now this is something that most people don't know. According to SLT, PeoTv service is seperate from the ADSL service and one service in no way affects the other. Technically, that's how things SHOULD BE. But, try downloading a torrent when watching PeoTV, or try to take a Skype call when watching Peo TV. You will notice that PeoTV becomes unwatchable, in such instances. The pictures gets distorted and the frames get stuck every 5 seconds or so, making PeoTV service useless.
(on a side note I've complained about this to SLT, and their conclusion was that there are Viruses on my computer!!!! I've come to believe that this is a prob with the adsl router, but they insist that it is not)
"Not so HOT" line - Criticality Medium
Stop telling me to call Visioncom to report these, cause I DID. Truth is, I've never once managed to talk with a Visioncom personal by calling them. They have a hotline number, but I doubt they know the meaning of a Hot Line. I guess they simply ignore the calls on the hot line, as they are too HOT for them to handle.
International Sporting events on local channels is not available - High Criticality
Please look at my earlier post here
That's it for now. Hopefully, after reading this, you might be able to take a better informed decision on whether or not to buy PeoTV. And also hopefully (Fingers crossed) Visioncom people will read this and find a way (and a interest) to fix these issues.
