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Zattoo – move over Joost, yer daddy’s comin’

Zattoo4

I’ve been trying out a closed beta of Zattoo over the past few days, and it’s pretty darn cool. For those who don’t know, it’s real live television beamed to your PC over your broadband Internet connection. No box, no aerial, no plug-in tuners. The image you see here is taken from standard daytime BBC television running at approx 5 seconds delay from the live transmission (yes I checked).

Now setting aside what damage this could do to newbie services like Joost (have you folks all got your invites yet from the previous thread – I hope that you’re all helping each other out) and Bablegum, it’s a simply astonishing piece of P2P technology. Remember that this isn’t a package of no-name, C level programming cast-offs from late night cable, but prime time premium television (hah!) beamed from subscriber stations to anywhere in the world on demand via a small downloaded player.

The quality is at least as good as Joost, if not better, and the content speaks for itself. In fact the only rival I can see for this is the Slingbox, which gives you your own stored PVR content anywhere on demand via the browser. Television has just gone global, and it should only get better as the technology improves (and maybe Open Source moves in?). Now all that’s needed is some decent programmes.

10 Comments

  • If you have a tv card you stream tv with Orb(.com) to any net connected device including phones. I get my bbc fix abroad with this and it works well.

  • Any invite for Zattoo? Looking for one desperately …

  • @Luca: nope, the Zattoo team are not even talking to us mere mortals. I’ve had some questions in to them for a while, and not a peep. Strange way to launch a business.

    @Sampie: yep Orb is deffnitely neat, but the super cool thing about Zattoo is that you don’t need a tuner at all. Think of the people who may be in locations which can’t receive a terrestrial, satellite or cable TV transmission but can get broadband down a phone line (and yes there are some, believe it or not).

  • Red, thanks for the cool review. We at Zattoo seem to be hitting a nerve with the product… so sorry if we didn’t get to answer your email. We’ll send you invites if you send me an email to my address, and you can then forward them to your friends. Cheers. Beat.

  • Thanks Beat, I’ve forwarded my details, hopefully we can start distributing some soon. :-)

  • Do you want to get some of that cool Internet porn (or other web video, streaming or downloadable) on your TV? Is there an easy way to do it? Tell your TVMama! Take our short survey and let us know if you think PC-TV convergence will happen this year. TVMama thanks you!

  • Please can I have a Zattoo invite????? (please [email protected]) Thanks – James

  • Sorry James, I don’t have any invites, they didn’t send any to me in the end.

  • pleaseeee one invite

    [email protected]

  • Please an invite for Zattoo.
    Thanks
    [email protected]

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