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Television

Philo Live TV

I canceled my live TV cable connection around 5 years back and signed up to Amazon Video, HBO, Hulu and Netflix for my TV fix. In addition to subscribing to those 4 I also have a YouTube, F1 TV and a UFC Arabia subscription bringing the total number of subscriptions to 7. But, even with all those subscriptions, I was still missing out on a lot of content, mainly shows on the History Channel and Food Network so I recently decided to sign up to Philo.

Philo is an internet television service that allows you to stream live TV channels as well as watch them on demand. There are over 50 channels on Philo including Food Network, History Channel, HGTV, Discovery and Motortrend. Since I signed up I’ve been mostly binging on Forged in Fire and Wheelers Dealers, two shows I like but previously only got to watch in hotel rooms during my trips.

I downloaded the Apple TV app for Philo and I found it fairly easy to flip through the channels and watch stuff, but it can be a bit overwhelming when there is so much TV. You can choose to watch shows currently playing live or watch older episodes that are archived and the combination of the two means you spend a lot of time just flipping through a ton of channels trying to figure out what to watch.

There are two main issues with Philo with the first being the price. Although it’s one of the cheapest options you can sign up to for watching live TV, it still costs $20 a month. That’s the most expensive subscription I have at the moment and to make matters worse, it’s full of commercials! At first, I didn’t mind the commercials because I hadn’t watched any in ages, but then when I realized I couldn’t skip through them and that they popped up frequently, it started getting really annoying very quickly. I wouldn’t mind paying $20 for live TV but to pay $20 and be forced to watch commercials I don’t think I can handle that.

It’s been less than a month since I subscribed to Philo and I am yet to decide if I will continue with my subscription or not. I’m still enjoying a bunch of shows and so I might keep the subscription going for another month or two before I make my decision. Like other subscription services, you need to use a VPN or a Smart Proxy service (which is what I use) to trick Philo into thinking you’re living in the US or you won’t be able to access the service.

If you’re looking for ways to stream live US channels, Philo is currently the most affordable route I’m aware of. For more info you can visit their website here.

39 replies on “Philo Live TV”

As a matter of interest, have you considered piracy for non live programming? If yes, did you forego it because of the ethical issues, or because you found it too cumbersome?

With ballooning subscription services (Disney and Apple are launching theirs soon), piracy is becoming the increasingly more convenient option, even when money is not the issue.

That’s quite a remarkable observation dear chap. Also, I do salute you for your rather eloquent command of the English language. I bid you farewell.

I go with piracy if I don’t have another option. For example with UFC I would download torrents of the fights but now that I have an option I would rather pay for it. Same with F1, used to watch illegal streams and then they launched F1 TV so now I am subscribed.

Using a VPN is piracy. You might as well just pirate from the get-go if a legal option is not available (UFC Arabia and F1TV are legal), it’s not a big issue. Posting publicly and encouraging people to pirate using a VPN isn’t so cool though.

And I know you will try to argue that you are giving the company money anyway, so it’s not all that bad, but that company doesn’t have the right to make money off these shows in your country. They didn’t pay for it. Philo can’t show AMC in the Middle East, and AMC is not making any money off of it. So now you are profiting people who don’t hold rights by using the VPN. Whichever way you spin it, it’s illegal.

How are those two the same? Amazon can ship anywhere they want, unless it’s explicitly agreed upon that they only have the right to sell a product in a certain region, in which case I am 100% sure they will follow the agreement. Philo Live TV didn’t pay to have any of the rights that you’re watching Kuwait, so it’s stealing, plain and simple. How is it any different than straight up downloading the shows?

I don’t have a problem with piracy, but acting like you are not pirating is laughable =/

I guess Netflix should just give up on stopping VPNs. I wonder why they dedicate so much effort to that? Can it be because rights holders get pissed off? And rightly so?

Plus, the clear difference in your example would be if Amazon does ship something that is exclusively held by a distributor in Kuwait, that would be Amazon breaching their contract. YOU going out of your way to deceive the company to make it seem like you are in the USA so you can watch the content they’ve licensed is YOU tricking them, and they are obviously trying to keep you away from watching their content since they’re not allowed to show it to you…

Don’t let your little cheerleaders make you think you’re making a logical argument here.

If Amazon was to ship to a US address, it’s allowed as well, since the free flow of goods is not the same as the flow of content. If you buy a product in the USA, you are allowed to move it out of the USA, through your own resources (Amazon can’t do it if they don’t have right).

