Over the last 3 or 4 years, satellite TV on PC has become increasingly popular. This has been driven largely by increasing costs of regular satellite TV and cable, and also in the declining quality and range of coverage of public service channels. Thus more and more people are seeking ways to take advantage of new technologies to be able to watch satellite tv on their home PCs, but there are problems.

The big problem with satellite TV for PC software

With many software products, you always seem to find your rip off merchants and scammers. However the satellite tv for PC market seems to have been over run with more than it's fair share of fly-by-night thief's. I don't fully understand why, but my research suggests it's mainly due to the low barrier to entry in the market and also the proliferation of cheap, underdeveloped software which doesn't meet the grade.

Let me give you an example.

It was about 2 years ago when I first started investigated the satellite tv on PC market. I'd been trying to find a high quality satellite tv for pc software product, which did the job of streaming loads of channels on to my PC. Now I found a few promising options, but then discovered a cheaper option on eBay.

Big mistake.

So I stumped up ?20 (about $40) for a piece of software. Once I ordered to my surprise I was offered the opportunity to purchase a license to sell the software for another ?25 or so, which I did thinking I could make a bit of money. So there I was with a license to sell the software and the software itself. Great I thought, I can make some money back, it'll pay for itself and I can watch all those awesome channels I was promised.

Here's the problem.

The person I'd brought the software from obviously had done the same. And the software itself was a big disappointment, it was out dated, few of the channels actually worked. In two words, it sucked. Only about 10% of the channels worked, most of them in foreign languages I couldn't understand, all the decent ones were gone, caput. I couldn't use it and I sure as hell could offer it for sale, I have a conscious for goodness sake.

No refund policy.

The other problem was I couldn't get a refund either, as none was offered, so I was ?45 ($90) out of pocket no further ahead than I was before. Frustrating is an understatement, I was back to square one. When you do any business online you should make it one of your key criteria to make sure the website/business offers a return or refund policy.

So here's the moral of the story:

Do thorough research, make sure the company offers a refund or return policy. You should check to make sure the software is updated regularly. With this kind of software the channels change frequently and you need to know the software is the latest version and up to date.