Sometimes I prefer watching movies and TV series on the computer rather than doing it on the couch. The image quality in my PC monitor is better and I can handle more formats than just DVD.

Of course, I need a good video player in order to enjoy my favorite movies at their most, and my choice is no other than BSPlayer. This great video player features anything you need to watch movies or any other kind of video on your PC. It supports all popular video formats (and audio as well, in case you were wondering) and though its basic interface is not really the nicest one I've seen, you can easily customize it with skins.

BSPlayer supports video subtitles, takes screenshots of movie currently playing, lets you create bookmarks and chapters to move along videos more easily and has also support for plug-ins. I especially liked the way you can control playback, either by using keyboard shortcuts or simply your mouse: one click to stop the video, two clicks to go full screen, mouse wheel to raise or low the volume…

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that, being a free version, you're obliged to install an adware element on your PC that displays ads from time to time while you're browsing the way. It's a safe app that doesn't compromise your privacy, but still it's not my cup of tea. I guess it's just the price you have to pay for having such a great video player for free.

BSPlayer lets you enjoy your favorite movies on the PC with a wide range of features (subtitles, screenshots, bookmarks and more) provided you're willing to accept some ads on your desktop.

Download BS.Player Free 2.31.974 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

Online Live lets you watch 3645+ free Internet TV, on demand videos and listen free online radio stations. The live television channels database is the biggest worldwide. No additional equipment required. Online TV Player supports Windows Media Player. You can play most stream formats in this program.

Download OnlineLive 6.3.41 in Softonic

anyTV lets you play TV channels and radio stations that stream their contents on the Internet. The program features a huge list of channels from hundreds of countries around the world.

The list is divided into TV channels, radio stations and videos, the latter being presumably videos from web pages about the most diverse topics. Lists can be filtered according to several topics and also arranged by rating, bitrate or genre. In spite of that, sometimes the channel list is difficult to manage especially when it's too long. One feature I missed, for example, is being able to jump to a certain part of the list by pressing its first letter on the keyboard.

anyTV looks very promising: a nice interface, hundreds of TV channels to watch and radio stations to listen to, a Favorites system, the possibility to rate channels… unfortunately while testing the program we found way too many channels that didn't work well or didn't even load at all. And what's worse, the program didn't show up any error message to let us know if we were missing any codec or other necessary component.

Watch streaming TV channels on your computer without any additional hardware.

Download anyTV 2.20 in Softonic

Sharing video is becoming increasingly important with bandwidths and hard drives getting bigger.

It's about time then than someone harnessed the power of P2P technology to share video which is what the developers of SwarmPlayer have done. SwarmPlayer essentially combines three ways of video watching and sharing i.e. Downloading videos, streaming videos, and watching videos while they are being generated i.e. via webcam. Effectively, SwarmPlayer allows a single player to download movies, watch video-on-demand, and watch live video streams using one technology, while taking advantage of the popularity and maturity of existing BitTorrent clients.

At the moment SwarmPlayer is purely in testing mode and you can only watch two videos -
a BBC test program (a weather report) and something called the "Fabchannel" which is basically a webcam on a TV station rooftop in Amsterdam - not very interesting. However, the SwarmPlayer principle looks good - you can see how many people are watching a stream at one time via the stats page which is great for those that are learning to produce their own broadcasts and want to know how popular it is via SwarmPlayer.

SwarmPlayer is potentially a new and exciting way to share video over the net although it may be a while before the finished product is released.

Download SwarmPlayer 1.0.1 in Softonic

With the increasing popularity of digital cameras, the need for programs that help us share our pictures is also growing. As digital photos cannot be stuck onto the pages of traditional albums, the perfect solution is creating a digital album, something you can do very easily with MemoriesOnTV. Even if you're not the computer-savvy type, you'll find yourself very comfortable when using this application and the results are really attractive.

MemoriesOnTV divides the process of creating a digital photo album into five easy steps, represented in the menu bar located between both panes: import, music, effects, menu and burn. To begin with, simply drag and drop files from the bottom pane onto the top one to add content to your photo album. The only downside would be the fact that you cannot resize the bottom pane, so if you have a large directory structure you're going to be scrolling a lot. After choosing pictures, you can work on selected photos individually: double click on any of them and the photo will be displayed in a separate window, along with a complete editing menu. You'll be able to fix colors and brightness, add a caption, change background color or apply any of the many special effects featured in the program. You may move to the next photo and continue working this way. However, unless you want to personalize every single detail of every single image it's not really worth it, as it's going to take a huge amount of time. Besides, the program can do it automatically! Just keep on reading and we'll show you.