If you subscribe to HBO GO in the USA, you can’t “move it out of the USA.” This would be clearly stated in the terms of the service.

Acting like you can only buy products from the country you reside in, or that shipping from a US store to a US post-office then to Kuwait is illegal in some way lol..

You’re being silly so I’m showing you that if you want to get technical like that then there are other things you might as well stop. Saying downloading torrents of The Deuce is equal to paying for HBO while using a proxy is just silly. Did you know as someone living in Kuwait you aren’t meant to purchase majority of the kindle books? Did you know by purchasing electronics from Amazon you’re hurting the local dealers? Did you know by having a burger you’re actually eating a cow that was killed to make it?

Sorry to break it to you but when an item on amazon.com doesn’t ship to Kuwait directly and instead you use a US forwarding mailbox to trick Amazon into thinking you’re US-based then you’re basically doing the same thing.

So stop trolling.

You keep telling yourself it’s the same thing. It’s absolutely not, you still have to go through customs to make it in the country. Keep telling yourself that your helping the content creators that have their content stolen by you on Philo TV, because paying for HBO directly is paying for HBO, but paying for Philo TV is not paying anyone but Philo.

Keep telling yourself you’re on the high ground when it’s clear you have no idea how licensing media works, especially when your argument is just to talk about electronics and burgers (media huh?)

Sorry but you’re picking and choosing your argument based on your personal conscious and not stating facts so it’s hard to have a discussion with you to be frank.

Fact = content creators and producers of the movies/shows you watch on Philo do not get paid when you watch it (they get paid by whoever LEGALLY licenses it in MENA). If that fact is true, it means you are ripping off the content creators just like pirates are (another fact).

But ok, I’m not stating facts but you are (electronics getting shipped is same as stealing content through VPN hurr durr)

If I license HBO content in the Middle East (doesn’t belong to HBO anymore dummy), you’re ripping me off and pirating my content. End of discussion.

How are you able to keep up with all these streaming services? And how much do they all cost together vs. a regular cable subscription?

I think they cost me the following (per month)
HBO 15
Netflix 15
Hulu 12
Youtube 10
F1TV 10
UFC 5
Amazon 10
Philo 20

Approx $100 a month with Philo. So not cheap. Amazon though includes Prime shipping so its technically less than that, Youtube u don’t need but I spend so much time there I would rather pay 10$ a month and not have to deal with ads. Hulu I could probably drop.

And may I ask what was the billing option you are using for each? With VPN you can mask your location, however if your CC is Kuwait based, they can catch you that way and deny you subscription/purchase (I faced this in several sites, not those in particular).
Are you paying using your US CC, or do they accept PayPal for instance, or do you use a Kuwaiti based CC normally ?

Are you having any DNS issues at all with Netflix? It’s been dodgy for the past month with me, constantly lowering resolution and taking ages to load. Strangely neither Hulu nor HBO have any problems

no error msg, my apple tv just don’t play anything (it’s like i’m not using internet), i’m connected via ooredoo router, could that be the issue ?

i have no clue, i just followed the steps changing the dns ip to manual … how about a guide ? are you using it on Apple TV?

Been using Philo for ages now. i have all my friends in the states move to it also. i was with DirectTv now for a while. but they keep raising the prices and eventually it cost me more than $120 per month. that’s when i moved to Philo to just have normal TV back in the house. there is a massive subreddit about Philo btw.

also i contacted Philo in February because of the ads. i was told they are just a middle man showing the channels and that the ads come from the Networks not them, and that fast forward will only work with DVR content not on-demand or live TV.

some problems i had with philo in Kuwait, it kept buffering while using smartdnsproxy when it should not buffer at all because DNS does not funnel the traffic like a VPN does, i then switched over to 4 or 5 other DNS companies and the problem i faced was. Philo worked just fine, in the living room, bedroom etc. but my Netflix kept throwing a proxy error and refused to play certain U.S only content. knowing i could get around this with a simple VPN and a WRT router i instead brought over my Google internet from the States and been using that, it does not pickup Kuwait at all, my current IP address is Dallas Texas. been 2 months since and working awesome.

i kind of like the ads to be honest, its a smoke break, bathroom break, tea break. stretch your legs a bit.

I rotate between having 2. At the moment Amazon and Netflix. I feel like I’ll never sit down and decide to watch 7 different things so I will cancel one and get another when I see there’s something I want to watch.

I think I pay like 5KD for the two which is a definite improvement on the years of 20KD OSN I had to deal with

I don’t do VPN streaming. If they don’t want me to stream it here, I will pirate it, simple.

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