LiveStation is a peer-to-peer application that lets you watch watch television online. At the moment the selection of channels is limited to international news stations like BBC World, EuroNews and Al Jazeera along with two radio services: BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4.

The positive aspect of this software is that, being based on peer-to-peer technology, it virtually eliminates buffering time, meaning you won’t have to wait to watch the channels. The video experience is much more enjoyable than what you can get from a traditional streaming service because the data comes from many sources at the same time, reducing congestion problems. Every PC connected is both client and server.

Livestation requires Microsoft Silverlight to run, but don’t worry because during the installation it asks you whether you want to download it automatically.

The interface is simple but cool with smooth fade effects and once the channel is selected, the very high quality stream starts immediately. Unfortunately there is no pause button, nor any functionality for recording programs at certain times. That said, the application is still at a 'technical trial' stage so there is still room for these kinds of improvements.

If you have a fast internet connection you can always be updated on what’s happening around the world by watching the most famous international news channels with the light and usable LiveStation.

Download Livestation 2.1 in Softonic

They said it would come but I never believed them - live TV on the Internet, that is. Zattoo brings genuine TV to your PC via peer-to-peer technology, indicating the appropriate selection of television channels based on the country you live in, something that no Internet TV app has done successfully to date. After registering for a Zattoo account online and installing the client, you'll get an overview of the available TV stations in your locality.

For viewing things like live sport, Zattoo is a dream come true. You simply click onyour desired channel and the transmission begins within a few seconds. Providing you have a quick Net connection, the streaming of the broadcast will work very smoothly, with only a few seconds delay from the live television show itself.

Zattoo finally brings genuine live TV to your computer, after a very long wait, and because the program provides channels local to you, you don't have to endure commentary in gobbledegook. Although the image quality leaves a lot to be desired, with a fast Internet connection, Zattoo gives you genuine live television in a way no other application can do at the moment.

Download Zattoo 3.1.1 Beta (2000/XP) in Softonic

They said it would come but I never believed them - live TV on the Internet, that is. Zattoo brings genuine TV to your PC via peer-to-peer technology, indicating the appropriate selection of television channels based on the country you live in, something that no Internet TV app has done successfully to date. After registering for a Zattoo account online and installing the client, you'll get an overview of the available TV stations in your locality.

For viewing things like live sport, Zattoo is a dream come true. You simply click onyour desired channel and the transmission begins within a few seconds. Providing you have a quick Net connection, the streaming of the broadcast will work very smoothly, with only a few seconds delay from the live television show itself.

Zattoo finally brings genuine live TV to your computer, after a very long wait, and because the program provides channels local to you, you don't have to endure commentary in gobbledegook. Although the image quality leaves a lot to be desired, with a fast Internet connection, Zattoo gives you genuine live television in a way no other application can do at the moment.

Download Zattoo 3.1.1 Vista in Softonic

Yes folks, the latest version of revolutionary peer-to-peer TV app, Joost, is now out and it includes some pretty important new features, as well as a handful of invitations for anyone already testing the program.

Joost’s roster of channels is increasing rapidly, to include such stalwarts as MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and, er, The Diddy Channel. Unfortunately many of the big-name channels are limited to US users only, no doubt for licensing reasons. Let’s hope that some agreements can be reached to extend availability of these channels… it’s tough knowing there’s an entire stream of Ren and Stimpy which I can’t access.

Latest additions to the interface include a new registration and login module, which even current beta testers will need to complete the first time they run the program. You can now sign up for a user-name, which will be essential when the full social elements of the app come to the fore.

Version 1.0 of Joost proves that it's a force to be reckoned with on the Internet TV market: slick, powerful and packed with content, this could very well be our first look at the future of broadcasting.

Download Joost 1.0.4 Beta in Softonic

As we wrote in reviews for PPLive and TVU Player, television via streaming P2P is part of the future of broadcasting. The two previously cited programs are good examples of the technology yet in Sopcast they might have found a more than worthy competitor. This streaming P2P television application offers a wide choice of channels in a very sleek looking interface, whilst letting you broadcast your very own TV program over the Internet.

