Watch live TV from channels around the world on your Mac.
TVU networks offers a free live TV service that you can watch on your Mac over a broadband Internet connection. This service is dedicated to bringing you TV that you can't get from cable or satellite, such as news and sports from around the world. To watch our service, all you need is a Mac, a broadband Internet connection and this free downloadable TVUPlayer application.Select from the 300+ free TV channels, read the Broadcaster blog, send email to your favorite Broadcaster, rate and review the shows, and mark your favorites.
I'm undecided whether this is even worth downloading because of lack of updates since 2010; picture quality is short of abysmal, especially full screen mode. I like watching dated material and there are a lot of choices, soccer around the world, etc.
Considering I pay $8 per month to stream Netflix [on multiple devices] with many choices and great picture quality, TVUPlayer has its positives, but rarely do I open it now because of the picqua and updates.
1.5 stars for effort.
A bit clunky, overwhelming & wonderful
zunipus
Pros
Cons
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />For a free application, this thing is wonderful! I've had it crash on particular program sources, but the overall stability is good.
Stuff that needs work:
The pop-out side window is very buggy. It's incredibly easy to break its interface so you can't see its tabs. The window acts independently of the main interface, which means it can annoyingly sit on top of other windows. The tv guide feature is a bit naff, with sources that aren't viewable on TVUPlayer, as well as lots of nothing listings. I have yet to see the Tags tab do anything. It also uses a scrollbar inside a scrollbar system that has always been a bad idea. I tend to simply close this window and ignore it.
The channel listing on the left side is not sortable, resulting in chaos. Thankfully you can filter this listings by language and be searches as well as the useful tabs for various types of media. The channel listing periodically updates itself, which is great except that it refreshes the listing back to the start. If you happen to be scrolling around in the list at the time, tough luck.
The application is also a bit of a resource hog while it's just sitting there "doing nothing". It occasionally updates its net listings, but that is not the cause of the problem. This behavior is reminiscent of Adobe Flash Player's CPU devouring habits, but is thankfully not nearly as bad. I'm talking about TVU eating only around 30% of your CPU cycles.
Overwhelming:
This is the world's live free video at your fingertips. As such, the experience for a newbie is overwhelming!!! Choice is good. Zillions of choices blows your mind. Therefore, using the tabs, language and search filtering is critical when you start learning what's available. If you know exactly what you want, you have some scrolling to do but you'll get there. If you're just browsing, it could take days to get through the listings.
Wonderful:
If you live in the USA like I do, you know what corporate oligarchic crap nearly all the news sources have become. Big Brother Murdock and pals dictate what news you can watch. Despair not! Quality world news is available from the Internet, at this player is terrific for viewing it!!! Then there's everything else: Movies from around the world that you will never find at Netflix or the video store; World TV dramas and comedies; Sports from around the planet; Propaganda channels from both sides of the walls; Cartoons; Music videos; Science; Dancing; Shopping; Seriousness and silliness!!!
Most of the programming is in other languages. But if you've learned not to care about the words, there's a lot to enjoy. If you're working on your foreign language skills, this is a great way. It is entirely JOYFUL to be able to see and hear how the rest of the world lives, works, thinks and spends their free time. It will free your brain.
Thank you to the developers of this App and all the associated sites for their work. The world is here for ALL of us to share. This great little application is a terrific way to take part.
Very poor compared to the Windows version
livefortoday6491
Pros
Many channels
Cons
Crashes on full screen or when dragging it out and slow buffering if at all. No menus to use.
Summary
As cons but very slow to load and buffer even on small screen, if they ever get it to work the signal strength is poor