The next step in the process consists of adding a soundtrack to your album. You'll be able to choose the music files you want to use in your project by just dragging and dropping them on the program's interface or clicking on the button with the plus sign. Don't worry about calculating the song's length; MemoriesOnTV features an excellent sync tool that will adjust the duration of both music and photos, making them fit perfectly.

Now it's time to add special effects to your pictures. This is where you can set the program to choose the effects for you (if you select the "random" option) and also apply them automatically to all pictures, instead of having to edit them one by one. You can choose both photo effects and transition effects. The amount of options available for each of them is certainly gorgeous.

The last step before actually finishing the project is choosing a menu template, that is, the image you will see when viewing your photo album on your PC or TV. Once again, you have a wide range of options to choose from, though the preview pane is so narrow they're hard to see. Fortunately, you have the possibility to preview the whole project as you work your way through the different steps. Once you've created the menu screen, end your project by saving it as a video file or burning it to a disc directly from the application itself.

MemoriesOnTV is definitely one of the best choices to create digital photo albums for novice users as it doesn't require any special knowledge. You'll be amazed to see how well your pictures look on your TV, with the appropriate background music and some smashing visual effects.

Download MemoriesOnTV 4.1.0 in Softonic

With 3webTotal TV & Radio Tuner you can watch 896 live television channels and listen to 3800+ online radio stations.

Live online television and radio are growing. Every single day at least a new radio station or TV channel come "live" on The Net. We are here to offer you our best effort in searching, selecting and adding those stations to our lineup.

3webTotal TV and Radio Tuner has TV channels from 104 countries and radio stations from 148 countries.

Download WebTotal TV & Radio Tuner 5.5 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

If you're obsessed by the weather or just need to be sure that you're always kept on top of the latest weather patters, Weather Watcher Live is one of the most updated applications you'll ever use.

This personal Windows desktop weather station automatically retrieves the current conditions, hourly forecast, daily forecast, detailed forecast, severe weather alerts, and weather maps for over 77,000 cities world-wide. It's configured by default for US users but it doesn't take long to configure it for your own city and location. The current conditions can be quickly viewed by holding your mouse pointer over the Weather Watcher system tray icon. At that moment, Weather Watcher will allow you to automatically retrieve your weather data at a set interval, display the current temperature in a customized tray icon and display the current conditions image in a tray icon. You can also designate which weather information is displayed in the Weather Watcher system tray tooltip, convert the weather data using almost any conversion, display a weather map as your desktop wallpaper, log the weather data in any format, export the weather data in any format, customize the look of the Weather Watcher interface and icons via skins, and much more. However, is it accurate? Well for my city, the forecasts weren't spot on although neither are the local weather predictions so the program can be forgiven for that but it's easy to use and read and beats trying to catch the weather forecasts on TV all the time.

For fast updates and attractive, easy to read forecasts, Windows Watcher Live is a great 24 hour tool.

Download Weather Watcher Live 6.0.0.44 Beta in Softonic

I'm sure that over the years you've managed to build up quite a collection of music. However, if you were born before the year 2000 then the chances are they won't all be stored in the form of perfect quality digital audio files. Vinyl, tapes and CDs were very good at the time, but given that we're all used to listening to music in crystal clarity these days, it can be quite painful to listen to these crackily old recordings.

Cool Record Edit is here to help though, allowing you to polish up your music and audio through an intuitive editor. The program is able to import recordings from LP, Internet, radio, TV, cassette, etc. to your hard drive, before making refinements to it. The application contains many useful tools, such as an amplifier, reverberator, volume gain, etc. as well as a handy zoom feature for pinpoint manipulation of the audio spectrum. I was also mightily impressed with the click and crackle filter, which is particularly good for cleaning up vinyl recordings.

Once you've edited your audio, you can committ it to CD using the built-in burning tool, and there are also tools for ripping and converting. If you want a program that can edit tracks for mixing and creating your own music then look elsewhere, but if you're after something that can improve the sound quality of your audio then Cool Record Edit is a powerful solution.

