App: TV Catchup

by Matt on 21 June 2010

http://www.tvcatchup.com

Watch TV, without using a TV! Whatever next?

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Pros

Wide-eyed

If you haven’t stumbled across this already, it’s an essential bookmark for your web-browsing collection. Well, if you’re in the UK. It doesn’t feature any fancy American channels or anything but they cost shedloads so you wouldn’t expect it to. Instead it’s just the Freeview set raring to go.

There’s a lovely set of very clickable buttons to take you from one channel to the next. The TV Guide is simple and easy to scan (in fact it’s quite a useful page in its own right). And if you’ve got a decent wifi connection the thing runs pretty smoothly. That’s it, live TV right there in front of you.

You have to sign up to use it but it’s a super-simple sign up form and then you’re straight into the action.

There’s also a mobile version, which works as a simple web app and can even stream over 3G. Whilst this can be pretty hit and miss, there are times when I’ve had a gloriously clear picture even sat on a train.

Cons

Square eyes

Apart from the niggling worry that this feels a bit too good to be true (seriously, how *are* they doing this?) the only negative I can think of is the name. And that’s only because when you enthuse about it and describe it to people they’ll invariably think it’s an iPlayer-like service. Because you’re not really ‘catching up’ are you?

But we’ll forgive them because this does one thing and does it really well.

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