14 DAY TRIAL // I heard some time ago that in February 2009 United States will end TV analog broadcast and all transmissions will be digital. Hope you changing the TV is on your to-do list as, although there is plenty of time left, some US TV stations have already started the process. But if you are not dependent on cable TV or SATV (satellite antenna television) you can skip the process.
With everything gaining more and more online terrain, television is still one of the primary competitors in entertainment industry and it does not seem to fall back an inch. I know that with all the websites hosting the widest palette of videos, games, music or social networks and interactive content it is hard to comprehend how TV still has a pretty high market share. The answer is that it offers professional content and nothing compares to live bloopers, the immediate reaction and the fact that everything happens as you breathe.
Television and Internet seem to make a wonderful pair when it comes to entertainment and the programs providing the end user with TV broadcasts are numerous, so it is quite a job to get yourself a software with a more than average rating.
MyInternetTV could be one solution if you declare yourself satisfied with the services it provides. It comes with hundreds of free television channels from all over the world (in my version the number reached 1094 TV stations) at a price of $24.90. Testing the application before you buy it is limited to full functionality for a period of 15 minutes and no setting will be saved. After the time expires you will have to restart the application, so there is plenty of time to properly evaluate it.
The interface is a standard one, providing the video window in the left hand side, and the list of channels in the right. MyInternetTV does not supply radio streaming which is a bit of a downside of the application considering the price. But, in order to compensate for this non-included feature the program makes available a small preview window that functions independently from the video screen.
It comes with its own volume control and you can mute it, turn it on or louder. Unfortunately there is no way to hide this window, unless you turn full-screen on for the primary video screen. In order to preview the channels all you have to do is right click on one in the Channel list and choose "Preview" function; it'll take a few seconds for establishing the connection and after that it's all about streaming and the quality of the transmission.
I have to say that the idea of placing all channels in a single list, alphabetically ordered by country, did not appeal to me one bit, although this way there is the advantage of having a general view over all the items available. Having the TV stations grouped in individual country folders would have been a more organized approach (but that's just my opinion).
Getting to the TV stations of a specific country is an easy job as users can either select the desired country from the filter or type in the first letter of the state until the needed result is displayed. Selecting the country will cause the view of Channel list to change to showing only the stations of that particular country.
MyInternetTV allows users to store the most important stations as Favorites (here it is called My List) but the limitations of the trial version will not allow preserving them for the next time you start the program. This location contains a few default channels like ABC News and NASA TV from USA, Qatar's Al-Jazeera, Specialrock TV from Russia, RTL 102.5 and Idea TV from Italy. I am sure that from this list most of you will be interested only in ABC News and NASA TV. To tell you the truth I successfully connected to ABC News but it took a while to view NASA Television.
During our testing we noticed an interesting thing: playing the same channel in both preview and main video window is not synchronous. This is not a glitch in the application and it is all about the buffering of the stream.
The settings that are not saved in the trial version of the application are actually reduced to adding favorite stations and setting the volume. Speaking of volume, there is a minor glitch with this function. In more than one case a swift drag of the slider to the left or right ends in no change. A click on the slider however will fix the problem and set the volume to the desired level.
Searching for a specific channel is done in an easy way, due to the Search function included in the application. All you need to do is type in the name of the channel and hit "Search" button.
As for the TV stations available in MyInternetTV, here's a hint: ESPN, FOX News, CBS, NBC or Comedy Central are not there. Regarding the quality, sometimes you have to try a few times before connecting to the channel. But eventually the image will get to you.
The Good
MyInternetTV does not pose any handling trouble and perusing the channel list is as easy as scrolling your mouse wheel or using keyboard arrows.
Preview window works independently from video window, similar to picture-in-picture on television sets.
The Bad
There are some channels that have been left out. For some of the countries there is absolutely no TV station (Czech Republic and Finland are just two examples).
Volume bar is not working quite right as after a swift drag of the slider it is required a click for the volume to change to the desired level.
The Truth
MyInternetTV comes as a good solution for Internet TV, but not the best one on the market, failing to provide general interest stations and with still a few glitches here and there. Search function is of great help as it provides accurate results almost instantaneously.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
