Watch Freeview TV on your PC/Mac

Have you ever wanted to watch television straight from your computer, but can’t because: a) you don’t want to buy a TV tuner, b) you can’t because you have a notebook, c) you can’t because you have a Mac? Here’s your solution: I stumbled across a nifty little program the other day which just might fix this!

Zattoo is a free cross platform (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux) application which utilises your internet connection to access over 40 Freeview television channels (the top ones in high quality) straight from any computer for free. It’s fully legal (so they say) and you don’t need any special features or a super fast broadband connection to access the TV.

The quality is average on the standard setting but when you move up to the high quality, which is available on the main few channels, it’s actually pretty good. The service is only available so far in some European countries – UK, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland – probably due to licensing rights. All that is required to start is to sign up on their website and login to the player.

The software itself works well – you can tell from the UI that it has been designed with Macs in mind. It is a clean layout with a pop-out channel chooser. There is also a TV guide but, strangely, this only seems to work with the BBC channels. The one fault I would give the service is that every time you load the program/change the channel there is a 30 second advert. This is probably necessary to fund the project, however.

As for the interface, this is also good, with an easy to use toolbar and the ability to resize the window or go full screen. One downside (not really a bug, just a feature that doesn’t exist) is that there is currently no ability to record or pause live programs. However, the team say they are working on this for a future release. This would be a great addition to the service and, along with fewer ads, is the only thing I would like to see in a new version.

Overall, if you are looking for a way to watch some TV on your computer without installing a tuner card, Zattoo might just be for you. Give it a try – it’s free! – and see what you think. In my opinion, this is a great unique piece of software and I have been using it more and more since I got it.

1 Comment »

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1. Hello from Russia!
   Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?

   Comment by Polprav — October 16, 2009 #

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