Sopcast’s interface is easy enough for any type of user. You can register yourself on Sopcast, a prerequisite if you want to broadcast your program but if you just want to view TV, you can log in as an anonymous user. We found that Sopcast probably offers the widest choice of channels of all P2P TV streaming applications, and organizes them via categories like sports, news or gospel tv. To view a channel all you have to do is double click the one you want and it will open a Windows Media Player side window. This truly separates Sopcast from the rest of the P2P TV streaming applications. By playing the channels in Window Media Player it allows you to set the size of the screen, adjust sound levels, keep a history of channels viewed…basically everything you can do with the famous media player. Furthermore, Sopcast is the only P2P streaming TV application we encountered that allows you to configure settings like port selection (extremely useful to maximize the use of your bandwidth and get better quality playback) or select among 12 different languages.

Another of Sopcast’s major innovations is broadcasting your own TV program over the Internet. If you would like to produce a TV show, Sopcast gives you the chance to reach a very wide audience of Internet users. Once your program has been filmed, edited and is uploaded on your PC, all you have to do is stream it via Sopcast and select a server address to which people can connect and watch. The quality of the broadcast will very much depend on the number of people connected (the more users there are, the faster the video will stream). You can also create your own private channel and decide what users can watch it by creating a network group. Imagine having your very own broadcast just for you and your friends!

Sopcast is an excellent application that allows P2P streaming television to keep improving. Although the program tends to crash every now and then, Sopcast is fairly intuitive, offers a very wide choice of channels and uses Windows Media Player well. In addition it is the first program of its kind that allows you to broadcast your own channel over the web. Give it a try, you might just shelve your TV for good.

Download SopCast 2.04 in Softonic

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.

Download TVUPlayer 2.3.7.1 in Softonic

Watching television is no longer a dining-room activity. With the number of available online TV channels constantly increasing, chances are you'll end up watching TV on your computer rather than on a TV set.

Internet TV is the perfect tool to watch television on the PC. This free app gives you access to more than 5,000 TV channels that stream content over the Internet. Among such a wide offer you'll surely find something you like, from news to sports, from music to documentaries, from religion to education.

Using the program is a piece of cake. Simply select the channel you're interested in and click on the "Play" button on the right-side screen. After a few seconds of buffering, the show will start. I have to say most of the channels I tested worked perfectly fine and only a few failed to start, most of them when I tried to filter contents by country. Apparently it's better to just leave the "All countries" option enabled. Also, when a channel didn't work sometimes it showed music instead, so in the end it wasn't that disappointing.

Internet TV lets you add your own Internet TV channels, if you know any that's not currently on the list and provided you have all the necessary data. A Favorites list completes the array of included features.

Internet TV is a basic viewer with which you can access thousands of streaming TV channels worldwide. Perfect to have a sneak peek at how television looks like in other countries and other cultures!

Download InternetTV 7.12 in Softonic

It seems that everyone is slowly starting to realise that the future of video broadcasting lies online rather than inside a television.

Following the success of Joost, Babelgum and VeohTV, Adobe decided to get in on the act with the release of the Adobe Media Player. The philosophy of the software giant is that if you use a browser to navigate web pages, why shouldn't you use one to view multimedia too?

The result is basically a version of Joost as seen through the eyes of Adobe. Now out of beta release, the app provides an interesting and immersive way of watching videos online. Navigation is very smooth and feels natural and there are a number of features and services that make it easier to eyeball TV more effectively. For instance, you can create a list of favorites, and keywords add ratings to Flash video, build playlists and use the Dashboard-style interface to check out the latest episodes of your top shows. You can also now subscribe to RSS feeds that tell you when new episodes are online.

Content is king though, of course, and version 1.1 of Adobe Media Player adds a lot more episodes and channels from a broad range of genres. At the time of writing, Adobe estimates that there are around 25,000 episodes available through its media player. Adobe has even partnered with Sony Pictures to offer some movies through the service, such as Jerry Maguire and Men in Black. I was also impressed by the speed and quality of the videos.

One of my main qualms with Adobe Media Player though, is that many of the episodes are not available outside the USA. Fine if you live there, of course, but for those of us in other lands it's so frustrating to see a show you want to watch only to discover it's not available (of course, you don't find this out until after an advert has played in the player).

Glossing over the unavailability of some programs and channels, Adobe Media Player is making all the right strides to becoming the best place to watch TV online.

Download Adobe Media Player 1.1 in Softonic

Keeping updated on what’s on the TV can be a pretty difficult task. Thanks to the growth of digital TV, the number of channels has increased considerably and it’s good to be picky when it comes to what you watch, considering the amount of content available.

