TV over the Internet is a big thing nowadays. Up until a couple of years ago, most people did not have connections with a high enough bandwidth to cope with TV. Low quality video clips were acceptable but generally not part of the “internet experience”
YouTube (and the crop of similar sites that popped up not long afterwards) changed all of that as it provided a Flash interface to online videos, removing the need to worry about numerous plugins and varying controls depending on what format the video was in. Video started to be incorporated into websites and it soon became commonplace. Then Google bought YouTube for quite a lot of money and the commercial world really started to take note.
TV networks and advertisers are now keen to capitalise the audience they have on the Internet. They’ve realised that this untapped market of viewers haven’t stopped watching TV, they’ve just changed the way they watch it. Instead of sitting in front of a box in their living room, they’re now watching TV from their laptops.
The Internet has has provided the viewer with more choice - for example, the BBC iPlayer lets the view watch pretty much any BBC program again within 7 days. The quality is good, and will get better. Channel 4’s 4oD has similar functionality but also offers a vast selection of programs from their archives. But if on-demand is so popular, why are TV channels still broadcasting traditionally, with scheduled programming.
Some viewers prefer a more passive viewing experience, able to sit back and relax. They like to flick from channel to channel, discovering programs they’ve never seen before. So it is very surprising that it is very difficult to watch streams of popular television channels over the web. Some channels provide a stream on their website. Others let you watch them live via a custom application. Either way, you can’t flick easily. There isn’t one website or application that brings these channels together in a coherent and easy-to-use fashion. Until now.
Zattoo, founded in 2005, is a software application that is installed on your machine which allows you to watch a number of television channels, from across the world, live on your PC. Currently avaiable for Windows (2000/XP/Vista), Mac or Linux, the latest version even includes a program guide.
The current list of channels available is:
- ABC
- Al Jazeera
- AutoMoto
- BBC Three
- BBC Four
- BBC News 24
- BBC Parliament
- Bloomberg
- Canal 24
- CBBC
- CBeebies
- Channel 4
- Channel 5
- Community Channel
- Deutsche TV
- EuroNews
- France 24
- Information TV
- The Poke Channel
- Russia TV
- SF Info
- Sumo.TV
- TeleZuri
- TVE
- TVP
There is an update scheduled for 29/04/08, which will add more channels including BBC One, BBC Two and ITV (I understand there have been regionalisation issues).
The software itself uses very few resources and is easy to use, with a channel bar down the side of the viewing window which can be toggled on and off. The video can also be switch to full screen mode.
I’d thoroughly recommend Zattoo. I can see a time in the near future where we’ll only need one or two applications for watching TV on the web and Zattoo will surely be one of them (the only other one I think I’l probably need is Kangaroo - the upcoming on-demand application from BBC, ITV and Channel 4).
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