IPad Apps for Watching Chinese TV

[feihong]

For those who have iPads, what apps are you using to watch Chinese TV? I see quite a few of these video watching apps on App123 but it's time-consuming to try them all. At the suggestion of John from Sinosplice, I've been using QQ Live HD (now renamed to 腾讯视频HD), but it recently stopped working (I live in the US). I really liked it because the quality was very good for scripted shows and it allowed you to completely download episodes locally before watching them. Now I'm starting to use PPTV, which has disappointed me in the past, but to my knowledge is the only other video app that allows you to download videos. 搜狐视频HD also works fine, but I think it only streams video (this seems to be confirmed by their App Store page, which claims that the next version will have a download feature).

Right now my strategy is to use PPTV for reality shows and Souhu for scripted shows (since the video quality of PPTV is sometimes bad enough it affects my ability to read subtitles).

I hope this post will be informative for other forum users, but if anyone has any recommendations I'd be happy to hear them.

[Areckx]

For iPod touch(and I suppose iPad would work) I just use UrTV, it's really just a link to youtube, but it works good enough for me because it has all of the shows sorted out so I don't have to search youtube. Although, if I'm using my iPod, I would be listening to a talkshow on tune-in radio.

I use Xunlei Player on my PC. I'll check out the ones you suggested.

[scoff]

Apart from the ones you are already using, I've found Qiyi's app 奇艺影视 pretty good. It let's you save videos for offline use as well.

[Gibbs]

There are two I use on my Ipod Touch one is Dopool (手机电视）and sometimes I'll use CNTN's app to watch live CCTV1.

[feihong]

I tried out Qiyi a little bit and I think the quality you get from it is in between that of Souhu and PPTV, which is not bad (the video isn't as good as Souhu but at least I don't have a problem reading the subtitles). One shortcoming of Qiyi though is the smaller selection of shows, which, now that I think about it, was also a problem with 腾讯 (neither had a single Japanese show in their listings). Qiyi also doesn't have a good selection of mainland reality shows, for example they didn't have recent episodes of 非诚勿扰.

It looks like the download feature of Qiyi works pretty well, though I haven't used it much yet. One weird thing about Qiyi is that when they downgrade the quality of their video to save bandwidth they also apply a filter to the video to make it look like TV shows were shot using traditional film cameras. This is... more than a little weird, but I'm not sure it bothers me enough to stop using it.

EDIT: Qiyi's download feature has some kind of weird limit on it. When I tried to download a second video, I got some error message about upgrading to a membership so I could remove the limits. Does anyone know anything about this? I know that with PPTV, I can download as many videos as I want.

[imron]

That's frustrating that Sohu have an iPad video player app, but not a video player for OSX (at least not anywhere I can find for download on their site).

[feihong]

I believe that Sohu's iPad app is just a fancy frontend to their website. Without the download functionality, there isn't that much of a difference.

[feihong]

Looks like 腾讯视频HD has been removed from the US app store. Which is weird, because that's the opposite of what happened with PPTV, which was temporarily only available on the Chinese app store, then later added to the US app store.

[scoff]

Have you tried PP Stream's pps影音 app? I just found it and from a quick check the quality seems pretty good plus you can download shows (I usually stream, so not sure if there is some type of download limit). Been using their desktop app for years without issue.

[feihong]

@scoff

I just tried it out a little while back, at your suggestion. It seems basically OK, but it has a terrible interface compared to the other apps. I haven't tried out the download feature yet, but plan to when I get a chance.

[guest1234]

just tried pp stream and have downloaded the Chinese bridge competition not bad .

I like uusee it streams tv. I am a mac user so can not use the desktop software but the Ipad is great. I am in the UK and missed the Beijing tv shows. This has several beijing channels along with the cctv and other usual stations.

can see the content on the web site www.usee.com

quality good and lots of choice.

[feihong]

Sohu finally updated their video app to support downloads, so I thought I'd do a brief write-up. It looks like they basically made a clone of PPTV's interface, but made it prettier. Video quality is pretty decent, as expected. More popular shows have a "super HD" option that pops up ("super HD" is just HD, actually). Speed seems pretty reasonable, too. I've been using mostly PPTV and Qiyi lately. I think Sohu's app completely eclipses Qiyi, but it can't quite replace PPTV. The selection of shows is surprisingly small compared to PPTV, and completely ignores all Japanese shows and more obscure Chinese shows (I wasn't able to find 毛骗, for instance). Unexpectedly, though, there is a Thai category--is there an emerging Thai wave coming on? In summary, Sohu might be the best overall Chinese video app, as long as you only want to watch the most popular shows and movies.

EDIT: After some extended use, I noticed a few more things. On the positive side, it remembers the position of the video from the last time you opened the app, and doesn't start the video from the very beginning. But a major drawback of this app is that there doesn't seem to be a way to download higher-quality videos. You are only allowed to download at the lower quality. So the quality of the videos you download might actually be worse than PPTV, in some cases.

[feihong]

Because Sohu's download feature isn't so great, I tried out PPS for a while. It was not a good experience. It easily has the worst interface of all the apps I've tried (even after the recent update), and is buggy to boot. For example, the filtering widget stopped scrolling and I had to restart the app to get it to work again. Although it supports offline viewing, it gives you about 5 error dialogs when you try to use it without an active connection. The video quality seems OK, at least for 城市猎人, but the biggest issue of all is that PPS chokes on certain videos. There was a certain point in episode 8 of 城市猎人--every time I got to that spot, the app would crash.

In summary, PPS is not a good app for watching Chinese videos, because it cannot handle the basic task of playing videos.

[deathtrap]

I kinda wish there was a dedicated app for watching Chinese dubbed/subbed cartoons. Just give me a list and let me click play.

On a more serious note almost all the apps/websites for watching Chinese videos(Youku, tudou...etc) are painfully slow outside of China. I'm considering a getting a VPN connection just so I can watch some cartoons.

[feihong]

Yes, many internet video services are pretty slow outside of China. That's why I always look for a "download locally" option. However I noticed that video streaming isn't so bad when you try to access them in the afternoon (corresponding to the dead of night in China). However, I'm usually at work during that time.

How will getting a VPN connection help you watch cartoons?

[deathtrap]

Well I'm assuming most of the slowdown comes from the great firewall itself, so hopefully a VPN would improve the speed if the connection itself is fast enough. Also, Im noticing a lot of the videos I try to watch are only available in mainland china, so I'll be able to watch those too.