Thanks to the constant improvement of broadband connections, watching TV over the internet is now possible. The current trend is to use Peer to Peer (P2P) technology to stream media quickly to consumers. TVU Player allows you to watch major cable channels over the internet, by sharing your bandwidth with other users.
TVU Player usually streams around 20 different channels, from a large American sports network to the major Chinese television channel and you can watch everything from gossip to movies or sports. TVU Player is extremely simple to use, you only have to double click on the channel of your choice, wait a few minutes for it to buffer, and start watching. Refreshing every now and then lets you check whether new channels are on offer.
TVU Player is a bit unstable, so you shouldn’t be surprised if it fails to initialize or if the channel you are watching tends to lag. If very few people are connected to the same channel you might get poor streaming quality, but if you are watching a popular program there should be a good number of peers sharing the load and the transmission will flow. Always remember to check the number of peers before watching a channel.
TVU Player doesn’t let you set your preferences, like your preferred bandwidth speed or which port to use and there is no way of getting extra information on the channels. There is a command button, but we couldn’t figure out what it was meant for, and TVU Player lacks help files to guide you out of problems. The interface window is mid-sized but you can’t enlarge it, though even if you could, we believe you would end up with a pretty poor quality image.
In other words, TVU Player is far from polished. However it’s an exciting application, which opens up the possibilities of television on Internet. While not everybody might be interested in watching Koweit TV, TVU Player still streams big American and Chinese channels and the other eclectic content. Don’t get taken aback by the instability of the application. If you have a solid broadband connection and a keen sense of curiosity, we suggest giving it a try to get a glimpse of the near future of television.
