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Have something to say about onlineTV 16 Plus? Say it here!
Have suggestions, comments, or need help? Post it here! If you know of better software than onlineTV 16 Plus, post it here! If you know of issues with onlineTV 16 Plus, post it here! Share your knowledge with all of us. :-)
It appears you cannot get the registration information needed UNLESS you sign up for the newsletter. It’s been my experience that while Engelmann does let us try some very useful software you had better be prepared for constant spam. This new technique of requiring you to sign up for the newsletter is something I will pass on. If someone else discovers a way to get the registration info without signing up for the newsletter, please let me know. Thank you.
Most software here required you sign in doe their newsletters which will be a spam. To resolve to not being bombarded with spam wmails, create an alternate email that you will be used only for this purpose.
[@Jhun Calvin] Honestly, this is the first time I have seen this ploy of signing up for a newsletter or you cannot get the registration info and I have downloaded and tried programs from this site for years. Yes, often you do need to give your email address to get registration info and sometimes you do get an occasional spam. However, it has been my experience that this particular vendor will send a lot of spam until you just attempt to unsubscribe or block any further.
Yes, you can use an alternate email address for spam if you like, but I just wanted to mention IMO you shouldn’t have to sign up for a newsletter at all if you just want to try a software program.
Intermittent – requires re-registering every time I open and close any “you must restart the program” window of ( non ) controls.
Presentations are not buffered or downsampled to stay smooth, for example, the Olympics’ downhill skying on BBC2 was jittery.
No subtitles, no closed captioning?
There’s a lack of sophistication throughout the user interface – right-clicking anywhere does NOT bring up a menu of possible controls.
Translations are naive at best – “You doesn’t have the required anytime license for Android”, and “Here select the webcam you want to listen to”, for example.
Opening ANY attempted control loses the broadcast I was watching .. so how do I tell it I want subtitles or closed captioning on a presentation that it has stopped presenting when I started looking for subtitles or closed captioning controls for that presentation that is no longer on screen?
I do like that I can eavesdrop on my family who is staying in Antarctica – there’s a webcam there – so, thanks for that feature … though the 60-seconds-between refreshes has NOT moved any penguins in a -l-o-n-g- time!
NO webcams show movement.
Unavailable webcams interrupt the flow of toggling between webcams – instead, I suggest to just popup a “nothing here” message and go away, don’t make me click on the “nothing here” message.
It’s weird to be told that the Grand Canyon is not available! =8^o Where did it go?
It lists “Toronto, Canada” under “USA”.
That’s fair, considering most US residents think they are in America and that Europe is one country, or Africa is one country.
It would be nice to have a seek feature where it just cycled between all available webcams, or all available TV stations, or all available radio stations.
There’s no program help or reference – only 3 topics under the help reference.
Bottom line – a fascinating pile of resources cobbled together in an unsophisticated bundle with hardly any user interface, BUT I don’t know of any alternatives, or any competition – Audials, maybe? On the web, places like [ https ://www. earthcam. com/ ] and [ https :// www. earthcamtv. com/ ] show live action on webcams, and you can zoom in on someone’s license plate ( ! ). And some appear to be live on YouTube.
Thanks for letting us explore this and share.
( Those penguins STILL have not moved! )
.[@Peter Blaise] That’s fair, considering most US residents think they are in America and that Europe is one country, or Africa is one country. Snarky much??
In response to [user=’Alan T’ id=’19260047′]’s comment: “… Snarky much?? …”
Are you suggesting the onlineTV16 programmers were “snarky” when placing Canada in the US?
Or are you giving up, and agreeing with folks who consider all countries on any continent to be one?
On topic, I suppose this territorial identification challenge is part of what confuses the onlineTV programmers who apparently don’t get out of their parent’s basement much ( see subsequent response posts on “Snarky much?” ).
Sadly, observing that “… most US residents think they are in America and that Europe is one country, or Africa is one country …” along with onlineTV programmers putting Canada in the US is NOT “snark”, but a lament, an apparently accurate observation of an inappropriate and careless trait.
And that’s why the onlineTV program appears on screen with hardly any awareness of what years of well-developed program controls are usual and expected from aware programmers who study their environment, programming-wise, and country-wise.
Yeah, I’m guessing that onlineTV is missing care on the part of their user interface programmers.
But, hey, thanks, Englemann, for letting us explore this and share – onlineTV17 is Shirley around the corner, maybe even with user-interface improvements.
.This program might be better for European users than for United States users. I am in the US, and so I will tell you about some things I experienced. I do not know to what degree European users experience the same thing.
I have used this program from the various online giveaways for a few years now. I didn’t have a TV in the room of my testing environment, so when onlineTV came along, I tried it out. What I discovered was a program that has lots of issues from a non-responsive company. But, at least I could catch some TV while working on other testing jobs. Each new release still had numerous issues, but as long as I could deal with a slow start, slow switching channels, and limited choices, it fell into the “better than nothing” category.
While using version 15, I received an e-mail offer to purchase onlineTV 16 for $12.99. After having so many problems with previous versions and still version 15 had its load of issues, I was really mixed as to whether I make the purchase for ver 16, which supposedly was a big improvement. Frustrated with version 15, I bit. The short version of the results is that it isn’t any better.
Four months after purchase, the next version (17) was released but I was not allowed to update to the latest version. I submitted a question to support but did not receive any answer. Later, as I experienced other issues, I also reported to Support, but there was never an answer (not in SPAM either). If there is no response ever from support for a paid user, do not expect a giveaway will get any response.
Anyway, here are my observations.
