I'm one of the many people who was recently affected by the shutdown of vaderstreams. Over the last couple of days I've tried quite a few different IPTV services, so I figured I would leave a review of a few that I thought we're Worthy.
I will say right up front, that I am not an IPTV expert. I'm also not a user that expects a hundred frames per second or full HD picture. as long as the picture is clear and stable I'm good to go.
Gears actually was not even on my radar. I had landed on a different site for an IPTV reseller and noticed that there was a live chat function. I explained what had happened with Vader's and asked if the service for that site had the features I was looking for.
at that point he suggested that I tried gears, which I did. He had me all set up and watching TV in about 25 minutes or so.
I signed up for gears with the guide and it cost me about $20 I think.
PROS:
Design and layout: one of the reasons that I stayed with vaderstreams for so long was that it was so easy to navigate and everything was so well organized and easy to find.
So far, I'm having a similar experience with gears. Everything is laid out in a very organized way which makes everything very easy to find.
Picture quality: as I mentioned earlier I'm not one of those people that expects for HD or 60 or 80 frames per second on every channel. As long as the picture is clear and there is little or no buffering I'm pretty much good to go.
So far, I've used five or six different channels and they've all been clear and they've had zero buffering
GUIDE: they used something called Mayfair, which is very easy to use and a scroll through. so far I found all the different listings to be accurate and labeled as they should be.
CATEGORIES: many of the services that I've sampled just kind of have a long list of channels that you have to scroll through endlessly to try to find the channel you're looking for. With gears they offer different categories such as movies, news, sports, documentaries, etc which makes finding what you want to watch a million times easier.
Catch-up: from what I can see they offer a catch-up service for quite a few channels. If I'm not mistaken there were probably 400 channels that offered catch up. This is something many other services did not offer.
Customer Service: the reseller I used to get set up was very responsive and answered all my questions not only completely but in a very timely manner. This is also something that many other services lac. Once they have your money they are pretty much done.
CONS:
Price: from what I've seen, it is definitely one of the more expensive services. I think I paid $20 and that got me the guide and one connection. For me though, it doesn't really matter. I'd rather pay the $20, and have a service that works and is easy to use than to pay $10 for one that's a little sketchy.
Upcoming Events and PPV: one of the things that I like most about vaderstreams, was that I could wake up on a Saturday morning check out the match center and it would list out all the sporting events and pay-per-views that we're going to be on for the next day or two, what time they came on and what channel they would be shown
There is an events and pay-per-view section, but I have not been able to find a way for it to list future events. With as popular as the match centre was in vaderstreams I'm really surprised that other IPTV sellers haven't done something similar.
CatchUp: I listed this as a pro up above, but there is a downside. They offer the catch-up service on four or five hundred channels I believe and you just have to scroll through all of them to try to find the channel you're looking for. It would be nice if you could divide these channels by categories the same way you can in the guide to make it easier to find the channel you want.
Maybe this review will help other novices and beginners like myself that are looking for a first or a new service.
Edited to fix some spelling errors caused by speech to text.
Also, I'm running gears on a shield AND for resellers, please do not bombard my messages with offers. I've already spent over $100 on subscriptions the last 2 days and from what I can see many services are getting their channels from the same places.
my only issue with them is price. I need 2 or 3 connections at times and that it to expensive using gears.