Fetch TV is one of the few IPTV plays being made in Australia (the other being Telstra’s T-Box). One of the issues for many users has been that Fetch TV required ethernet networking. Wifi networks could not support the bandwidth required to have streaming TV. Until now.
iiNet Labs came to the rescue with two items, the BoB routers/modems and the Wi-Fi Bridge (reviewed here).
So with the iiNet Lab devices, can Fetch TV live on a wireless network? The answer is a resounding yes.
When testing Fetch TV, we found that the service works rather nicely. With available bandwidth of 8.0 Mbit/s down and 1.0 Mbit/s up (based on speed testing and the fact that the ADSL2 service is a fair distance away from the exchange) the Fetch TV service seems to grab around 2 Mbit/s of the bandwidth. Unless you are a mad BitTorrent user or suffer from other legitimate high bandwidth usage, the Fetch TV will not hit the net speed of other computers that noticeably.
The Wi-Fi Bridge uses the less cluttered DECT phone frequency rather than the traditional Wifi frequency of 2.4 Ghz. And when downloading media via the Fetch TV Movie on Demand or TV on Demand services, computer users can still use the network and IPTV services can still stream without issue.
The streaming of video (Services like Al Jazeera English MTV Discovery Channel and related subchanels) all transmit without lag or stutter. The vision and sound is top notch and little or no video/audio artefacts was seen.
We didn’t test the Freeview side of Fetch TV, partly because the test location did not have access to Digital TV reception. However on specs, with 1TB storage and 3 digital tuners, the Fetch TV box is one of the better PVR units available.
The main weakness of Fetch TV is not the impressive hardware or network load it imposes on the Wi-Fi, it was content. The IPTV range of channels are limited, with many channels having limited appeal (like the Manchester United and Chelsea Football team channels). Some of the IPTV channels like Frontier (The scifi TV channel) only had a couple of shows available, mainly from the Stargate franchise. For cable cutters, Fetch TV needs to negotiate wider access to content for both the streaming and on demand shows. However, the On Demand movies is the closest thing we have to Netflix streaming service. With a good mixture of Pay per View and Free movies, cinema lovers will get good value from the Fetch TV service.
All in all, for those waiting for Fetch TV to be available for Wifi networks, iiNet has done wonders with its BoB and Bridge products.
