The service currently requires a plugin to work properly but this need will fall away in the coming month according to Techcrunch when the Joost Standard service is introduced. The plugin is still needed for live and high definition broadcasts while all other shows are available for users without plugin as well. The Adobe Flash plugin will still be needed but this is pretty much a standard plugin on most computers nowadays.

Rumors are that Joost will stop development on the software client to concentrate fully on the Joost website which they are trying to establish as a video based social network type of website that comes with all the usual features and functions of those websites.

The move will surely see an increase in usage numbers but the real question is if it will be enough to keep the service alive. Taking it to the web means that it now has to compete with many already established video portals such as Youtube, Dailymotion or Hulu.

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The problem is that it can be very frustrating for a broadband viewer. If you do have the bandwidth to spare and want high definition (HD) video, then Veetle is for you. It’s a Silicon Valley based firm who’s USP is to let the average viewer watch and broadcast HD quality video.

Veetle works a lot like popular video-sharing site Veoh. Before you can watch a video, you have to download and install the VeetleTV software on your computer. After that, you can watch the videos in your browser itself. VeetleTV works on Windows, Linux, and Mac so there are no OS compatibility problems here.

Rather than have individual videos displayed on the site, Veetle lists video channels. Depending on your preferences you can choose from action movies, the NBA, European football, etc. amongst the current crop of channels. They also had a few channels covering the Olympics but those have been taken off for copyright violations. If you want to broadcast your own videos, you need to have a computer with a minimum CPU of 2 GHz in addition to a broadband internet connection.

Veetle reminds me of programs like Miro, Sopcast, TVU Player, etc. You install a client and then watch the videos. Since Veetle is relatively new, they don’t have too many channels just yet. Content seems to be okay. When I checked the site, one channel was showing a HD version of Blood Diamond while another one had the Japanese anime Hikaru No Go. The sports section looked nice as well.

What are you currently using to watch TV online? Would you like to try Veetle out or does the prospect of downloading the software put you off? How tempting is the idea of free HD video on your computer? Let me know in the comments.

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The website offers full episodes of all twelve South Park seasons; The best news is that they are freely available for a worldwide audience and not only US viewers. The image quality of the South Park stream is excellent, the actual resolution of the picture is 640×480 which is almost double of what Youtube is currently offering.

They seem to run a script that is checking for the country of the viewer but it seems like it is being used for advertisement and not to block viewers from viewing the episodes.

The language of the South Park episodes is obviously English. Some of the newest episodes can’t be streamed just yet and you receive a notification when they become available. South Park Studios is an excellent way to watch South Park online. I did add it to my bookmarks.

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The selection of tv shows is actually pretty good. You get to see Animations like The Simpsons and Family Guy, Crime & Mystery like Bones or Team Knight Rider but also pretty old – but still cool tv shows – like Simon & Simon or Emergency Room. Should be something for everyone, great if you do not know what to do for a certain amount of time.

Users from outside the United States, for example US citizens traveling to Europe or another location, can use the free application Hotspot Shield to view Hulu content even if they are abroad. Check out my article on accessing Hulu – and other services – using Hotspot Shield.

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Image quality is quite good and you can view several country related and public tv stations. Since Zattoo is new in the UK I would like to list the TV stations that are currently UK exclusive, they are: Channel 4, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, Cbeebies, CBBC and Channel 5, Community Channel and Information TV. The last three will start on March 12th.

Next to those exclusive channels viewers from all countries get access to the following TV stations: ABC Now, Al Jazeera Arabic,
Bloomberg UK, Canal 24 Horas, Deutsche Welle, EuroNews,France 24 English, France 24 French,SF Info, sumo.tv, TVE Internacional, TVP Polonia and Auto Moto, Poker Channel, Russia Today and Tele Züri. The last four becoming available on March 12th as well.

Picture quality is good but not good enough to view the stream in fullscreen. Another new feature is the EPG – Electronic Programming Guide which looks really nice and offers a good overview. Zattoo is free to download and run, so go grab a copy now if you are interested.

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If you live in the United States, most of the networks offer their TV streams for free. Most of the content is in High-definition format. As long as your connection is fast enough to handle the content, you should have no problems whatsoever.

If you happen to live anywhere else, you will have to look for other routes to get your TV fix. Luckily, there are plenty of people who post shows on different video sharing sites. This is where a lot of the dilemmas come in. Do you just watch the first link that’s posted and get it over with?

The second concern is regarding quality. If a file is available in both ‘flv’ and ‘divx’ format, which one would you prefer. For me, it depends. I don’t have a fast connection so I avoid ‘divx’ links as far as possible. However, this also depends on the quality of the other file. I can deal with minor sync issues by adjusting my media player but bad color and picture quality drives me crazy. On the other hand, a problem with divx files is that most of the sites hosting them do not support resuming downloads.

I spoke to some people about their preferences and realized it’s a matter of personal choice. Those people with limited time and slower connections preferred lower quality files. But I’d like to know what you think about it. Do you think the current choices are good enough to convince you to stop paying for cable?

