Tag: app-subdomain-redirection:sopcast

If you were to fix up the heavyweight P2P TV battle of the World and then watch them smash each other’s brains out, then you’d surely have to go for Sopcast and TVAnts – two monsters of the P2P ring. I’ve probably come to rely on both of these two applications more than my TV for sports viewing over the past few years because of the wide access they offer to English football streamed on foreign channels.

What they offer though is two quite different P2P TV applications. While TVAnts is purely about broadcasting and is heavily dominated by Chinese channels, Sopcast not only broadcasts but allows you to create your own channels as well. How many people actually do bother to set up their own channel on Sopcast is another question since the vast majority in the West probably use it for sports viewing like myself.

Added to the fact that setting up your own channel is not particularly well explained, it’s not a big edge over TVAnts but at least it’s there if you want it. The existence of this option however does mean that Sopcast always prompts you if you want to log in on start-up which is a bit annoying. While also heavily influenced by Chinese channels, Sopcast however definitely has a broader range of channels from all over the world.

The important thing to consider with any P2P TV app though is does it stream content well and are the channel names and listings decipherable? In the case of TVAnts it’s a definite yes to the former and a resounding no to the latter. TVAnts offers some of the most stable P2P TV streams around but unfortunately, most of the channels are in listed in Chinese and there’s virtually no way of navigating what’s on unless you know the language. Sopcast on the other hand is mainly dominated by channels that are at least labelled in English (albeit badly such as the intriguingly titled “Man & Woman Romance Epic”!!). The annoying thing however is that it seems not many of the channels are ever streaming (including the aforementioned epic I might add). Click on any channel on TVAnts and you’re at least guaranteed something will appear even if you don’t understand it. Continue reading “Sopcast v TVAnts”

There are a handful of P2P TV streaming apps out there but only a few available with interfaces in languages other than Chinese. These two monsters of the P2P TV streaming world offer exactly that with excellent streaming stability and good image quality to boot.

As a big soccer fan, I find myself naturally gravitating towards SopCast. Even though you can select 12 different languages for the interface, most of the channels are Asian but it’s these channels – such as Star Sports, ESPN Asia and CCTV5 – that broadcast most international soccer league matches. However, SopCast is for much more than just watching TV – it’s also for creating your own TV content, as embraced by its slogan “Deliver your media to the world!”. To do this, you need to complete a simple registration process on the SopCast website (if you just want to watch, you can log on as an anonymous user). To broadcast, you simply upload your video to one of their servers via an easy interface.

Continue reading “SopCast v TVUPlayer”

As we wrote in reviews for PPLive and TVU Player, television via streaming P2P is part of the future of broadcasting. The two previously cited programs are good examples of the technology yet in Sopcast they might have found a more than worthy competitor. This streaming P2P television application offers a wide choice of channels in a very sleek looking interface, whilst letting you broadcast your very own TV program over the Internet.

Sopcast’s interface is easy enough for any type of user. You can register yourself on Sopcast, a prerequisite if you want to broadcast your program but if you just want to view TV, you can log in as an anonymous user. We found that Sopcast probably offers the widest choice of channels of all P2P TV streaming applications, and organizes them via categories like sports, news or gospel tv. To view a channel all you have to do is double click the one you want and it will open a Windows Media Player side window. This truly separates Sopcast from the rest of the P2P TV streaming applications. By playing the channels in Window Media Player it allows you to set the size of the screen, adjust sound levels, keep a history of channels viewed…basically everything you can do with the famous media player. Furthermore, Sopcast is the only P2P streaming TV application we encountered that allows you to configure settings like port selection (extremely useful to maximize the use of your bandwidth and get better quality playback) or select among 12 different languages.

Continue reading “Broadcast yourself on the net with Sopcast”