Talkin’ Bout My Generation

For the 80’s and 90’s generation, we’ve grown up with shows ranging from the A-Team to Family Guy and Simpsons. The average person has seen more Simpsons episodes than they’ve heard classic symphonies. You can name every single Friends character (and side characters) easily while only naming about three or four elements on the Periodic Table of Elements… Mendelevium? What?

I have to admit that I’m one of the many that have succumb to the many joys of television viewing. Yes I was there for Janet’s wardrobe malfunction, I was there for the season finale of Friends (awe Ross and Rachel), or the latest Survivor vigor and the wannabe reality spin-offs (Average Joe was pretty funny though). TV has been an intricate and some would argue important part of our lives.

Well, we can expand this important part of our lives with Fantasy TV. Here’s an Internet television tuner program that lets me view over 2500 online TV and Radio stations from around the world. When it comes to it, I can honestly say that I’ve never watched too much foreign TV, let alone Internet TV. However with Fantasy TV I can easily remedy this problem. I think I might even have to invest some more time in my latest discovery.

What’s Inside

It was when I started watching the Cartoon Network’s Superman that I realized how beneficial and educational this program could in fact be. As I continued to watch Superman and Scooby Doo in Spanish I thought to myself that this little tool is pretty useful. Especially for only 20$. I then thought that it could be a good way to sharpen up on a foreign language while doing something entertaining.

Yes, you’re probably saying that watching Superman is probably not educational, albeit in Spanish, or French or any other language. But I forgot to mention that you can also tune into some educational programming. I was able to even find channels from the University of Washington and listen to some lectures using the programming.

The Tuner’s not only limited to television, but also radio stations are also an intricate part of this program. The biggest benefit that this program gives us is the ability to view all these different channels with no subscription fee. You also don’t need to have a specific PC TV card with this software because the TV channels are streamed through your Internet connection.

The Program itself

The program itself is a bit moody. I wasn’t always able to connect to every single stream that was offered to me. Although I can hardly complain when I have so many streams to connect to. I guess the biggest thing the users would probably want to know is if it’s better than satellite. I’d have to say no.

Even though the player’s quite adept at finding a sheer absurdity of streams, not all of them will work, so you can’t always get the maximum number of streams. The streams that you do get don’t really impress the people who are trying to watch some quality television. You get no premium channels (so no HBO) and you can’t really Tivo anything unless you get an extension.

The player is a little on the stiff side. You can’t readjust the size of the viewer unless you only want to go to full-screen mode. And I see no way in which to actually see the streams that you’re connected to. You get a nag screen after ten minutes of watching FantasyTV, that blocks the viewing screen.

As a side experiment, I was able to connect to the same UWTV stream on my Windows Media Player that I had been viewing in FantasyTV. So if I can do this for at least 1 stream, I’m pretty sure I’d also be able to do it for another of the 2500 streams that Fantasy TV offered.

The Good

The good part of this is that you have a lot of accessibility both television and radio wise. You can use it for a lot of easy listening and regular television viewing from a horde of different countries.

The Bad

The bad part of the program is that it’s stiff in operating even if it does offer you a throng of streams. You can’t adjust the viewing size other than full-screen or small, while the stream itself is fully dependent on the connection that you currently have. The streams don’t all work.

The Truth

If you have 20$ to spare and want to take a look at the international world through someone else’s eyes, go right ahead. You have lots of possible streams to go through and you can watch something other than American television. It’s a good alternative to easy viewing without a satellite.

Check out the screenshots below.