Television Options

Lving off post, you have a few options for television, but if you're like me, and used to having 300 satellite channels at home, none of them are ideal.

Option 1: hook up to the Korean cable system in your apartment. Most of your channels are Korean language, but I've been told there is English HBO and several other channels in English (including Animal Planet and Discovery, apparently). I don't know much about this option, as we didn't go this way, so maybe someone else will know more.

Option 2: Go to the PX and buy a satellite dish and decoder box. You will buy the dish and lease the box. It costs about $100, and then you pay an installer to come to your apartment and install it for you. This costs another $100. For your trouble, you will be hooked up to the AFN network, and will have several channels, like AFN Prime, Sports, News, Spectrum, etc etc. It's NOT comparable to TV in the states, but they have a little bit of something for everyone.

Option 3: (and this is the one we are about to do)...buy a Slingbox. http://www.slingmedia.com/ If you have someone stateside who is willing to share their satellite, you can hook up to their signal and receive American TV here in Korea. My dad has offered to hook up an extra cable box for me (if I pay for it, he'll even do a DVR) in a spare bedroom and set up a Slingbox for me. You can control the box from Korea, over the web! Only one user can control at a time, so you will have to coordinate with your benefactor for time slots, or have a dedicated box.

Option 4: You can watch TV over the internet in Korea, using the networks' websites and/or tv sites like Hulu.com, or even the "Watch Instantly" feature that Netflix offers, HOWEVER, because we are located OCONUS, you will have to use a proxy server to access these sites. I use HotSpot Shield http://www.hotspotshield.com/ myself. It's free, and it will give you a domestic IP address so you can access these media sites.

We have the AFN, I don't think it's a waste of money. We both like sports a lot and AFN is the only way for us to watch things like baseball and football. Personally I like the news channels a lot too. There's always something on I want to watch.

There's only a few channels though - sports, movies, news, kids, and a channel with sitcoms and reality shows.

I just recently got the AFN box from the px and it was $13. There are 3 choices now...the $13 box, $15 box, and the $18 box. Your not buying the box from them, just renting it. Whichever box you choose will be the price you pay monthly or you can just pay for a full year when you first get the box.

Also, their going to tell you to buy the dish and box from them for $100 and then call the guy (they'll give you the card) for him to come and install it for $140. DON'T DO THAT! Just rent the box from them and then call the guy and for $140 he comes with the dish and all the cables you'll need and installs it.

So in the end you end up buying the dish for $13, $15, or $18 and then paying the guy you call to bring the dish and install it.

Do you know what you get for the difference in price for AFN boxes?

I think we will be going with this Slingbox (thanks to Misit's orginial post of FB). My family aren't big into sports and from what I can see that is the bulk of AFN channels. It will be a couple months but if and when we do get the Slingbox set up I will post reviews on here.

For each individual box i'm not quite exactly sure what the differences are. I do know that the $13 box is the older box, and they will try to push you towards getting the other boxes over the $13 box. One of the boxes, I believe the $18 box is HDTV...not sure if you'll recieve more channels or not.

As of sports channels, during the day time most of the channels are sports but they still do have a little bit for everyone. If you have kids it might work out for you, I believe one channel is cartoons almost all day long.

If your a big movie buff they also have a movie channel, which I like!

FYI I just found another site if anyone is interested. www.playon.tv You can get a free trial and if you have a Wii or Playstation 3 it allows you to stream Hulu, Amazon VOD, Netflix, and a couple others from your computer to your game console. The cost after the trial is $40.00 but compared to the price of Slingbox this is a bright shining light (if you already have the game console). I am playing with the free trial now. So far, so good. I know you can get Netflix w/o this but it is nice to have it in one little bundle (still waiting on my Netflix disc).

just a note about the internet streaming sites, including Netflix. You can not access these sites outside the US, unfortunately. You can, however, use a proxy server, which gives you an anonymous US based IP address for that session. I use it every single night right now, so I can get caught up on Dexter on Netflix The one I use is AnchorFree HotSpot Shield. It's free, you just download it, and whenever you want to use it, just turn it on. It does have pop ups and some annoying quirks, but for us, it's worth it. We can watch Netflix and just about any other online TV site (including the networks) that has the shows we like. Hulu, though, is hit or miss. They seem to be savvy to the anonymous IP addys...sometimes it works, sometimes (most of the time) it doesn't.

http://www.anchorfree.com/