When I got the press materials, I knew I had to check out the KylinTV. This is a first-of-its-kind offering that puts current Chinese TV programming in your living room no matter where you are on the globe. It's all delivered via the Web, but here's the sweet part--you don't need a computer to access the content. Everything happens in the KylinTV box, all you need to do is supply a broadband connection and a TV.
I opened the package and found something that looked remarkably similar to a cable TV box, a bright yellow set-top box with a remote control. A broadband Internet connection is required as the input to the set-top box, and the output goes directly to a television. Any cable modem, Verizon FIOS, or DSL line that can provide a link faster than 750 Kbps will do.
You'll find several available channel packages with the KylinTV, including some from locales like mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, along with a large video-on-demand library. Pricing begins at $16.99 per month for a basic package of 13 channels. In an agreement with the China International Television Corporation, KyLinTV recently expanded its selection with the Great Wall TV package for $29.99 per month. In addition, video-on-demand movies and dramas are available on a pay-as-you-go basis, or unlimited use for a $250 annual fee.
One function I found very useful was the NetDVR. This works like any DVR you'd have stuffed into your entertainment rack, but the recording isn't happening locally; it's happening on one of Kylin's servers. The KyLinTV automatically stores the last 24 hours of broadcast programming on every channel. I looked at the programming guide, and could choose to watch anything that had been broadcast since the night before. The really nice part, is that this is all stored on KyLinTV's servers and accessed by your KyLin box over the Web. No need to store or configure anything locally.
The on-screen menus and programming guide took a little practice but soon became comfortable to navigate. By default the menus are in Chinese, but a button on the remote control switches the on-screen display between English and Chinese. The availability of English menus is important, especially for a younger generation of Chinese-Americans who may speak Mandarin or Cantonese but cannot read the characters comfortably. As a student learning the Chinese language myself, I found it to be a helpful tool. That said, most programming is in Mandarin, but there are a small number of Cantonese channels and some movies in the VOD library, too.
Setup was real easy, since the box comes pre-configured. I plugged the box into my Sony TV with an S-video cable on one side and then into my SonicWall home router on the other with a Cat-5 Ethernet cable. Pow! I was ready to watch. You can opt to use wireless, but unfortunately, the KylinTV only has WEP encryption, not WPA/WPA2. Rather than downgrade my home WiFi to something less secure, I stuck with the wired option.
Kylin's smart about video tranmission, too. The setup uses an MPEG-4 stream that needs 700Kbps of bandwidth. Video is automatically buffered before being displayed on the TV screen to help smooth out the inevitable hiccups associated with streaming video across the Internet. When the Internet connection speed drops too much, KyLinTV automatically pauses the program to allow the buffer to catch up, similar to RealPlayer or Windows Media Player.
Under normal usage, however, that never happened to me. To make it happen, I started a 3.2GB download of the Fedora Linux DVD ISO and started a multi-player online game as well. That saturated my network enough that when I told my Chinese wife to watch her Mandarin drama program, the buffer filled up. Her show simply paused for a few seconds and then continued. There was no content loss, just the pause. Fairly slick, actually, and in most households with 1.5Mbps incoming bandwidth it won't happen that often anyway.
KyLinTV is a great new approach to bringing television programming to the Chinese population in North America and worldwide, with a large selection of television shows and movies. This is a technology that is only going to grow, and may find a niche in delivering international content from other countries, which is something KylinTV's parent company is rumored to be working on. Stay tuned.
-- reviewed and written by Jamie Bernstein
Price: KyLinTV Basic, $16.99/mo; Great Wall TV package, $29.99/mo; both, $34.99/mo; Unlimited Video On Demand. $250/yr additional (requires any one of the above packages). Prices are per set-top box & TV set combination; no discount for multiple TV's in one house.
Overall rating: 3.5
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August 6, 2008 8:28 PM
The KyLin TV does not support WPA security for wireless which most wireless routers and clients support. It only supports out dated WEP. This is a big flaw and it is an important information to provide to the users prior to subscription.
December 31, 2008 9:56 PM
Don't ever give this company your credit cards!! They will try to rob your credit card!!!!! They wouldn't issue any credit back to you even it's their fault to double charge your monthly fee. I would never recommend this company to anyone. When I try to cancel my annual subscription for next year, they told me their company never issue refund?? These people are very greedy and instead of making subscribers happy, they want to wring out as much cash as they can from the subscribers.
January 31, 2009 10:04 PM
I was looking into KyLin TV for my house, but based on all the bad reviews I read about this company, I'm going to stay away. thanks for the warnings.
March 20, 2009 12:32 PM
I've had good success with Kylin, and I've found their customer support to be excellent. Also, despite what some posters have said, WPA is supported. Originally, only WEP was supported, but WPA was supported BEFORE the post saying that it wasn't. I'm starting to wonder if the people posting negative reviews are even actual customers, because their information is factually incorrect.
I know for a fact that WPA was supported as of June of 2008, yet people posted that WPA was not supported months later. Either they don't know what they are talking about, or they are simply lying. In fact, the complaints about lack of WPA support sound the same from site to site, so I suspect that the same misinformation is just being passed along, or is even being posted by the same person.
May 17, 2009 10:17 PM
The box I was given to review did not offer WPA or WPA2 support. I contacted KyLin / Neulion to ask about this and was told that as of that time only WEP was supported.