There must have been one time or another, when you have moved to a faraway city or to a different country all together and you are deprived of your favorite TV channels and your favorite TV shows. Or if you travel a lot, then again you will be missing your favorite TV channels like Star Sports, ESPN, CCTV5, SHTV, Fox, ABC, CBS, GolTV, NBA TV and many more. Luckily, there are several nice P2P(peer-to-peer) software that let you watch live TV on your pc for free!
I am compiling a list of the 5 best applications that let you watch free live TV on your pc. I will be posting the distinctive features of each player as well, so that will help you to decide which one best fits your needs. If you need any help then contact me by commenting here or by using the contact page(link at top).
TVU Player is my favorite out of all the applications because it is a no-hassle program which is backed up with great channels that you can enjoy at rather good quality. The player uses p2p to broadcast the channels so if more users are watching a certain channel then it will work very nicely. Even I had no problems with the buffering, and I have a slow internet connection(384k). Some of the more notable channels are Star Gamers TV, Sci fi Channel, CBS, Bloomberg, NASA TV, Fox News, Spike TV, ABC7 News, Fox News, CCTV5, SHTV, Star Sports, GolTV and many more! You will surely find something that you like there. From their site: “In the first year of service, the TVUPlayer has already been downloaded over 7 million times.” I highly recommend this to all users who wish to watch tv on their pc.
My second most favorite player, and sometimes even my first choice due to the great list of channels that it has. It also uses peer-to-peer technology to broadcast. So just like TVU, you will get awesome quality if more users are connected to a given channel. One of its main advantage is that it has a very fast buffering system(unlike TVU). Also, it has a very nice list of tv channels from all the different categories like sports, news, comedy, cartoons, movies, etc. Another great distinctive feature to the sopcast player is the VOD(Video on Demand) function, meaning you can select from a range of different movies and shows and it will play them from the very first minute!
JLC Internet TV has a huge database of channels(2000+) but as you would expect, not all these channels work. But to counter that, the program has a built in rating system. Users are able to submit, rate and flag channels. And with this new flagging and rating system you’ll easily be able to see which channels work and which don’t. Raymond from Raymond.cc has written a good article on JLC Internet TV.
Although I don’t use it often myself, TVAnts is a good option to watch tv. It mainly consists of asian channels though. Some of the channels that you will find on TVAnts include: BBC world, Espn, Al-jazeera, Star sports, Discovery channel, National Geographic channel, Truesports, Guandong, SHTV, CCTV5, Eurosport, Eurosport 2, CableSoccer, CableSports and more. For a basic user guide for TVAnts, click here. The TVAnts website is not in english so to download the program, click here. The program however is 100% in english.
5. TVKoo
TVKoo contains a lot of nice channels. NBA TV is one of them. I primarily use it for that but there are also many other chanels as well for movies, cartoons, tv series, and sports. The loading is fast, the streaming is very nice as well.
Although there are many more programs that let you watch tv on your pc like CoolStreaming, PPStream, AnyTV, PPLive and more but they are sometimes not in english and for the most part, will have the same content as the above mentioned programs.
Also, if you enjoy sports then I will also suggest MyP2P to you. It is a site that has a very nice schedule for sports related streams and links to streams. It also has a very active community that you can be a part of.
Comment posted by Weasle
at 1/26/2008 6:44:43 PMIt seems to me that every time I download one of these programs that advertise all these great channels they turn out to be 12 American channels and 1000 channels with worthless programs and languages i don’t know
Comment posted by Mathias
at 1/26/2008 6:40:06 PMNice list of programs to watch TV. I didn’t know there were that many. Installing a couple at the moment
Comment posted by Jacob Share
at 2/3/2008 1:12:41 PMI’m surprised that you didn’t mention Miro
Comment posted by Wanna watch free tv on your PC? Here you go!
at 2/6/2008 12:03:31 PM[…] days ago, one of my friends posted an excellent list of applications for watching free TV over the internet and got huge amount of traffic on that post. […]
Comment posted by Freaksword
at 1/31/2008 12:32:15 PMNice List, I’ll be downloading a few of these to try out myself now.
@Weasle, So that would be 1012 channel’s of worthless program’s then ^_^
Comment posted by avinash2585337
at 1/31/2008 7:44:15 PMGreat, Best application I have seen. I give it a try.
Comment posted by Vide brander
at 1/31/2008 7:48:12 PMI like second one, great applicatioin. Must try for everyone
Comment posted by hjays » Blog Archive » links for 2008-01-27
at 1/27/2008 4:08:42 PM[…] 5 Best Applications to Watch Free Live TV on Your PC Top 5 applications for watching live TV on your PC. (tags: cool tv application television internet technology) […]
Comment posted by hjays » Blog Archive » Cuz AFB don’t want to be below the Links
at 1/28/2008 7:06:16 AM[…] 5 Best Applications to Watch Free Live TV on Your PC Top 5 applications for watching live TV on your PC. (tags: cool tv application television internet technology) […]
Comment posted by Chris Nystrom
at 2/7/2008 8:16:24 AMWhat operating system do these programs work on? Do the work on linux?
How about non-live TV? Say I want to watch Hogan’s Heroes?
Comment posted by Fahad
at 2/7/2008 1:39:58 PM@Chris
Sopcast has a version for linux so you can try that out. I didn’t see a linux version for TVU or JLC though.Also, if you want to watch a certain show, then you will need to find the channel its on and at what time. It is not available on demand, as you are asking.
@Jacob
I have never heard about Miro before. I am only hearing it from you right now. I will give it a try to see if its good. Thanks for recommending.
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