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To counter this problem, I scour a whole host of online TV sites to catch up. My personal favorite used to be TVLinks but that site got shut down some time in October. Ever since then, I’ve turned to Alluc, which is short for ‘all you see’. This is one of the better show aggregators out there. It has extensive links to movies, TV shows, anime, music videos, documentaries, and sports videos.

Like other sites, Alluc itself does not host any of the files. They simply link to files present on video sharing sites like Youtube, Stage6, Veoh, etc. The home page has the most popular links in each category. If you are looking for something specific, simply click on the desired category and then browse through to see if it’s available. Most of the time, you will definitely find what you are looking for.

The only downside to this site is that they do not have any control over the quality of the videos, since they accept links from all over. Most of the files are in ‘flv’ format, which is not exactly DVD quality. Do not despair since new links are constantly being added. If you come back the next day, you will often find the same file in ‘divx’ format. At the same time broken links are removed so you are not likely to get dead links very often.

Alluc ranks high on my list largely because they have a lot of links. While popular shows are available easily, this site even has files pertaining to older TV shows as well as obscure ones, which got cancelled halfway.

There are lots of online TV sites out there. I’ll be checking them out in the coming weeks and will post reviews of good ones over here. Suggestions are always welcome.

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I recieved some new information about the tvu player and thought it would be best to write a new tvu player faq article instead of updating the old tvu player faq. It addresses all major problems people have with the tvu player and tries to find a solution for most of them.

TVU Player FAQ

TVU Player Requirements:

• What are the requirements for tvu player ?

• TVU Player 2.2 runs on Windows 2000 and higher and requires at least 256 megabytes of ram. A fast internet connection is advisable, usually 500 Kbs+.

TVU PlayerConnection Problems:

• I do not see a channel list after installing TVU Player

• This error only occured in previous versions, install the latest version of TVU Player and everything should be fine.
• If the error persists download the following files from rapidshare and put them in your tvuplayer directory, they are a channel list filled with channels, this helped some users. Replace the new files with the old ones.
• It seems that this fix is only temporary, the problem returns when you restart. A tvu player user wrote a small start script that copies both channel files and starts tvu player afterwards. You can download it here.
• Put all the files in the same directory and create a shortcut to TVURunIt.exe.
  
• Whenever you want to start tvu player you do it by clicking on the shortcut of tvurunit.exe.
  

• If you experience bad or no picture problem with download/upload data, you may try:

• Upgrade your Windows Media Player to Windows Media Player 10
• If the problem still occurs, try the following steps
• Have VLC player installed on your computer. (Video lan client)
• Right click the “TVUPlayerâ€? icon on your computer’s Desktop
• Select “Propertiesâ€? -> “Shortcutâ€?
• Append â€? -vâ€? (with a leading space) at the end of the line in the “Targetâ€? box If the line in Target box is: “C:\Program Files\TVUPlayer\TVUPlayer.exeâ€? then after appending, the line should be like this: “C:\Program Files\TVUPlayer\TVUPlayer.exeâ€? -v

• The Buffer up to 100% with no picture and sound

• This is most of the times a temporary issue, try again later.

• The streaming stutters / stops, buffers all the time.

• Try the (low) bandwidth channels. Please note that you need a broadband connection.

• TVU Player cannot be initialized, please check the network connection

• This can have two causes as far as I know. First you need to check your firewalls settings if it blocks the ports that tvu player needs to connect to the channel list and the streaming clients. Second it could be that you are using a proxy server which does not allow connection to the tvuplayer at all. Quoted from the comments of Worldcup Preparations post. (thanks gornea)

• At start TVU Player uses UDP 3950, 3951 and 3952 then at least one of TCP 3950, 3951 or 3952. The TV channels list is obtained from a connection on port TCP 8080. All those connections are made to the server previously mentioned by others. When you choose a TV channel it uses UDP 3940 and then a TCP connection to 3940. Then you just get a rain of connections to other servers using UDP/TCP combinations. In the end it settles to only UDP streaming between peers and an brief TCP reconnection for control and status I guess.

• Why did nothing happen, when I selected a channel?

• Could be a problem with your network connection, you need to grant TVU Networks the right to access the network by opening the ports mentioned above. It could also mean that the network connection is down, try to restart the player or try later again.

Known TVU Player Bugs:

• I have no sound on certain channels

• A bug exists which should be addressed in the next update. 1.5. users update to TVU Player 2.2.

• My screen is almost green, and cannot see the picture.

• Press refresh button often resolve this issue.

Misc TVU Player Topics:

• TVU Player Log file.

• TVUplayer creates a log file which might help you in finding out why something is not working. It is located in the tvuplayer directory. You can check on the ports that the player is using on your system, you see if it was able to show the channel list and more.My player is working fine and my log file is showing some problems , the following could be normal and temporary. Try closing and starting again.Failed to update the channel list data in memory
  Failed to update the channel list data, when initiating
  Failed to update the peer server list data, when initiating
• What does the CMD button do in TVU Player ?

• Nothing. The feature has not been implemented yet.

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