Have you ever wanted to watch live TV on your iPhone when your out and about? Well now you can with TVCatchup. This web service allows you to watch Over 50 channels including BBC One, ITV2, Channel 4, Five, Dave, CBeebies, 4Music, Virgin 1, Sky Sports News and Film4. So basically all the Freeview channels.You can also listen to a large number of radio stations.
Now as the name suggests you might imagine that this would be like all the TV on-demand sites where you can watch previous shows like the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4's 4OD. Well you would be wrong, the service actually streams live TV over the Internet, so you can't select specific shows just what is being aired at that point in time. So it does seem an odd title for it.
On a PC or MAC the service simply runs through the browser of your choice as long as you have Adobe's Flash player installed.
The site not only gives you a channel list to make your selection but a full TV Guide with the next 6 days listings. As for the quality of the video and audio feed, well that depends on your Internet connection. Their service checks your speed and attempts to stream the show according to your bandwidth. I found both the picture and audio to be acceptable, not iplayer quality I have to add but not bad at all. A couple of Nice features to note when watching a feed is that you can change the aspect ratio on the fly to match that of your TV. An impressive feature is that when you check the guide or go to change channel it is overlayed over the channel you are watching.
As for the iPhone. TVCatchup provide a tailor made site specifically for the iPhone which is clear easy to use. However the TV Guide is missing which is a shame. As for the quality, Well because of the lower resolution screen the quality seemed better than on my PC and I was amazed at how quickly I was watching a live feed from selecting the channel. It appears to be nearly instantaneous. I had a play using both wireless and 3G and was extremely impressed on both accounts of the quality, lack of lag and speed I could hop through channels. Obviously 3G was a tad slower and dependent on signal strength. For some reason that I don't know the iPhone app does not list as many channels as accessing the site on a PC or MAC. You only get 15 of the 50, however they are the main ones and hopefully more will follow. The iPhone however does appear to some features that the PC and MAC version doesn't get. These include the ability to pause live TV and resume from where you are and the introduction of a step back 30 seconds button. I have not fully tested how long you can leave the pause function on for but it certainly allows you to do it for a couple of minutes.
TVCatchup also have a good forum on their site covering support, news and suggestions for additional features. TV Guide on the iPhone would be mine.
And how much does this service cost? Absolutely nothing, it's free. No subscription or app to purchase. So what are catches? Well none that I could find, the service checks that the ISP you are connected to is based in the UK as they legally cannot stream Freeview channels outside the UK, which is fair enough.
This is probably one of the best apps I have accidentally stumbled across. Well to be honest it's not even app just a bookmark to a website tailored for the iPhone but if you add it to your home screen it looks like an app.
For more information and too sign up follow these links:
For PC or MAC http://www.tvcatchup.com/
For iPhone http://iphone.tvcatchup.com/
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