LocalBTV, part 2

Last week, I installed the LocalBTV app on my Roku device. I said I would give a check out over the next few days.

Well, it's been a few days. I'm not impressed. Well, a little maybe, but not a lot.

It's a great idea. Find local stations that will allow you to offer their content streaming. They focus on the minor stations, the ones carrying the minor networks, such as Retro TV, get TV, Cozi TV, Right Now TV, and so on.

While that's good, it's not really all that much. It's not that there aren't some good channels, it's just that the overall total is quite limited. And the on-screen guide isn't that helpful. I think that's actually a bigger problem.

I should mention that there are no local channels available for me. I'm in the Savannah market, and LocalBTV doesn't have any agreements with the Savannah stations. However, for those in my situation are provided a national feed. That's certainly better than nothing, and in many cases has nearly as much content as some markets. That is, while you get more if there is a local viewing market, there isn't a whole lot more. The national feed is okay.

The national feed has 34 channels. There are channels with older programming, some news, some sports (no major sports channels), some music programming, and the like. Think the local minor networks you can get over the air. That's what you would expect from LocalBTV is there are local agreements, and what you get with the national feed in other areas.

The service is good insofar as what it is, but the channel guide is the real problem.

Only seven of the channels have proper programming information. Only those seven tell you the actual episode or movie details. The rest don't provide any level of information.

To be fair, for the news channels, that's to be expected. For music channels, that's also to be expected. But allowing for those, you still have at least 2/3 of the channels with no details on the content.

I can't really blame LocalBTV for that, as they can only provide what the channels provide. But LocalBTV is providing channels that don't offer that level of detail, so it really does fall back on them.

My Streaming Live will only have LocalBTV on an occasional basis. It's good, it's just not good enough.