I guess I never paid attention but this software has been out for some time. It lets you watch TV over the Internet. In other words you stream different stations that are captured by individuals or by the broadcaster themselves. The TVU Player uses P2P technology to spread the bandwidth. The key word to remember is that it’s FREE. If you are living in the United States you probably already get all the main stations over the air, but in Canada or around the world we would have to pay local providers for these channels (FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS). Many take it for granted but when you think that you have access to channels like the Cartoon Network it’s value becomes increased.
Additional interest comes from the fact that foreign language viewers will be pleased to know that there are Asian and French channels available. Paired with many music video channels, Animal Planet and HBO to name a few. Sports fans get their share with a few ESPN and NHL Center Ice (broadcasters here can charge around $150 for it!). Sadly there are a few down sides to this great system, since it relies on P2P to share the data amongst viewers if there are not many people watching a station it will reduce it’s quality and in some cases the picture became unviewable combined with distorted sound. The channels are broadcasted with no alterations, this means you see advertising just like on regular TV. This way the content holder increase their viewers and they stay happy because the advertisement they care so much about is still there. There is no reason to pay monthly fees mostly for a infrastucture and profit to a third party when the Internet could be used as low cost medium (bandwith use mostly on the user side).
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, than what about streaming video? It’s more like a thousand books. Just try it out and tell me what you think of it. If you live in a house of plenty and all the TVs are busy… well you just turned your computer in an aditionnal TV WITHOUT a TV Tuner card. The TVUPlayer 2.2 can be taken from Download.com [here]. Their official website: www.tvunetworks.com
[...] So now you have no excuse not to tune in for their return April 4th 2008 on SCIFI and SPACE at 10PM Eastern Time. And if you happen to be outside the US or Canada or don’t subscribe to these channels it’s possible to catch a glimpse of their content live using the TVUPlayer. [...]