I'm writing this today to inform you all on something I been working on for a little while now, Yep you guessed it, its the Greek TV 4 Me Box, now what is this little box, what can it do and why am I telling you all about it? Well let me start with a story, If you want to skip the story scroll toward the bottom of the page to find out prices and how to make a purchase otherwise please continue reading;
I first started mucking about with the idea of building a Greek TV box, so that I can save mum some money on paying for Greek TV. Mum had purchased a box from a company here in Australia for $450 up front and had to continue paying something like $79 per month to watch her Greek channels, what made it even worse was the fact that she needed to also be paying for a high bandwidth internet connection with lots of data (at least 500 GB per month) since the little box mum paid $450 for worked off a not so new technology called IPTV. Now IPTV has been around for a long time and I remember the days when I had a old laptop hooked up to my TV running some overseas channels. The idea has been around for ages, but its not until the last 2 years that IPTV has been really making waves. See up until a couple years ago there weren't as many streams around, especially when we are talking about Greek TV, but yet suddenly in the last couple years, Greek television companies have taken there channels to the internet with live streams. In addition many Greeks in Greece have been uploading TV shows to the net for family and friends alike to watch in other parts of the world.
All this has led to the rise in popularity of internet TV, especially for the Greeks, however up until recently the only way to get access to all of the TV channels and shows was to either pay for a monthly subscription, be a techno geek who knows enough to hook up their computer to a TV streaming what you like or if you had the know how and the money you could purchase an Apple TV box and pay for subscriptions to individual channels (very expensive in the end)
All of that said, there is one thing that Greeks really hate, and that is paying money monthly for things that don't work properly, some of the Greeks I know just hate paying money for bills full stop. Now when something good comes along that saves them money, its in my personal experience that every Greek wants in.
So this brings me to the nitty gritty......
Along came the Greek TV 4 me Box
As stated earlier I started mucking about trying to build a box that would save mum monthly subscription fees and something that would work, So I did research, purchased a bunch of boxes from overseas and started experimenting with them and installing media centre software. I tinkered with them and hacked some of the boxes to get them to work properly, my tinkering paid off and I then drew a conclusion and stuck with the best of the best, I didn't care what it cost as long as it was good performer and very little bugs. most of the boxes I mucked about with had many bugs and very slow compared to the box / setup I use.
So what setup do I use?
Well its no secret, I use what's called an Ouya Game Console that is converted to be used as a media centre / TV box & the reason as to why I use a game console is simply because the quality of this little game console is far superior to other boxes and runs our TV Box software flawlessly. The guys at Ouya and the guys at XBMC banded together to create software specifically to be compatible with the Ouya and run natively with minimal bug issues, so simply put XBMC on Ouya just about runs rings around the competition and it does this in 1080p. Now the reason why its so good apart from being a native application on the Ouya, is the Ouyas impressive hardware, It runs a quad core 1.7ghz CPU & Nvidia Tegra 3 Video card., that along with a native XBMC make this box tough to beat.
I don't say tough to beat lightly, there have been other box manufacturers out there with more impressive hardware, however they still fail to compare to the Ouyas performance running XBMC and I think it comes down to the right combination of hardware, quality of hardware and the quality of the native XBMC build. that combination has let the Ouya stand tall above the rest and until something better comes along in terms of XBMC performance, I will stick to the Ouya for all my Box Setups.
What can I watch using this Box?
Well in a nutshell, EVERYTHING.... yep you can watch everything, from Greek to Arabic shows, from Tv soaps to Documentaries, from Movies to reality shows, I mean everything, in fact I don't think there is anything TV or Movie that I haven't been able to find, its rare if you cant find something. Recently I was put to the test by one of my customers,
She Said;
"I haven't been able to find a Jerry Lewis movie anywhere, I've looked everywhere for it"
I said;
"Well I don't want to eat my words here but what's the bet we can find it on this box"
She said;
"If you can do that, I will buy a 2nd box for our bedroom"
I said;
"What's the movie called?"
