I have always looking for ways in which to view Greek television live from Greece. I remember back in the day when we had a radio that hooked up into the coaxial cable and we were able to listen to live radio from Greece. We have definitely come very far technologically since that point.
In the recent past, and even in the present, there are FTA channels that Greeks have been shelling out a few hundred dollars for, and more money for the set top box, that gives great picture and feed directly into the TV. This is the best solution for watching Greek TV outside of Greece. However, depending where you are from, those satellites go up and down, and have been down for years now. Then there was finding a young Greek kid to come over and download the new BIN files for you to get them on to the set top box to see if you could watch the soccer games on Sunday. This solution worked in the past, but it is not effective or efficient anymore for most Greeks living outside of Greece.
In the US, Greeks have been able to set up a few satellite dishes from DirecTV and Dish Network, pay a lot of money per month, and watch a few Greek channels. Mostly, these are the time delayed channels, like Mega Cosmos and ERT World. This is legal, costs a lot of money, you must in the USA to take advantage the satellite providers services, and you still don’t get all the live channels like you do in Greece.
More recently, over the last 7 years, there have been two online companies who control the Greek television streaming market. I will refer to them only as GIPTV and MYTV. GIPTV is the more popular service, has many channels (Nova Sports never works now though…), quality is not the greatest, and you need to know how to use a computer to hook it up to your TV to start watching. Also, you can’t watch GIPTV via native applications on different platforms like Android, iOS, Blackberry, etc. GIPTV is only good if you know how to use a computer, but my yiayia will never learn and therefore not be able to watch good Greek programming live from Greece.
MYTV is a pretty neat service. It is a desktop application that only works on Windows. They offer fewer channels than GIPTV, although they have 4 Nova channels and their picture quality is much better than their competitor. However, MYTV has many faults. First, it’s hard to find online, to download, to pay and get it up and running. Second, it only works on the Windows platform, and we run into the same issues that GIPTV has. The cost is about the same with GIPTV. According to both companies, what they are doing is legal. However, I don’t think NOVA is unencrypted, so MYTV may be rebroadcasting a signal they pay for. Also, GIPTV has other FTA/OTA channels like CBC and CNBC. Both companies harness channels via satellite feeds, and rebroadcast these channels online through a browser or desktop application.
There are also several “free” websites that have streaming links of Greek television. I don’t even want to post them here because they are terrible. The picture quality is terrible, the links always go down, they don’t offer many channels, etc. It’s a mess.
There has to be a better way. How can Greeks in the diaspora watch live Greek television, uninterrupted, on their television sets? This is what I want to see:
1. Live Greek television channels from Greece – Not Mega Cosmos or Odyssey and that stuff.
2. Good picture quality – By good I am referring to anything that is SD and better
3. Convenient – Being able to consume content on virtually any device
4. Ease of Use – Being able to change the channels with a remote control, not having to learn how to use a computer to watch Greek TV. If my yiayia wants to use this service, it needs to be with a remote control and set top box, not a mouse.
There is a solution to this problem. I want to know if there is enough demand to justify the expense of creating this venture. Do you already know of a better service? Please share it with us. Have you rigged up your own personal solution? Let us know.