In 2016, watching tv via the tradition cable or DVB-C might be further reduced by people watching on their tablets / via a computer. The first providers already have apps that work on Android and iOS devices. Streams are however lower than 720p, but very good SD quality. In order to watch these streams on pc, you can install an Android emulator.

I have tried to extract the streams from the apps, but as they are fragmented .ts streams, it is quite hard (but not impossible). Easier is to install one of the several Android emulators around. Tested are

• AmiDUOs
• Bluestacks 2
• Xamarin

AmiDUOs

AmiDUOs is one of the best Android emulators around, although not the easiest to understand. It installs quite a bit of things on your harddrive, but works very well after installation. It is not free, but requires activation after 30 days of use. It runs fullscreen, and does run several video apps. The debugging is not quite that good, as you have to take various steps to get the debug logs out and send them to the development team. The emulator has hardware video acceleration and has Android Lollipop. I could not get some video apps running.

Bluestacks 2

By far the easiest to set up, Bluestacks 2 now has hardware acceleration. After the first Bluestacks version, which was highly tweakable by altering the registry settings, the successor has various new features such as direct APK installing and an updated integrated app store.
Too bad is the top bar which holds the various tabs with apps that are open. This cannot be hidden and is very annoying. Overall Bluestacks works fine, but not as smooth as AmiDUOs.

Xamarin

TBA