Download Cool Record Edit 5.9 Pro 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

We all know this multiple Emmy Award and Golden Globe award-winning TV series. The six seasons lasted from 1998 to 2004. Noted as the most important television show for fashion and its industry, it tackled socially relevant issues, often specifically dealing with women in society in the late 1990s, and how changing roles and definitions for women affected the four main characters.

For all the millions of fans of this fantastic series, I’ve packed a wallpaper in a zip file, based on the official movie’s screensaver. These will bring to your desktop all the allure of the four stylish women, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda and that feeling of friendship, love and disillusion-illusion, that appealed to so many of us.

This collection consists of twelve screenshots of the cinematic adaptation of the TV series with lively captures and romantic moments. You’ll love it.

Download Sex and the City: The Movie Wallpapers in Softonic

We all know this multiple Emmy Award and Golden Globe award-winning TV series carried out during six seasons from 1998 to 2004. Noted as the most important television show for fashion and its industry, it tackled socially relevant issues, often specifically dealing with women in society in the late 1990s, and how changing roles and definitions for women affected the four main characters.

For all the millions of fans of this fantastic series, here’s the official screensaver which will bring to your desktop all the allure of the four stylish women, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda and that feeling of friendship, love and disillusion-illusion, that appealed to so many of us. Just set the slideshow rate, something like 5 seconds, and when you see a picture you particularly like, click the ‘set as wallpaper’ option. If it doesn’t work, which can happen, have a look at the collection I’ve zipped for you.

This screensaver consists of twelve screenshots for the cinematic adaptation of the famous TV series with lively captures and romantic moments. You’ll love it.

Download Sex and the City: The Movie Screensaver in Softonic

ChrisTV TimeShift lets you freeze the live TV stream, giving you a break while it's still recording. TimeShifting gives you recordings with time delayed playback which offers various advantages over the linear recording style you were used till now. By TimeShift recording you can fast-forward through commercials and create your instant-replay on a live TV program. Never miss anything from your favourite show, by timeshift recording, a simple pause will let you resume later the interrupted TV program viewing.

Download ChrisTV Professional 5.20 in Softonic

Most of my friends are replacing their old CTR television sets with brand-new flat screens, but I don't think I'll follow the trend. After all, I can also watch TV on my computer with Online Media.

This simple tool lets you tune in to about 2,000 TV channels and 1,500 radio stations, all streaming content on the Internet. They're all classified by countries and can be conveniently selected by using the tree-like structure on the left pane of the program's interface. A double click on the channel's name is enough to start watching or listening. There's also a bookmark system that lets you easily store your favorite TV and radio channels.

Be aware though that the program is far from being perfect. Many channels simply don't work and some others have such a low speed transference that you get a series of fixed frames in a slideshow instead of real video. However, given the large amount of channels available, you may still find some good content – and what's more important, be able to watch it.

Online Media features a really impressive collection of TV channels and radio stations but unfortunately not all of them seem to work.

Download Online Media 1.0.1 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

This popular web tv player allows you to watch TV programs in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Arabic and many other languages. The live channel guide is divided by thematic categories such as music, news, educational, sport and shopping. In the station-by-region menu, you have a list of all available channels divided by nationality so you can have a quick glance on the offer.

Unfortunately, the choice of programs seems to be based on a quantity, not quality policy. It does offer TV channels from all over the world although you will not have the best national broadcasters.

TV's design is really disappointing: the main page is stuffed with so many advertisements that using the application can be confusing; the list of channels is presented in a very inelegant way; the video is slow to start and the video player is different for every channel.

TV might be an interesting application if you want to watch 'not-so-common' TV programs from all over the world but you will have to put up with poor quality and design.

Download TV 2.1 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

Online TV free edition allows you to watch hundreds of television channels from around the world ranging in content from sports to films.

The program works with a TV screen on the left and a channel manager on the right. The channel manager not only includes the channels you can watch, but also multimedia material stored on your hard drive. You can minimise the player into a "mini player" which plays in the top right of your screen so you can watch TV while using other applications. Whatsmore, you can even view photos via Online TV although this seems a bit pointless - the viewer is poor and it's unlikely that anyone would want to view photos in a TV Viewing app. There are two major downsides with the whole application though. One is that many of the TV channel links seem dead or at least, don't work properly. The other problem is that the streaming time can be very long - you can be waiting more than a few minutes for a channel to start with no indication of what status the streaming is at.

The number of channels is impressive but the functionality of them sadly is not.

Download Online TV Free Edition 5.0 in Softonic