TellyPrompter lists the programmes of 170 UK TV channels, so you can have a look at what’s on offer for the upcoming week. Select your favourites on the Programme Grid and take advantage of the reminder function for any show you just can’t miss.

The application’s interface is easy to understand and in the View menu you can either choose to see TV programmes as a list or as a grid. I particularly like the latter mode, as you can have a quick glance at what different channels have to offer, and also a visual idea of how long each show lasts.

TellyPrompter lets you find out what TV has to offer you. Get updates to avoid missing an episode, and you might even discover something worth watching that you didn’t know about before.

Download TellyPrompter 1.2 in Softonic

Watch over 853 television channels all over the world with TeleStreamer. The application streams all online video content that TV channels make available on the web. For each country then, you'll probably get satellite channels rather than the national ones, but you still have a really large choice, with many news channels in nearly all the languages in the world. It’s also a good way to have a general idea about how TV formats are elsewhere; bear in mind though that maybe you will not have access to the most popular programs.

The GUI is very simple and clear. There is a list of nationalities with TV channels associated and you just have to double click on the one you want to watch. Not all the programs will work, but this may also depend on the availability of the content provider’s server. When you manage to connect to a channel though, the sound and the video quality are fairly good and you can either watch the program in windowed mode or, by double-clicking on it, enjoy the full screen mode.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to pause the stream, as the program doesn’t store data on your hard disk. It is a big limitation considering that it’s a very easy function to have on PCs and it’s the real plus in rapport to traditional broadcasted TV.

Although you can’t have any control when watching a program, TeleStreamer allows you to watch 853 channels all over the world, both to practice your language skills and to see what’s going on in Africa, Iraq or Suriname, if you know where that is.

Download Tele-Streamer 1.0 in Softonic

JLC's Internet TV is a simple application that enables you to watch free online TV channels from all over the world. It automatically finds over 1,400 channels and have an online updater to keep the channel list updated. Also, these channels are organized into categories (News, Government, Sports, Webcams, etc.) for a more comfortable browsing.

The program works really fast and is very easy to use. Simply select the country whose channels you want to watch and take a look at the different TV channels. You can arrange channels according to name, bitrate or category.

Have a look at what this program features:

• Watch over 1,400 online TV channels for free!
• User friendly interface with inbuilt channel list
• Channel updater to keep your list synchronized with World Wide Internet TV
• Program updater automatically keeps your program up to date
• Powerful search function lets you easily find any channel
• Favorite list to keep a track of your favorite channels
• Absolutely NO spyware/adware or malware included

Download JLC's Internet TV 1.1.1 in Softonic

Joost, Democracy, VeohTV, Zattoo... The list of Internet TV apps being published lately doesn't end. Babelgum is one of them, another online TV client that claims to be the perfect application to "watch whatever you want whenever you want".

However, the truth is quite different. Babelgum is still in beta, and you can tell especially by the lack of content. There are several channels devoted to music, documentaries and news, and you can also watch your own videos, but I had a hard time trying to find something really interesting to watch. This may also be due to the fact that Babelgum is trying to set itself as a promotional platform for video content producers and doesn't just rip content off commercial TV channels.

In all I think it's a very promising app with lots of potential. It features a slick black interface and it's very easy to use. Let's give them some more developing time and see what happens.

Download Babelgum Beta in Softonic

Modern satellite TV systems make it increasingly difficult to be aware of all the content they broadcast. You have so many different channels and so many shows you like that you really need some help.

This help comes with TV-Browser, a simple tool that enables you to check what's scheduled on more than two hundred TV channels and radio stations. The program runs a wizard right after installation which sets up everything for you, although it displayed some error messages.

The program includes many European stations and also displays whatever extended information is available about each program. If your favourite channel is missing, you can add it to the developer's Wishlist on their webpage. TV-Browser also includes special tools to mark certain programs as Favorites or set a reminder so that you don't miss the next episode of a given TV show.

A quick, easy way to follow TV showns on your PC

Download TV-Browser 2.5.3 in Softonic

Streaming television apps get better as new versions are released and PPMate NetTV is an example of what these programs are evolving into. A friendly interface and a load of original features mean PPMate is one of the most solid P2P streaming apps out there.

