"I have a friend" who is very familiar with online TV. I, err I mean "my friend", need to resort to the internet in order to watch cricket games that aren't televised in Australia, so I've learned a lot about streaming over the past couple of years.
I haven't heard of DTV4PC before, sounds like a scam to me though. Mainly because of the "one time fee" - none of the software I've used I've had to pay for. Likewise, none of the streams I've used I've had to pay for. The streaming community has become a branch of the P2P community from what I've seen - everyone helps each other out where possible, just not as tight-knit or as personal as say WCC was. For instance, I've received messages from owners of certain streaming sites to let me know what "channel" and what time a certain match will be broadcast and I've replied to thank them - but I've never had hour long conversations with them.
The original free streaming player which spawned many other programs was TVUPlayer. This like the majority of streaming software is from China, so that is reflected in the channel list. A lot of CCTV (China Central TV) stations and other Asian networks, like Star Movies, Star Sports, etc. But there was also a wide range of international stations - NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, Channel 10 (Australia), BBC, etc. A lot of cable networks too, the likes of Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon, CNN and so on.
TVUPlayer declined in popularity a bit - even though it was probably the simplest of the softwares that I've used (it's interface was essentially a TV on the right, a list of channels on the left) I imagine it wasn't the easiest for the stream providers. I don't think there was any browser protocol they could use either, so you couldn't access a station by clicking a link on a website (not 100% sure about this though, it has been about 2 years since I used it).
The biggest streaming software out there, even though this too has lost a bit of ground recently, is Sopcast. Sopcast is similar to TVUPlayer in that it (the actual program) has a TV screen on the right and a channel list on the left. I have discussed this and more about video streaming in this article which I posted last February:
http://www.cricketmx.com/articles/read/ ... d-so-good/ (in the example, it was when the Zimbabwe cricket team toured Pakistan). Well worth a read if you are interested in streaming, I researched the topic quite a bit at the time, and the article is not too long.
Sopcast also integrates into Internet Explorer, which is good and bad. The good thing is that it plays out of your browser window, so it is very easy for stream distributors to distribute their material - a person can just go to a website and watch a stream without having to even open the software, let alone sort through a long list of channels. The downside is it only works with IE. Sopcast works on P2P technology (which I guess was a contributing factor in bringing the P2P and streaming communities closer) which can result in very fast speeds. You are downloading and uploading your stream from and to many different users. I don't have a great upstream speed, so it normally takes a little while to find a steady download speed (until that point it buffers quite a bit). Once I left a match on overnight and fell asleep. When I woke up at some point in the early hours I started watching the game again and it was crystal clear, just like TV.
Not sure of the crapware status of Sopcast - there are ads - but I'm pretty sure it is limited to a banner within the Sopcast program only. I don't think Sopcast collects any information. Certainly, I've never seen any ads within the Internet Explorer version of Sopcast, and I've never received any ads from Sopcast when the program is off.
The newest software that I've used is called SPVOD:
http://www.spvod.com/livee.jsp (once again based in China)
As far as sports go, they are in a league of their own. Their service has been exceptional in terms of providing matches that are hard to find (eg. Zimbabwe vs Bangladesh, most people would struggle to point out these countries on a map let alone know when their next cricket match is!). They take a long time to buffer though. Whether that is my slow upstream or something else I couldn't say for sure though. I believe they also use P2P technology - these programs like SPVOD and Sopcast are grouped in a category called P2PTV.
Windows Media is considered to be the pinnacle of video streaming. Consistently fast with very good quality, but it depends on the server speed of the provider because I'm pretty sure that is just a direct download rather than peer to peer, so the less people using it the better. In recent times I've found Windows Media links become few and far between, although if you pay for the privilege you could probably find some.
So in summary to answer your question: DTV4PC sounds like a rip-off; I would never pay for anything like this unless I had a very good reason (guaranteed or high quality match coverage) and perhaps I knew the person or people running the service quite well. If I am able to find streams for broadcasts which I
know are not in high demand and are very rare, then for the average person who just wants to see what TV is on in England or America or whatever then finding a free stream using one of the many available programs will be very easy.
And for the programs you should look at: TVUPlayer (if it's still around - I remember this was the best software for drama/comedy/movies/documentaries - not so much sport), Sopcast (has everything... you can pretty much type any TV station name in Google and find a stream, like "NBC sopcast stream", etc), SPVOD (sport only I believe - not just cricket, but gridiron, soccer, hockey, golf... you name it). Probably in that order too.
One other thing to add - all of these programs are Windows only (but Sopcast might also work on Linux). In recent times (last few months or so) there has been a sudden move towards flash based media, even though it is not entirely mainstream yet. You've probably heard of websites like ustream.tv, justin.tv... these websites also provide free TV/streaming if you know what you are looking for. And the good thing is it works on any operating system - it runs particularly fast on my Mac.
This post became much longer than I intended (I probably should have made this an article
) but hopefully it helps you understand more about TV streaming on computers.