I was very excited when I found OverseaTV in January 2006 and I will be forever grateful to them allowing me to watch the entire soccer world cup last year live (I live in Chicago). I always felt however that at some point I may need to find a new provider or set up one of the new PAL slingboxes with my family in Germany.
When OverseaTV ceased to exist and after a little searching I found Shift TV. I am not sure whether it is the same company some of you referred to here on this site. My shift TV is owned by Netlantic located near Munich, Germany. It is an online VCR that offers 19 channels (including ARD and ZDF). I signed up for three months and so far I like it even better than OverseaTV. With OverseaTV since it was live I could only watch late at night due to the time difference and soon after I had signed up with them and they switched to a new streaming system I could not record anything anymore on my computer. With Shift TV I can record any show, any time. Its not live but a couple of hours later you either stream it or download the file. I can now tape shows for my German friends and give them a CD with the latest "Sendung mit der Maus" for their kids for instance. It works like charm and I love it.
Since somebody mentioned the Sylvester show that was missed. Here is what I did last night. I taped the entire 4 hour Sylvester show on Pro7 earlier in the day and took it to the party we were invited. There were lots of Germans there. I synchronized the show so that is was exactly 7 hours shifted. Close to midnight we could all even watch the count down of that show. It was great. After that we watched "Dinner for One" which I had also taped during the day.
If you want to try it, they offer a free demo. You can tape up two 2 hours and after the recording is finished you can stream it. Since the server is in Germany you may not get the best bandwidth at times. However when you sign up for three months (9.99 Euros/month) you can both stream and download from their site. Alternative you can subscribe for a full year for just 4.95 Euros/month. As a subscriber you have 10 hours to tape. Works very well. The only downside for non German nationals is that you will need to type in information taken from your German "Personalausweis" or passport. They use this info to confirm that you are over 18. I taped a few dozen shows over Christmas and had zero problems with them. Obviously you need to be a bit computer savvy. I have hooked up my computer to my flat screen and is very close to actual television.
One word of caution. As many of these services they too exist in a grey zone. They used to have RTL but the RTL group sued them and they had to stop feeding RTL into their system. The battle with RTL is still ongoing (has been for more than a year). So we may loose this system again in the future. For now I am very happy and hoping for the best.
Happy New Year to everybody and enjoy Shift TV.