AhlulBayt TV Without Sky, Part II

By way of introduction, if you live in the UK, and want to watch ABTV, you have three choices.

- Live web stream.
- Sky channel 842
- Manually tuning a freesat box, assuming you already have a satellite installed.

There is a recent, new way, and another way which flows from it, but I'll get to them later. Notice also how simple the first two sound, compared to the third.

It's hard to explain how happy I was when I wrote the previous piece. I think I was just happy that I no longer had any reason to contribute to BSKYB's coffers. No watching of ABTV on their platform meant no chance of changing channels and being tempted to subscribe to their sports, movie, or leisure packages. By which I, mean to say, if you already are a subscriber to these, well, I don't think it wrong, but I'd rather not be one myself.

Anyway, the freesat box does have its own issues, which makes it a less than ideal solution. The channel requires you to watch in "non-freesat mode", which is annoying when you have something else to record, and it switches back to "freesat mode" to record it. In other words, you can't watch it any time you want, unless you decide not to record anything. That "freesat mode" and "non-freesat mode" are mutually exclusive is the real issue here, and one that I would assume could be fixed by a firmware or hardware update, but I think that would require too much common sense of the part of the makers of the boxes.*

So, there has to be a better way. I dont want to re-install the sky satellite box, and I don't want to rewire the dish to provide additional cables to hook up another freesat box. It's a simple solution, but not elegant, and somewhat ungainly to have exactly two of the same devices hooked up to one tv.

Which brings me back to the new ways. The main one is a new trial scheme which allows mobile devices to access the live stream as well. Which is brilliant. An increasing number of people have smartphones on their person now, and the stream is available for Android phones, BlackBerry phones (I assume for their upcoming tablet as well), and iOS devices (umbrella term for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches). And it's brilliant. I can't speak for the others, but streaming on both the iPhone and iPad is of exceptionally high quality, and I would recommend this over the actual computer web stream requiring flash.**

The other half was serendipitous, and comes in the shape of an Apple TV I just bought recently.*** One of the many, many benefits of an Apple TV is that an up-to-date iOS device can stream video or audio to the Apple TV - so you can see it on your big screen. And in the classic Apple way, it just works.

Brilliant. Of course, it's not that simple. Streaming video to an Apple TV is instantaneous from within any app (that allows it), but streaming from a website is a little bit more complicated. I can stream the audio straightaway, but not the video. Not without running this hack****. But once the hack is inplace and activated, it really is quite simple.

1. Find the saved bookmark on your home screen and tap it.



ABTV should now be playing on your iOS device.

2. Tap the airplay icon when playing. It should only show that you can stream audio to the device. This step isn't needed really, except for demonstrative purposes. Skip this once you've done it for the first time.



3. Run the script that activates the ability to stream video. The video should flash. That's it. Once you resume playing, the AirPlay icon should then show that you can stream both audio and video to your Apple TV. Obviously, select the Apple TV option.



4. The video is now streamed to your Apple TV, and within a second or two, will show up on your tv. You no longer need a satellite to watch it on your tv. Doing this wirelessly feels magical.



Again, step 2 is purely demonstrative, so all you need to really do is steps 1, 3, & 4.

What do you need to run this? An iOS device. Running 4.2 or better. I would recommend anything with the A4 chip or better, so the iPhone 4, the recent iPod touch, or either generation of iPad, though theoretically the third iterations of both iPod touch and iPhone should be able to do this as well. You also need an Apple TV (obviously), and a tv that can accept a HDMI input, which is pretty much all of them nowadays.

Back to the beginning. If you want to watch ABTV in the UK, you now have 5 choices:

- Live web stream.
- Sky channel 842
- Manually tuning a freesat box, assuming you already have a satellite installed.
- Web stream for mobile devices
- iOS web stream to an Apple TV from iOS devices.

5 ways (and more to come, hopefully). This is brilliant. This is on par with major news organisations, though ABTV has a fraction of their budget, and a small core of staff who pour their heart and soul into making it what it is. More than anything, they refuse to be static, and continue to be forward thinking, as evidenced in the smallest of ways by this post. Please support them - They are worth every penny.

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*Of course, the whole thing could be solved by telling AhlulBayt TV to become a freesat channel as well, but it's not my place. The channel has, in my opinion, done more than enough by simply existing, without having to go through a technical exercise to solve a niche problem for one viewer. In any case, the decision to have a web stream for mobile devices is orders of magnitude wiser than becoming a freesat channel

** A little jiggery-pokery with the stream URL allows me to tap into the address of the video stream meant for mobiles, and play that on my computer. In my opinion, that is actually better than the one requiring flash, both in terms quality, and in terms of resource strain on my computer. If you are ever given the choice between H.264 and flash, pick H.264.

*** I would have reviewed this in a blog post, but another post headed Designed by Apple in California would be a bit much, even for me. Take my word for it, the Apple TV is awesome.

**** It feels weird to describe it as a hack. The iOS platform is robust and curated, and what this simply is, is an elegant way to run a JavaScript applet on demand in MobileSafari, by turning the code into a clickable bookmark. Other applets, such as those that reveal the source code of a page are also available and can be activated through the same simple, elegant method.