Hey everyone, smile! It’s Saturday! I had my violin lesson this morning and since then, I haven’t done anything really so I decided to write on my blog.
Is anyone watching Chelsea vs Man Utd? (Football- sorry soccer- Two of the biggest clubs in the UK). I am. It’s a first, I know but I thought I just couldn’t miss it. I’m watching it on my computer using an excellent bit of software I found on the internet the other day. It’s called Zattoo, and it works in the same way as talking on Skype, the data is streamed straight to your computer rather than buffered (loaded then played). But, the massive plus point of it is that it’s free. Yes, FREE TV on your computer. No licences. At the moment, the service is only available in the UK with a small selection of channels- Al Jazeera, BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC News 24, CBBC Channel and CBeebies, but it’s a start. Who knows what could come next? Recording without having to buy an HD recorder? Fast forward, pause, rewind? Sky+ for free? Imagine that.
The downfall of the service, as you could expect, is that you need a good amount of bandwidth to watch it- it’s not for dial up users. I have an 8MB connection, and I’m fine, but I don’t know about you people with 512k.
The sound quality is of excellent stereo quality, and picture quality is excellent for internet TV.
I only have one problem with it- I can’t get Al Jazeera at the moment, and can’t usually get BBC4. But, that might vary from where you are, and remember- it’s still a relatively new concept for the UK market.
To get hold of Zattoo, you need to sign up for a wait list as it’s not actually released as software anybody can download yet. Go here to sign up for the wait list. I know, it says it’s not available in the UK yet, but trust me it is, I received my invite to sign up within a week- in fact I was surprised I received it so quickly. So, patience, all good things come to those who wait.
Zattoo is in the ‘closed beta’ status in UK, but will open up soon. And we will add more channels, too.
Zattoo is currently available in Switzerland (more than 300000 subscribers already) and Denmark. More countries to come. See our blog for some insights.
Enjoy! Fredy, Zattoo Inc.
Hi there, Really liked your article on Zattoo… I’m looking forward to getting it here in Ireland. At the moment, I use sopcast and tvants to watch the premiership… it’s good, but I hear the picture quality will be much better on Zattoo… Do yo uhave any invites for Zattoo? If so, could you send me one please to stetoye@gmail.com! Thanks.