Well, in short Satellite Direct isn’t nearly as good as promised. I’m not sure if they have any fine print that disclaims the “3500 HD Channels” statement, but everyone should know that you won’t get that many HD channels. Heck, I can’t imagine that there are that many High Definition channels around yet even on a world wide basis. Claiming that you’ll get 3500 HD Channels is simply fraud.

So Satellite Direct leaves some things to wish for. Also many of the probably better quality channels arent available in the “one time fee” version that they’re selling. Instead you can upgrade your account for a “$4.95 trial month” subscription (not sure what it would cost from there on) to get access to them all.

Also some channels aren’t even live but “recorded programs” that start the same every time you start the channel.

So far it looks pretty fishy, borderline a scam. So should everyone forget about putting $49.95 into a thing like that?

I’d say so. The fact that you can make your favourite foreign or local channels readily accessible may be of some worth though, if it wasn’t for the fact that you can do the exact same thing on free sites like wwitv. Heck, Satellite Direct really is nothing more than a software shell for a free streaming site. Plus the navigation system in SD doesn’t give you much overview, at least until you’ve constructed that list of “favourites” that are more easily accessible. From the start there is no system to sort out channels by category and such. The only way to sort is by country, and when selecting for example “sweden” you get a list of about half a dozen channels (of which all of them aren’t even swedish). Compare this to the 300ish swedish channels that are promised on the Satellite Direct home page.

All in all there aren’t 3500+ channels. Maybe about half of that. I don’t intend to count them, cause there is still a bunch. Satellite Direct Channels List.

Further many channels aren’t available a large portion of the day, and channels like Animal Planet HD, or FOX HD, ESPN HD and bigger networks like that, that at least some affiliates of Satellite Direct claim that they provide, are nowhere to be found.

To put it short. What Satellite Direct is, again, is a pretty poorly constructed interface to watch tv channels online that also are accessible for free at the networks own web sites, or free streaming sites. Even if the service can be of marginal use for some, they are basically selling what can just as easily be aquired for free, plus the fact that it is half a world away from what it promises (especially as to picture quality) and certainly isn’t something that is to replace your cable provider, makes it at the bottom line a scam. And since even a good internet connection often will struggle with stuttering images and buffering timeouts, I doubt anyone will feel the service is worth a $49.95 tag.

I rate it 1 / 5.
http://www.satellitedirect.com/
Update May 25th: It seems satellitedirect.tv is now offline. Satellitedirect.com claims to be the official site (that site though used to load content from satellitedirect.tv, but now instead uses “digitalsatellite.tv” as content source). Also clickbank hoplinks have started pointing directly to digitalsatellite.tv (they previously pointed to satellitedirect.tv, not satellitedirect.com). Sorry lots of domain talk here but the bottom line is that Satellite Direct are switching domains for whatever reason. Maybe their old domain or email is getting black-listed here and there, or they just want to get away from their old name out of bad publicity or otherwise. Either way it sure doesn’t look good. — end update.

The average picture quality of Satellite Direct:

(click the thumbnails for bigger versions)

Most are terrible. Some are ok, but I actually have yet to find one channel that lives up to true HD.

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Any site that claim to offer quality Internet TV for a one time fee I feel can safely be labelled scams. It’s simply an impossible business model to provide hundreds of quality channels legally without charging a pretty hefty subscription fee. There are working options for Internet TV, but then you have to pay accordingly. A2btv, for example, but the price tag is $99/month. There are also sites offering the same deal as Satellite Direct, but for free. An example of that is iFreeTV (affiliate link), and if you like to see what Satellite Direct is offering or if you simply prefer an application rather than free streaming sites, you can try that one out. They are all free streams though of course.

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Other services profiting the same way as Satellite Direct and offering either the same or similar content as them include domains tvnoop.com, hdtvkanaler.com, streamdirect.tv, tv-in-pc.com, satelliteultimate.com, satellitesoft.com, itv-pro.com, worldtvpc.com, direct-pctv.com, livetv4me.com, football-tv-live-online.com, satellitetvtopc.com, dtv4pc.net, to name a few.