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TV Catchup?
mashamoto79
Posts: 2,884 Forum Member
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Doesn't seem to be working, I get this error when I load it on the app:
cjsondeserializererrordomainerror-11
Website isn't working either.
Anyone else?
cjsondeserializererrordomainerror-11
Website isn't working either.
Anyone else?
0
Comments
If they start to offer content that sites behind a paywall, that would be a criminal act, but they are not doing that, they rebroadcast free to air content.
ITV may still have an old case against them, but I doubt with the success other similar services have had recently that ITV will get anywhere (If this is still going). ITV seemed to be really battling something more out of fear of change, rather than any disruption or hurt to their business. In fact, services that retransmit simulcast live TV benefit the original broadcasters as it increases their potential viewership, and in the commercial sense, that increases advertising awareness.
Anyway, there are other companies out there offering the same basic thing that TV-Catchup do, and many of them have some interesting additional services.
There is FilmOn, they have to be free within the UK to comply with UK laws, and they are. The catch with them is that their free browser based service has very poor quality. That said, their free mobile based quality is comparable for the most part to TV-Catchup. I've been using them a bit and I especially like their iOS features which includes good Airplay. They do have a subscription service which provides better quality, but is quite expensive.
Zattoo is a Swiss company that does the same thing. I don't know if this works in the UK for free (I'm not in the UK), but if you have a SmartDNS service, their free service works anywhere in the world. You can record up to 6 shows from their selection of channels in the free service. The quality is not quite as good as FilmOn or TV-Catchup, certainly good enough for mobile devices, but when enlarged to full screen it is a tad worse. They have an affordable monthly subscription as well, which includes the ability to record up to 250 shows, plus access to every show for the last two weeks (basically, they record every show and keep for that time period)
AERTV is an Irish service that offers the same things for Ireland (their channels) which is free, but for a small monthly fee you also get some UK channels as well.
Of the ones mentioned above, TV-Catchup has the best video quality when free services are taken into account, it also has the most amount of UK channels. So, it is a good service.
We shouldn't forget the official sources as well. BBC, ITV and Channel4 all offer their own live feeds, and from what I can tell, all of them are better quality than any of the free services above. But Channel 4 is a bit hard to get on mobile devices until later this year.
If anyone knows services like this for other English speaking countries, especially Australia & NZ, let me know.