Users start by clicking on File > Search in the menu to open the search interface which can be used to list all available channels or filtered channel lists either by keyword or pre-selection (e.g. sports, top 100). It is also possible to enter a keyword which will search for and return all channels matching that keyword. A good start is probably the top 100 channel list.

It takes a few seconds to populate the channel list which displays one channel per row. Each row includes the name, bitrate, quality, audience and other values. The most important are the bitrate, quality and audience as these are indicators on the quality of the picture and the bandwidth that is needed to watch the channel fluently.

A click on a channel with open an internal viewer that is connecting to the selected tv channel. This process can also take some time as the StreamTorrent begins the buffering process.

The player offers basic status information and controls including a buffer bar, changing to full screen and changing the volume.

Watching tv is probably the most popular use of StreamTorrent. It is possible to add new channels to the application and to start a live stream from the local computer system.

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One Tip a Day posted a nice collection of sites and programs that make it possible to watch tv online. The list is unfortunately sorted by theme (tv shows, movies, cartoons and sports are the two categories). I personally think that it would have been better to categorize by way of viewing (website, software, download) and describe the type of content that can be viewed after the name of the service.

The list is great nevertheless, here is a short compilation of sites that I can recommend:

• AlluC - links to various video portals, has a database of more than 17000 tv shows
• TeeVee – similar in concept to AlluC
• TVU Player – program that streams live tv, concentration on Asia. Lots of live sports events

The list at One Tip a Day is bigger of course, it contains about 30 links in total.

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Sopcast is an alternative. You can download the freeware from the developers website or use one of the mirrors to do so. The download from the main website did not work for me, not a good sign, and I had to use one of the mirrors to get the program. Sopcast offers free tv streams over internet using P2P technique which means that the quality not only depends on the source who is streaming the tv signal but also on the peers that share their bandwidth as well.

A pleasant suprise was that the website was completely translated to English, which is not the case for most other Sopcast-like-tools out there. Once installed you can login anonymously and click on channels to see the big channel list.

Channels are sorted into categories like Sports and HiFi Music. As you can see on the picture to the left there are some characters that are not displayed correctly, most likely because of missing Chinese language support on my system.

Clicking on a channel opens a new window to the right of the program that is connected to it. You receive some basic information about buffering, speed and which program you are viewing.

It normally takes some time to load. Just remember that the quality of the output not only depends on your connection speed but also on the connection speed of your peers.

The tv stream playback began quickly but the buffering was not done yet. It is normal to get some small interruptions during the first minutes of playback. This should stop once you are connected to more peers.

Sopcast does not have that many US channels like TVU Player. It offers ESPN, HBO Movie and CNN. There are probably more at different times in the day and some minor ones that I missed but it’s rather mediocre.

All the football fans should also take note of CCTV 5 which is a Chinese Sports channel broadcasting lots of European football. (that is soccer in North America)

Conclusion: If you like sports you may want to try out Sopcast and won’t miss tvu player that much. If you like movies and tv shows sopcast is not really the right tv streaming application to use.

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This is basically a collection of free streams that are available on the internet and can’t be compared to programs like tvu player that stream popular tv channels like ABC, Comedy Central and FOX. The only advantage you get with streamick is that it displays the streams directly from within their website.

To be honest, many channels that are offered at their website are crap. Local channels about Miami or New Orleans don’t appeal to a world wide audience. Neither do many of the other channels offered there Boardriders TV and High TV for example.

My suggestion would be to give it a try, take a look at the offered streams and see if they offer any that might be of interest to you.

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I can’t see many changes in this version. TVU Networks are unfortunately not publishing release notes so I have to compare the old and new version by myself. The only change that I was able to find is a link to the program of that network that you could click on. Some stations are not there for the moment, I’m missing ABC for instance.

If you run into errors with TVU Player you should take a look at my tvu player faq which addresses some of the most common problems that are encountered. Please note that you do need a broadband connection for most channels, only the channels marked with low could probably be viewed without one.

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I did write about some of them here at ghacks already but I guess only the die hard ghacks readers will know about this. I would like to start with a tool that I have been using for some time now. It is called Hamachi and the main benefit is that it is able to simulate a lan over internet. This is great if a game only offers lan play for instance. I do not suggest you use it for the following purpose but it is possible. Many games require serial numbers and those numbers are checked when you connect to a game server on the internet. They are not checked if you create a lan game.

System Tools:

Please insert the CD into the drive and restart the application. I hate this message. Forcing legit users to have the CD / DVD in drive to execute the program is something I never understood. Pirates crack those protections in seconds and legit users have the problems with methods that are supposed to make it harder for pirates. Something is wrong here. I do like Daemon Tools which emulates CDs on your hard drive. Create an image of the CD, mount it in Daemon Tools and you may use the software without the Cd.

