14 DAY TRIAL // Television is a constant in almost everybody's life. From the beginning, it created an attraction that grew and grew until people started installing their TV sets in the entire house. In the case of my parents (and I am sure this happens to most houses), the bathroom is the only place where there is no TV. They are old fashioned and would rather rely on TV sets. I, on the other hand, like my place less crowded as possible.
In this case TV sets are not required, and yet, I have to watch some television. The only solution is getting a software that will play online television. There are all sorts of solutions out there and one of the best I have met is ChrisTV Online. However, do not limit only to this suggestion and look for new such software. I took this advice of mine and bumped into Online TVPlayer, a very easy to use application specially designed for online TV viewing as well as radio listening from all over the world.
The price of the nifty program is $29.98 and the developer will offer a generous 15 days trial period. The 1.6MB installer will complete unarchiving the code on your computer in very little time and very soon, you will be able to watch TV stations and listen to radios from all over the world. As a bonus, the application also supports installing a set of skins designed to make it look even more elegant than the default installation. This package of themes is available for download for free from the developer's website.
In order to properly view almost all the television stations, it is required to install Windows Media Player and RealPlayer 6 or above. All the download links are available on the producer's website for free.
The main application window is divided into three distinct areas. The first one is in the left side and displays the favorite stations, radio stations and TV stations. Open one of the folders (Oline Radio or Online TV) and choose the country you want. In the right part of the country folder, you will see the number of stations that are available.
Below the Online TV List, there is the Filter area that allows you to control the display of the station. Thus, enabling both Broadband and Modem options, you will get all the available stations. The next filter is designed to control what to view in the Online TV List: TV stations, radio stations and My Favorites. Further down, there is the country filter and there you can choose the countries you want to be listed. This way, the user can find the desired station faster, be it TV or radio.
The number of TV channels Online TVPlayer provides is 850 and growing, while the list of radio stations goes as far as 1500. To be frank, the list of 800+ TV channels is not too interesting as, browsing around for Romania, I could see that only one TV station is listed although there are at least four TV stations that are broadcasting online. If for a country like Romania only this much is listed, then what can I expect from all other countries?
Anyway, let?s move on to the Options menu which is not as rich as I expected. General section covers only language section and gives you the chance of an update in order to get more language options. Skins, however, let you choose between 40 different items. The effects will be immediate and there is no need to restart the application. The preview window will give you a hint on how will the skin look like on the program.
A good thing about each channel is that the broadcasting bitrate will be displayed. This information tells you about the quality of the transmission. The lower the bitrate, the lower the quality.
The viewing options allow the users to double the window size or to view in fullscreen.
The Good
It is a nice application that will also allow you to open files from the Internet or from the computer and play it in Online TV Player. Search function lets you look for the desired station.
The interface is intuitive enough to allow every user to handle it.
The Bad
Most of the TV stations I tried did not work, but this is not because of the software. Although the developer could take some measures and clean the list a little.
The Truth
It is expensive enough for me not to buy it. The alternative is much better and the options are richer.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