When the program first starts, it spends some time getting connected; expect as much as two to three minutes or more to get connected. When it finally connects, it seems on a random basis, it displays an overlay window touting the value of their Android App that can be downloaded. That can be closed of course. Next, a screen is displayed that has different types of media that can be selected, such as TV, Radio, Online Radio, online Streams, WebCam, Newspapers, and Mediathek. There is also a final icon for “My stations” to store your own.
TV Usage
Channel Listing
Channel listings are on the left of the display area. In the display area (large black background), the “Last viewed” channel choices are displayed on a black background. The first time starting after having used the program before, the user can select one of the previous channels with a single click from the display area. Once a channel is either started or attempting to start, the other “Last viewed” choices are no longer visible. Therefore, you must select a different channel (or even the same channel) by double-clicking on the channel list at the left.For onlineTV to be able to show a TV channel, the provider must make it available somewhere it can be accessed via an IP address. Not many US stations make their content available via the Internet. New York City is the only U.S. city I am aware of that has made three channels available. If you like or miss seeing your favorite news personnel in New York, this program can be used to see the same content people living in New York City can watch on their local TV.
Channel Listing Issues
The channel list on the left lists several channels initially. At the top of the list is a drop-down list that allows the list to be filtered by country. The TV from U.S.A gives seven (7) choices:
CBS
CBS News
CNN U.S.A
Fox5
NBC
NewsMax
US MoviesTherefore, for common TV programs, CBS, NBC, and Fox5 are the only choices in the US, and all three are New York City stations. A lot of the time NewsMax is blank. US Movies is “usually” online with older movies. What I mean by older is black-and-white movies from the 50s.
Changing channels
Changing channels takes a long time. It is not like using a regular TV to switch. Sometimes switching may take 2 minutes to 20 minutes. If you were planning on watching one program until its end, then switching to a different channel that starts at the same time as the first one ends, you may end up missing the first 20 minutes of the show. The best case I experienced was a 1 to 2-minute switch. By skipping the last minute of one channel (especially if I expected it would have commercials), and then hoping that the new channel would start with commercials, sometimes I didn’t miss out on much. The times that I had to wait for as much as 20 minutes, I had to try over and over again. In many cases, the only choice is to exit the program, restart, and the channel would connect after the regular startup delays. By then you have already missed five minutes of the show you wanted to watch.Since the channel listing at the left takes up some real estate, you can maximize the display area to full-screen. Very often I found that using the program at full-screen then exiting, both sets of channel listings were missing (on the left and on the display area). Also, the menu items on the left still showing? Also, the three common icons at the top right corner of the window (minimize, maximize, exit) were gone. The only way to get them back is to restart the program or use the left arrow to go back to the list of different types of media to select TV again. It would be interesting to see if this is a common occurrence. To try, go into Full-Screen mode, then exit out.
Fuzzy images.
The quality of the video image displayed will not be anywhere near as good as watching a video online. The video data must be compressed a great deal to render such low quality. You will be able to watch the program, but you will not be happy about the quality.Displayed at the top of the display area when switching programs, the current program and time are displayed, however, it does not match the local time or the show you will see. It looks like the data is for Universal Coordinated Time. There is no way I have found to change the offset. There is a Setting section you should explore, but it does not solve any of the observed problems.
There is a place where you can add more channels. If you want to remove the channels you have added, there is no way I can find to remove them.
When these types of issues occur, it is a huge disappointment. For a lot of these delays in connecting or switching channels, I received an error message:
Error
Fehler #54487
May it helps to restart the computer.At other times, for no specific reason I can see, the program crashed:
Your onlineTV session has been stopped. This happens, for example, if you log-in at another computer.I have used onlineTV on only one computer so I have not logged in from another computer.
At other times, the program does not respond, and finally, Windows reports the error:
onlineTV 16 is not responding
Windows is checking for a solution to the problem…
CancelContacting the developer to ask questions, report issues, multiple times never got a response. That is not how you treat customers.
I wanted to use onlineTV due to not having a TV in my testing room, but the best solution has been to buy a TV for that room. Fast channel switching, lots of things to view/watch, and I have no regrets in making the TV purchase.
[@Peter Blaise]
I have Online TV15, which I have been using for several years.
How to switch to Online TV 16 without reinstalling. . .if possible.
But is it worth it !?“…You get free updates for the same major version…”
There was a pop-up that asked me to update which I did to: 18.22.1.24
Put in the same serial/reg/activation code …it says its an old one!
well the prog still works for now, will uninstall if it has a hissyfit!
time will tell.
This is old and has been given away many times before
As version 18 was just released a few months ago why not offer version 17 to us?
Thanks, Ashraf!
And thanks, Peter Blaise – I love your analyses, as always, and this time your comments, too.
And thanks very much for your review, Gary – very helpful!Hmmm
After regestering the product, it tells me to restart the app.
– now it asks for the code once agan, but it does not accept it, i get an “Error – Invalid License Key.”I tried to remove and re-install.
– Same story as above.If i press the “Click here to request your unlock code” i to the website and it says “Unfortunately this promotion has ended.
Thank you for the great interest, thanks to you we have once again made it to the top of the download charts.”Need help
The app doesn’t work for me
I get an error code c_403
version 15 use to work now nothing I don’t know if it’s a residual registry bug or a geolocation thing maybe it’s not available for my ip rangeCette application ne présente absolument aucun intérêt!On n’a même pas les chaînes de la TNT! seulement 4 chaînes françaises. Pas de traduction française!
Je l’ai désinstallée immédiatement.
Absolument nul!!!!!!!!