She Said;
"Rock a Bye Baby"
Of course we found the movie, it took a couple minutes to find using the various video add ons available but in the end it was there, not many sources available so it was definitely a rare movie to find, but with XBMC and the right add-ons, you can just about find anything.
Ok all thats great but im here for the GREEK stuff, Tell me about the GREEK...
Ok lets get on to the GREEK Stuff, Well simply put when it comes to Greek Channels there are 69 Greek Channels available, of those 69 you can expect most of them to be working, however there are some channels that just wont work in Australia due to something called Geo-Blocking, Alpha is one of those channels, unless the blocking is lifted Alpha will not work in Australia unless you use something called a private proxy. You can purchase your own private proxy and watch alpha but that is entirely up to the individual. I will list some of the more popular channels, You have ANT1, ANT1 Cyprus, Mega, Mega Cyprus, RIK Cyprus, EDT (ERT), ET3, Skai, MAD. Bellow you will see some screen shots of the channels.
As you can see there are plenty of channels to choose from, and that is just the tip of the ice berg, there are Greek Movies, Greek Cartoons, Greek Shows On Demand. Greek Sports on Demand there is even Greek Documentaries to watch. It really is a powerhouse of Greek Internet TV. If you would like to watch a Video previewing the box please watch the video below.
How much does it Cost?
Well the cost varies depending on what's required but I will itemise it all out for you, prices as follows;
- TV box with Mele F10 Pro Remote - $350 AUD
- USB hub - $30 AUD
- Ethernet Powerline Adapter - $80 AUD
- Pre-Made Cat6 Ethernet Cable; 1m = $6 / 2m = $8 / 3m = $10 5m = $12 / 10m = $16 / 20m = $30
What are the minimum requirements to have this setup at my home.
Well a good internet connection is key, Cable internet or ADSL 2+ with unlimited internet data is usually best but the minimum would be 200GB of data per month which will give you about 8 hours per day. See you can get by on less data but its all dependant on your viewing behaviour and time. Watching thing in high quality 720p-1080p can chew up to 1600mb per hour depending on the source.
In addition to the above a line check on the distance to the phone exchange is usually a good indicator on internet speed, the close to the exchange, generally = better speed, the further away the slower the speed. I can perform this check and step you through on how to do a speed test on your current internet connection. This will give us a good indication if your speed is suffice for Internet TV.
How do I purchase this? What Next?
I require a minimum deposit of $150 per box, I do not currently hold these boxes on stock, I order them as needed, delivery is from the united states, boxes take approx 1 week to arrive. Remotes are ordered from China, they also have a turn around of 1 week, all in all these boxes cost me much more than $150AUD that said if you decide to cancel the order you will loose your deposit, If we have another customer in line for a box we will offer to sell your box to them however you will still loose $50 of your deposit money, We only do this because we are nice and we do not have to do this for you, so don't complain, we have been screwed around before and we stood out of pocket. If you don't want the box don't order it, only order if you are sure you want it.
Call me (Nick) on 0490 144 872
or
Email: GreekTV4meAustralia@Gmail.Com
to arrange payment via PayPal. We will invoice your PayPal Email and you can have peace of mind knowing your transaction is protected through PayPal Buyer Protection. Alternatively you can send a Money Order or you can contact me on my mobile to come to your home for a demonstration and I can Pick up the Deposit and invoice you then. Just make contact and we will take it from there.
Warranty / Return's
There will be no returns unless the box is faulty, in any case if it is faulty, you must pay for shipping back to the US for the box to be repaired / replaced. These boxes are not available in Australia and as such the warranty is in the US, We are not liable for faulty boxes, the money you pay us is for us to purchase the box and fee for us to set it up and programme it with XBMC and all the required addons. You are paying for a service, the boxes are not made by us or owned by us, once you purchase a box, the box is yours and you are technically responsible for it however we will help in getting the box sent to the appropriate people to have it replaced for you, should the box become faulty so that it is repaired / replaced under the 1 year warranty that the box comes with.
Contact Information
Call me or Email me for more Information, Questions , To make a Purchase or arrange for a shipment;
Phone Nick on: 0490 144 872
Email: GreekTV4meAustralia@Gmail.Com
