By Tim Stanton

Free access to Perfectly legal.  Because of an extraordinary loophole allowed by U.S. Congress - the FCC is not allowed to regulate free TV for PC Software.

Meaning?  You can enjoy thousands of top channels with absolutely zero added fees.

Let me try out my best "infomercial voice" here as I shout:  Get instant access to and top channels like NBC, Fox, ESPN, CNBC, Major League Baseball, Comedy Central, MTV Overdrive, Euro TV, Discovery Channel, Broadway Network, Game Network, MovieStat Network, National Geographic, Food Network.  And thousands more!

"Dead Channels worthless junk..."

Feedback on iStream TV - Received via Email

How TV for PC Software is Like the iPod?

As you can imagine, this is a highly competitive market.  TV for PC Software--good and bad and ugly--clutter the marketplace.  Success breeds competitors. 

Witness the success of the iPod.  A beautiful and functional thing, that iPod.  But as for the thousands of imitators?  Some good, some bad.  Mostly bad. 

That is the situation the Shop TV on PC Software™ found when reviewing TV for PC software.  After reviewing scores of TV for PC software, the results were disturbing--but with a number of breakaway successes.

Sacrificing a Computer in the Name of Science

by Reiko S.

The methodology of testing software is different than testing weed whackers or cars.  The difference is that cars and weed whackers can be tested on their own.  But software must be tested via an existing platform--i.e., a computer.  Run an unfriendly piece of software, and you risk melting down your computer.  That's exactly what happened with the Shop TV on PC Software test machine.

We used an old Sony Vaio.  We intentionally chose a machine with lower computing capacity--128MB RAM and a Pentium II processor.  The reason?  If an application could run on this, it could run on anything.

First, we wiped the hard drive clean then reloaded Windows XP.  Next we downloaded 8 PC-to-TV applications (listed in our comparison chart).  The three of us split up the 8 applications and ran each piece of software for at least one hour each.

Call it "luck of the draw" but Tim and Jonathan happened to get the two best TV-for-PC software...ones that became the Review Board Top 2 Picks.  And me?  I got one that nuked our test machine.

Yep.  At the end of our testing...one of the programs embedded viruses, trojans, and spyware in our Vaio.  Oh well, we had planned to junk it anyway.

"...Almost No Dead Channels, I even got some
crystal-clear HD programming on my PC..."

Feedback on Satellite PC Pro - Received via Email

Great Channels or Worthless Channels?

by Jonathan Winston

Nearly all TV for PC software we reviewed claimed to offer "thousands" of channels.  One problem is that many of the TV for PC applications just offer bizarre things like Eastern Hungarian local access TV. But not hot offerings that real people want like sports, movies, news, documentaries from top media outlets. If that wasnt bad enough, some of these applications had tons of dead channels that would never play. 

The two best in terms of channels and programming were Satellite PC Pro and Satellite TV for PC.  These excellent applications had popular channels like:

Yet Covering the Local and the Unique

But the great thing about TV for PC is that it covers both the big and the small.

In a way, it's like Internet radio.  You can get both the popular channels.  And you can get small localized channels from, yes, backwater places.  (In fact, these TV for PC software also have Internet radio!)

You'll get TV from countries as diverse as Ireland and Iran, Great Britain and Germany, South Africa and Russia.  Catch up on your home country, or simply find out about other amazing cultures around the world...with TV for PC software!