Every year that passes seems to give us yet another way to watch television. We can watch TV via our mobile phones, off the internet, from the hard drive of our TV recorder, live via satellite, through a cable company or even the old fashioned way from the aerial. Nearly all free-to-air shows and even Sky Sports and Sky Movies can be watched via internet TV.
In this article, we’ll take a look at a few of the ways to watch television via the internet for viewers in the UK and a little look ahead at what’s to come.
BBC iPlayer
The BBC’s iPlayer has been available for several years and is making continuous improvements to the player. The iPlayer is the largest portal for viewing in the UK and generally lets you catch up on TV from the last seven days, including some HD (High Definition) programmes.
The BBC iPlayer has even been added to the Wii and Playstation 3 platforms making viewing easy from any room in the house connected wirelessly into your WiFi router.
ITV Player
The ITV player has been a little slower to expand, but you can now view up to 30 days of catch up TV covering many of the television network’s channels. At the end of 2010 the player was also added onto the PS3 games console, making the PS3 the best games console in the UK for TV viewing.
Channel 4 - 4OD
Chanel 4’s 4OD player allows the last 30 days of viewing to seen and is also on the Playstation 3 games console.
Channel 5 - Demand Five
Channel 5 has a good variety of shows to catch up on from their channels but is not on any games consoles at this time.
Sky Player - a great way to watch Sky Sports and Movies
Sky Player offers over 30 channels from their extensive network to watch via your PC or via XBox Live games console. If you already subscribe to Sky Television, the package available via the player mirrors your TV package. If you do not subscribe to Sky television, you can take out a subscription for viewing via their player making it very useful for those unable to have a dish installed.
Just a few of the channels available are:-
- Sky 1
- Sky Atlantic
- Sky Living
- Sky Movies
- Discovery
- National Geographic
- and many more
There are also other providers such as SeeSaw TV allowing you to watch the TV channels rebroadcast on their service, some of which are free. Later this year, YouView is launching; this will allow TV shows to be downloaded onto the devices hard drive as well as recording two channels at once off Freeview. With other options, such as BT Vision and TopUpTV, you are spoilt for choice of how to watch your favourite TV show.
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