It’s easy to navigate around the PPMate interface. The screen is divided into two tabs: the player and the menu. On the side, you have a scroll down menu from which you can select one of the 940 channels available to choose from, with all sorts of categories covered, like sports, news, movies, and TV series. Channels you have viewed will be saved in the "Favorites" list and you can use the search-as-you-type function to find a specific show. There’s also a ticker bar in the player view to remind you of upcoming programs, although unfortunately it appears in Chinese. We like how the main menu interface shows a thumbnail image of the program and you can select programs by clicking on the category tab. You have a little popularity marker next to each program. The more popular a show is, the better it will stream. You can also maximize your streaming quality configuring the XP TCP patch. Setting it to 256 or higher should guarantee you good streaming quality.

Apart from messy interfaces and dodgy streaming quality, I found early streaming TV apps to be very unfriendly to new users. PPMate thankfully launches a quick help window at the start, detailing the main functions accessible in the program, like channel list, player control panel or captions bar. This is really useful in helping you get acquainted with PPMate.

Thanks to the recording button included in the player bar, you can record any channel you’re watching. However, the “browse recording directory” button is not well configured and won’t take you to recorded files. You have to open up the PPMate folder yourself to take a look at what you’ve recorded.

We were also disappointed by the subscribe feature in PPMate. While it should be simple enough to select and save your favourite shows, clicking the subscribe button in tools only displays a blank “notify” window with no further instructions. Hopefully this will be corrected in the future.

Compared to other P2P streaming apps, PPMate offers a great interface and very good streaming quality. However, the new features like subscribe or record were not totally up to scratch. We were surprised to learn that the program only works with WMP 9 or 10, so if you have version 11 installed, you’ll have to downgrade. Also, while the program offers hundreds of channels to choose from, the majority of them are from Asian networks, meaning Westerners might not find what they want. Hopefully in future releases, there will be a wider variety to choose from.

Download PPMate NetTV 2.0.0.41 in Softonic

The Tvkoo! viviplayer integrates P2P technology, provides uniform content management and forms integrated online media streaming system. The applications does not require any installation process and will give you access to hundreds of channels from around the world. The interface of the viviplayer is friendly and accessible to any user.

Download Tvkoo! viviplayer 0.061206A in Softonic

If you're tired of always watching the same channels in your TV set, why not try channels from other countries that stream content on the Internet?

This is precisely what you can do with PCShowBuzz, an Internet TV tuner that allows you to watch hundreds of TV channels from all over the world. Channels are classified by country and also by genre, so it's easy to find something interesting to watch. There's also a button for radio stations, but apparently this function is currently not working. The program features some advanced tools as well, such as a bookmark manager to save your favorite channels and the ability to schedule channels for playback or recording (with a third-party tool).

As for other similar tools, image quality depends on several factors: your Internet connection, your computer specs and also the channel's features. Generally speaking PCShowBuzz worked fine during our tests, though I found it a bit annoying having to wait until the whole buffering was finished in order to start playing a channel.

PCShowBuzz lets you watch online TV channels from many different countries and genres right in your computer.

Download PCShowBuzz 1.20 in Softonic

When you first encounter PPLive it seems like someone’s playing a sick joke on you. Upon first installing the application you’ll almost certainly be thinking this is the most annoying, pointless program you’ve ever seen and will be ruining the time you wasted downloading it. The reason for this being is that at first glance it just looks like a very poor media player and the entire interface is in Chinese.

These problems are made all the more frustrating by the riches promised by the program. The shareware app boasts to offer you the ability to watch free television from across the world on your PC, including live sport, live news, the latest episodes of top dramas and comedies, and a host of brand new movie blockbusters. The software integrates advanced peer-to-peer technology so it can provide the users with the smoothest TV programs with no interceptions, meaning every user becomes a broadcaster, saving the cost of traditional streaming media.

Not being fluent in the Eastern language and uninspired by the drab GUI we were all set to uninstall and even thought about removing the program from the Softonic site altogether to save you visitors from the worst ten minutes of your life. Then something happened – after stumbling across a site devoted to PPLive we realized that was a way around the frustration.

ESSENTIAL USER TIP: How to change the interface to English

By loading up the PPLive TV Engine and right-clicking on the fourth option from the bottom (the one that looks like a squiggle) you’re presented with the chance to change the interface into English. Hallelujah! Unfortunately, opening the Channel List menu gave us even more Chinese to try and decipher but luckily the Football4Less site contains the full list online, as does the PPLive site.

