Update: if you want to watch the Beijing Olympic, you can also try the PPLive program if PPStream is not working for you. Check out my post here.
Before the P2P TV days, if you want to watch a movie on your computer, you have to find the movie and download it using eMule or BitTorrent. The download might take hours or even days.
With P2P TV, you can just click on the name of a movie and start watching it. There are few P2P TV programs out there. My favorite one is a program called PPStream.
PPStream a Chinese program, I’ll show you how to install it and using it. It only runs on Windows.
First, turn on Chinese font support. If you are using Windows XP, open the Control Panel and click on Regional and Language Options. Under the Languages tab, click on Install Files for East Asian languages.
Regional and Language Options
Now open your browser to http://dl.pps.tv/ and click on the green arrow pointing down to download or you can click on the image below. The site is in Chinese.
PPStream Download
When the download is finished, click and run the install. You can keep pressing next until the install is complete or follow what I did in these pictures.
Click the button with (N) for Next.
PPStream Install 1
Click the button with (N) for Next. If you want to change to a different installation directory, you can change it now.
PPStream Install 2
The last option, I unchecked it. It is for running PPStream on Windows start up. Click the button with (N) for Next.
PPStream Install 3
I unchecked the following options. They are for extra programs. Click the button with (I) for Install.
PPStream Install 4
Installation is complete. The first checked option is for running PPStream after you press the button (F).
PPStream Install 5
Now you are done with installing PPStream.
Once PPStream is running, it is in Chinese. The channel selector is on the left panel. On the top there are two tabs. The one on the left is Direct Broadcast. The one next to it on the right is Video On Demand. The difference is Video On Demand starts the movie from the beginning.
PPStream Direct Channel
PPStream Video On Demand
There are different categories in the channel panel. What I opened in the pictures are the movie categories. You can double click on the movie names under them. Once the movie starts playing, you can watch to see what the title of the movie is. Not all movies are in English, some are in Chinese and some are in Korean.
[...] For those of you want to install PPStream, I wrote a how to article here. [...]
Hey.
Somehow, this won’t work out for me! I’m a Chinese-reader myself, but I can’t seem to install the program in Chinese. I double checked that I had East Asian Language selected, but it still won’t show up. The entire installation process was in perfect English (a shock to me), and the program has a bunch of question marks due to the un-able-to-be-read Chinese. Any idea what’s wrong?
Also, P2P isn’t streaming any of the videos. It just stays on the original scene for like hours and hours without changing anything when I select a channel or a program. When I did pick something non-Olympic related, it worked but I could only see the commerical. The rest of the video is in sound… Am I missing a necessary video codec?
Help!! I really wanna watch the Olympics! Thanks a bunch in advance!
btw, I have Windows XP. Does that change anything?
hmm. i restarted my computer and changed a bunch of language settings!
i then re-installed the program and it’s now in chinese! unfortunately, it says (in chinese) that there’s a problem with connection. it says it’s out of the normal range of connection or something.
what does that mean?? btw, i’m from the US.. i’ve tried everything to try and change my IP to an open proxy but it’s not working. somehow, websites like youtube and other streaming sites can tell it’s still in america.. am i doing something wrong o_o”
[...] it had some problems for me during the Olympic opening ceremony. (For installing PPStream, read it here.) Watching Beijing Olympic on [...]
Hi,
I also downloaded the player everything went well in English was able to follow, but after the player opened that’s where I got a little clueless it’s all in question marks etc.. like Alice mentioned earlier, it doesn’t want to play any movie when I click the left button and when I click the right one it starts adding songs from my I-tunes to the player but no movie.Can you help me with this please.I’m in Greece in case you need to know. Thanks
If you see question marks and junk characters, then Chinese fonts are not installed. You don’t have to have Chinese fonts in order to watch the movie. But it’s easier to have the Chinese (East Asian) fonts installed and see Chinese characters and find the movie section and start playing some movies. Once the movie starts, if it’s an English movie, you will see the titles. Not everything will play, usually, if you start playing, and it’s buffering quickly, then it’s a good connection and movie will play smooth. Other wise, try another movie.