That shitty movie is not playing. I don’t see a picture, I hear no sound. Have you ever witnessed something like that ? This could be due to a missing codec on your system. Gspot analyzed a movie file and displays the codecs it is using. Did I say that I hate the fact that there are billions of codecs out there ? Waste of time and energy.

Notepad 2 replaces Notepad which ships with every windows installation. It offers more features than Notepad like syntax highlighting.

Rbtray makes it possible to minimize every window into the system tray instead of the task bar. If you are like me and dislike crowded task bars this tool is for you.

I like my computers as silent as they can be. One method to achieve this is to use a software that is able to control the speed of the fans in your pc. Speedfan is my choice. It displays temperatures for important system components such as processor, motherboard and hard drives and lets you change the fan speed if that is supported on your system.

Vippy the writer friendly cursor changes the cursor into a eye-friendly one. This is great if you have troubles finding the cursor in a text document. Vippy changes the color of the cursor to red for instance.

Internet:

Ghacks is running on a dedicated server and I have to make the connection using a terminal program. I do use Putty for this, it is fast and clean and does exactly the things that I need it to do. I do use WinSCP to connect download backups that I made from the dedicated server. SFTP means secure file transfer.

I have a Skype account to talk to my friends and see who is online at the moment. There is no charge if both users are connected to the Skype network. I do prefer Teamspeak while gaming. Teamspeak has the advantage that more users may chat and talk at the same time while Skype has that limited I think. When I was playing WOW we were using Teamspeak with more than 40 people in one channel. Don’t worry, you can moderate everything.

If you want to view tv on the internet you should take a look at tvu player which offers some interesting channels to choose from. To name a few: ABC, ESPN, Comedy Channel, CBC, Fox and more. All free, with relative good quality. You need a broadband connection for good results.

You need some additional tools if you want to save video streams. Most providers hide the real url to the stream making it impossible to detect it by normal means. Url Snooper comes into play and detects the real address by analyzing all network traffic.

I need a local test installation of ghacks to test new features before I make the upgrade on the running site. XAMPP offers everything I need to have a local Apache installation with PHP and MYSQL support. It is great for learning and testing upgrades.

Security:

You might remember the Sony rootkit incident. They planted a rootkit on some of their CDs and users had a hard time getting rid of it. Rootkit Revealer is one of those tools that helps detecting and removing rootkits.

Other:

I do not buy lots of new CDs but sometimes I buy some used ones on Ebay or Amazon. I don’t have a CD player at all so I have to get the songs from the CD on my computer to be able to play them and transfer them to my Ipod. CDex is the tool I use for that purpose. It is fast, pulls all relevant information from the internet (author, title, songs..) and adds them automatically to the songs.

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The second tip on the tvu player beta page deals with the problem that many users seem to face: the problem that they have no picture at all or a very bad one. The entry suggests to do the following:

• 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. Click here to download VLC
• Right click the “TVUPlayer” icon on your computer’s Desktop
• Select “Properties” -> “Shortcut”
• Append ” -v” (with a leading space) at the end of the line in the “Target” box
• If the line in Target box is: “C:\Program Files\TVUPlayer\TVUPlayer.exe”
• then after appending, the line should be like this: “C:\Program Files\TVUPlayer\TVUPlayer.exe” -v

Last but not least I have five unlimited invites for the tvu player beta, if you would like to participate write a reply to this thread.

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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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I think they have added some additional channels in the new release, can´t remember for instance that the Cartoon Network or HBO were available in the previous tvu player version. TVU Player Channel List: ESPN, CCTV-5, Cartoon Network, ABC, HBO, CNN 1-4, Disney Channel, Hollywood Movie channel and many lesser known ones. If you are looking for a free ride tvu player is exactly what you are looking for.

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1. Where can I download the TVU Player / TVUPlayer ?

You can download it from the official website, rapidshare, badango or rapidsharing.

2. What do I do with a .rar file ?

A .rar file is a packed file. You need to unpack it with a packer that supports .rar files. This is for example winrar.

3. What are the requirements for the tvu player ?

Windows 2000 or XP
Broadband Internet connection, such as DSL or cable modem

4. I installed the tvuplayer but I do not see a channel list !

This seems to be a temporary issue. Close the program and start it later again.

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

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

6. tvuPlayer 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.

7. 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

8. Where do I recieve official support for the tvuplayer ?

The official website for TVUplayer is tvunetworks.com and viidoo.com. Viidoo.com has a tvu player support forum.

Unsolved Issues:

Out of sync video and audio

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