The list of streaming feeds is pretty comprehensive, and although many are in Chinese, it’s possible to dig around and find some great programs such as Desperate Housewives, English Premiership football games, American Idol, WWE wrestling, and a host of new films . Clicking on the link in the ‘Currently’ category on the listings page brings up the schedule of programs for that particular channel for the day, although many repeat the same show or movie all day. You can also search channels by category, such as sports, movies, news, cartoons, etc.

The task of finding western movies and shows is made all the more tricky by the Chinese-to-English translations of the programs, which can be a little baffling until you get used to it. To give you some clues to start with: Friends is known as ‘Six person of like’; Desperate Housewives becomes ‘Crazy Housewives’, and Brokeback Mountain is curiously known as ‘Breaks arm mountain.’

Clicking on a show will open your media player and begin playing the show or film from the start. You can choose to use the built-in media player (which is rather limited in features), or open in Windows Media Player or Real Player. The program uses P2P technology to share TV shows, so the more people are online the faster and more reliable the access will be, and we were pleasantly surprised by the speed in which most of the streams are buffered and the quality of the video. Unfortunately, like many P2P apps, the program turns out to be riddled with malware which installs itself in your temporary drive - so be warned!

Although it’s about as easy-to-use as a rubber saw, PPLive is certainly worth investing a bit of time and patience in if you want to watch TV for free online, and once you’ve figured it out it becomes a very addictive way to spend your time.

Download PPLive 1.9.21 in Softonic

As the world of P2P TV continues its expansion, new kid on the block is TV Ants. The increasing unreliability of its Chinese cousin PPLive means that increasing numbers of users are changing to this simple but highly effective alternative.

The installation is fortunately pretty simple as everything is in Japanese – it’s simply a case of clicking on “Ok” a few times and away you go. The channel list appears in a simple window and you can reveal more by clicking “Renew”. The channel list is a bizarre mix of Japanese, public and private channels. If you want to find out how American troops keep up their morale in Iraq, check out “TV Pentagon” (the US army’s official channel) or if you’re looking for something a bit more scenic, there’s “TV Canada Tourism”.

Streaming is steady once it gets going and image quality is as good as anything you’ll get on PPLive. There are literally hundreds of channels to choose from although most are obviously of little interest to English viewers. The program is actually a project of Zhejiang University hence the plethora of mainly Asian channels. Its popularity lies in the fact that like most P2P TV apps, the channels broadcast live European football much to the chagrin of the The Premiership, La Liga, Sky Sports,etc.

Other channels include music, movies, news and fashion, mostly from Asian sources. Most of this can be found on Shanghai TV, Gungdong TV and Goal TV. Schedules can be found on various P2P forums around the net such as Free Football and you’ll certainly need them to get the most out of TV Ants.

Download TvAnts 1.0.0.59.0834 in Softonic

Have you ever wanted to watch television programs from all over the world? With Online Live you can not only do that, but also easily select films, documentaries and radio channels.

It contains an impressive database of contents you can watch, but for many films and documentaries, you need to pay a subscription fee. Television channels are freely available though. We would have expected to find all the most well known world channels, but there are only mostly satellite TV channels.

The platform on which the videos are shown is in Windows Media Player, and the program guides you to install the plug-in in case you missed it. The full screen mode, is just a double-click away.
Moving onto the usability side, Online Live improved a lot from the previous version. The general design is nicer and it render more pleasant the whole experience. There is no "go-back" button in the application which doesn't ease things. The right click is disabled and while watching a video, there is no pause button!

It's interesting to have a look at all these channels, but you need a very good high-speed Internet connection to enjoy them properly.

Download Online Live 6.3.37 in Softonic

We've seen quite a few software apps that stream online TV channels right to your computer, but this is probably one of the first TV apps to focus on music TV.

Audials TV delivers more than 50 different music streaming TV channels to your PC, thus providing you with an entertaining background soundtrack while you're working or simply browsing the web. The program can be run as a standalone application – with different interface designs - or be embedded in Vista's sidebar as a gadget.

Don't be fooled by the small number of channels on the left pane of Audalis TV. If you click on the "Sender" button you'll see a complete list of all available channels, among which you'll find popular stations like MTV or Ministry of Sound. Bear in mind, however, that the image and sound quality may vary a lot from one channel to another, and that you may also find the odd channel that doesn't connect at all.

Audalis TV lets you watch streaming music TV channels right in your computer, either on the desktop or as a Vista gadget embedded in the sidebar.

Download Audials TV 1.2 in Softonic