I’ve been happily watching BBC iPlayer on my iPhone for a while now. It’s a shame the other UK channels haven’t followed suit in opening up their offerings to iPhone users, but it’s understandable given the problems that the Beeb have had with their shows being unofficially downloaded.
But what about live TV? Catchup TV is all well and good, but sometimes you just want to watch live. Unless you’ve streamed it yourself using Slingplayer, Orb or EyeTV, then you’ve been out of luck. That is, until a couple of days ago when TVCatchup opened up a beta of their new service.
TVCatchup.com streams over 30 UK Freeview channels live. Sounds too good to be true? Surely this can’t be legal? Well, it seems it is, at least according to their FAQ.
So with that out of the way, is it any good? Nope. It’s superb!
I’ve been trying it out tonight (having been alerted by James Burland), and it has worked exceptionally over Wifi. It also worked pretty well over 3G (just occasional drop-outs), and I’ve had a report that it works over EDGE too. And the quality? Eminently watchable. Here’s a screengrab of me watching The Daily Show on More4, simultaneously on both my iPhone and my TV:
As you can see, there is a difference in the picture, because there’s about a one to two minute delay in the TVCatchup feed. But unless you’re watching side-by-side, then this is irrelevant.
What do I need to watch live TV?
Live streaming is only supported in iPhone/iPod OS 3.0 onwards. So upgrade if you haven’t done so already (Geek note: Because the service uses playlists with the .m3u8 extension, you can tell that it’s using HTTP Live Streaming, hence iPhone 3.0+).
Then, open up this URL in the iPhone’s web browser: http://iphone.tvcatchup.com, and pick a channel.
That’s it! The TV channel will then load in Quicktime on your iPhone or iPod. You can pause live TV, and also skip forward to jump to the live stream. It works in portrait and landscape mode.
What else?
There are currently only 11 channels available with the iPhone beta, but more are on the way. The company has also submitted an app to Apple, and are awaiting approval.
Also, you may wonder about the name – TVCatchup – since they are offering a live service. It was originally intended to offer recording functionality, but that was postponed while the legal position is being worked out. But apparently it’s still on the cards. If that was included in the iPhone app, it would be, quite frankly, amazing.
Aside from the current limited number of channels (but it’s a beta, so fair enough), the only other downside it that it’s restricted to UK users. But if you’re smart, just use a VPN service that gives you a UK IP address, which will get around the geographic block. You can even use that VPN on your iPhone.
So I only have one question – do you think their servers are going to be able to handle the demand?!
Extra:
I just had to include this. I’m watching The Matrix Reloaded live on my iPhone. Surely that’s worth double geek points 
