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MY-IPTV & CAM Anywhere Review

By Mark Shapiro

 

Do you travel a lot? Do you miss not being to see your local news or watch local sports? Well, there is a solution. The MY-IPTV & CAM Anywhere from Honest technology is designed to let you access local cable television programs remotely from anywhere in the world you can get a good broadband connection. This is pretty cool. In addition, using the associated My-IPCAM application, you can also remotely access and monitor a security video camera in your home or business. The IPTV Cam system includes a small color camera and mike built into the box or you can plug in your own video camera and microphone.

 

Depending on your needs and what kinds of hardware you have, you can select among a few different flavors of the product featured at the my-iptv.com web site. If you already have a web cam and/or a TV tuner card in your computer, you can opt for just buying the software, If not, you can buy the combined package with includes software for both applications as well as a combination TV tuner and video camera box.

 

We tested the combined package. The IPTV & Cam Anywhere Deluxe is available for a price of $150.

 

To use this product you will need an “always on” computer with a good broadband connection that is located near to your TV cable box. You install the server software in that computer and then attach the IPTV & Cam hardware to it via a USB 2.0 cable. The IPTV & Cam box has two USB output connectors – one for TV and one for the security web cam. The package includes a single USB cable to connect to your computer from the box.

You can use MY-IPTV Anywhere and MY-IPCAM Anywhere simultaneously. When you install the MY-IPBOX (included hardware), it will be detected as two separate devices by your PC (TV/Video capture device and a webcam). 

However, device drivers for some webcams use up more CPU processing capabilities than others.  Thus, if you are using both applications along with three webcams at once, it is recommended that you run them on PCs with faster processors.

If you plan on using the system for security video, you also need to install the MY-IPCAM Anywhere web video software which allows you to set up the camera and variety of capture ad alert modes. You can also configure the image capture quality, alert cue and location to where you want the alert to be emailed. As there is no audio, you can not use this for web conferencing. The security cam is just used to capture video clips or still images and then emails them to you for review.

 

The most interesting aspect of this system of course is the ability to access and watch your local cable TV from anywhere in the world via the net. Once the server software is installed on your home computer and you have connected the cable connection to the MY-IPTV Anywhere box. You then go online and register it. You should be able to test the connection and watch your cable on your local computer.

 

The final step is to load the MY-IPTV Player software on your laptop and then log on to see if you can access the your local television. The remote player allows you to see and hear the video, change stations pretty quickly and blow up the image to fill your screen. You can configure your home MY-IPTV Anywhere computer to record shows while you are away and then you can watch them back via your remote broadband connection.

 

This is pretty cool. MY-IPTV Anywhere also features a scan window that will display icons from all the various shows that you can access.  Just click on it to go to that channel.

 

There is also an online channel guide which displays upcoming programs that are available on your cable system. However, you cannot simply click on the remote show listing to have it start viewing. You need to navigate back to the video channel player or to the cable scan window. You can use the channel guide to set up recording times.

The IPTV package can be used for videoconferencing if both parties have MY-IPTV Anywhere set up.  However, under many circumstances, you will notice a few second delays depending on the internet speed.  So, even thought it will work, if web conferencing is your main goal, MY-IPTV Anywhere would not be an optimal solution.

As you probably know there are a variety of other solutions on the market like Slingbox, Sony's LocationFree PC, and Pinnacle PCTV that provide a similar or better experience. SlingMedia’s Slingbox Tuner has a list price of $129 (street of $99 or so) and provides the same basic remote television viewing experience and odes not require a computer. That’s a big deal. In addition, SlingMedia provides a range of compression options that let you access your video on your cell phone as well as on your remote computer.

 According to Honest technology, MY-IPTV provides better video quality than Slingbox and others. That's because "MY-IPTV Anywhere uses H.264 (MPEG4 part 10) while Slingbox uses WMV format (MPEG4-part 2).  H.264 provides up to 40% higher compression rate than WMV which results in better video quality."

Also, depending on what kind of video you want to feed into the system, the MY-IPTV hardware offers both a coax (cable/antenna) connection as well as a standard video and audio in connection. This means you could plug in your camcorder or a VCR or any other device with standard RCA video and audio output jacks. 

If you are just looking for a way to remotely access your local TV cable and broadcasts, the Honest Technology My-IPTV Anywhere package is good but there may be other products available on the market that cost less and meet your needs. 

However, if you need a package that provides security video monitoring AND the ability to access to your videos, this might be the way to go. Especially if you need to access videos that are stored on your office or home PC.

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