Hi

I rely on freesat, which can be flakey in wet weather. I know nothing about streaming live internet content to a TV, but I see two possibilities for starters and would be grateful for any guidance you could give me.

1) If I bought a long HDMI cable, could I connect to www.bbc.co.uk on my iMac and stream live BBC1, for instance, from the iMac's 'Mini DisplayPort' output (with an adaptor to HDMI 1.3b) straight into a spare HDMI input of my non-Smart HDTV? Or do the broadcasters block this somehow for their live TV channels? And/or would this setup work for iPlayer, 4OD, ITVPlayer content? If this setup worked, then would an HDMI streamer provide an alternative wireless solution?

or 2) Would a Media Streamer such as WD Live TV stream live TV channels? Or is this content uploaded by broadcasters in a format that such devices won't handle? (I've read that WD Live TV works fine with on-demand content - as do other similar streaming devices.)

Thanks in anticipation

Roger

Instead of that hve you had your dish and setup looked at? I've got Freesat and it works fine in most weathers. Only when it's really windy and lashing it down with there be the occasional breakup.

I agree - it might be a dish alignment issue and perhaps it's time to consider calling out a satellite installer to do a check up. I have only once had rain interference on my Freesat set up and that was during a very heavy torrential downpour and only a channel on the Eutelsat 28A satellite at 28.5°E was affected and not the BBC channels on the Astra 1N satellite at 28.2°E.

I take your point, but I'm planning to ditch the satellite setup in a few months' time anyway and Freeview's not an option.

Is there a solution via the Internet?

You can get a mini display to HDMI, though some content may be blocked. BBC iPlayer will work though. If you are running Mountain Lion on your iMac you can Airplay or mirror your display wirelessly which is a much neater solution.

I used to do this but seem to remember I had to have another cable for sound.

You normally have to change a setting on your sound card to output digital audio over the hdmi connection instead of the analogue outputs . On a PC normally right clicking the speaker icon in the system tray and choosing output devices gives you the option.

Upgrading to Mountain Lion sounds like a good option, providing it's possible to mirror the display on my Samsung LE40LB650, which is only a few years old - but not SMART. You can buy an optional wireless dongle for Internet@TV - I think that's a proprietary Yahoo system.

Have any of you tried using a media streamer like WD TV Live with any live TV channels?