In the past couple of years, the Internet has taken over and changed a lot of our media consumption habits. From newspapers to magazines and even movies, everything is available online. With more and more publishers taking the online route, it would be safe to say that in a couple of years the Internet will take over as the sole medium of distribution for media producers such as newspaper publishers and movie studios.
There is still one medium, though, that hasn’t really taken to the Internet in a big way and that is Television.
Sure, there are websites such as Hulu that let you watch TV shows at your own leisure, but well, Hulu doesn’t work outside the US and that for me is a big deal breaker, considering I and a majority of the readers of this blog stay outside the US.
If Live TV is all you crave and nothing else works for you, download and install TV Chrome right now.
TV Chrome is a plugin for Google’s Chrome web browser that lets you access hundreds of TV channels from around the world for free. Installation, like all Chrome plugins, is swift and easy. Just click the “Get TV Chrome” link and click Continue to let Chrome download and install the extension.
TV Chrome installs a tiny little icon next to the address bar of your browser. To start watching TV, just click the TV Chrome icon.
When you click the icon, you’ll be presented with a list of channels from around the world, sorted according to countries as well as genres.
Select the channel that you want to watch from one of the two categories and the channel will start playing, almost immediately, in another pop-up window.
One thing that you might face a problem with is that most of these channels require the browser to include the windows media player plugin. Chrome doesn’t come with this plugin by default and if you don’t see a link to download the plugin in the TV window itself, then download it from this page.
I know the page says that the plugin is for firefox, but trust me, it works.
After you’ve installed the plugin, you might have to restart Chrome for the plugin to be enabled. Restart the browser and try watching TV now.
Congratulations ! Have fun watching all the awesome channels available for your viewing pleasure now.
Programmer, blogger and a geek making a living shifting bits around the Internet. Sharninder is the owner of Geeky Ninja
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Question: Is google chrome better than firefox, with the extensive applications it allows? Also, what kind of connection does one need for tv to stream without pauses?
Well, I like Chrome as it’s much leaner and is light on resources. Firefox still has more extensions but Chrome is getting there and a couple of my favorite extensions have already been ported to Chrome, plus it’s getting better.
Also, on a 1Mbps connection that I have, most channels were streaming fine although some did require buffering.
This looks good. Also, this is the first time I am visiting geeky ninja on mobile. I see that you are using the WP touch theme for mobile. Good choice. I used to use carrington earlier, but it wasnt this good looking.
my theme is pretty barebones so most browsers display it as it is, but yes WP touch is one of the better mobile optimized themes available.
TV Chrome is not working on my computer. Are there any system requirements that this depends upon?
None that I know of. Did you install the media player extension ? That is all that it needs.
This is exactly like the fireTV extension. depends on WMP and the buffering is so inefficient. I’d say that for BSNL unlimited users (yes 256kbps) these apps show a bla(n/c)k WMP popup with a hopeful buffering and times out quickly. I’m pointing this out, coz unless there’s a way to record the shows, no 2mbps home plan user would sit awake daily 2am to 8am to watch tv on internet. For me, these things like speed requirements matter a lot. Having said that, do you think there could be like a better way out…lo-res? I used to tune into winamp/nullsoft video channels…they used to atleast show a few frames :p
All these extensions basically link directly to the video feeds that TV channels put out. That is why you see so few of them showing Indian TV channels. The extension makers don’t store anything on their end, just give you direct access to the original feed and the speed/quality depends on the TV channels generosity with their free feed :-)
I wonder if like radio streams TV streams could also advertise their quality rate like radioverve stations are i think 64kbps.
Having said that, ultimately I’m all supporting for platforms like blip.tv which let indie serial producers showcase their work than commercial channels showing free content and I’d really wish to see some good content from India. I like the Get Shorty program (forgot the channel) on film shorts. Unique stories.
p.s. do I have to select notify of followup comments on same post for every comment I add? did it this time also though.
Yes, wordpress manages follow ups to comments per post.
I cannot get windows media player to connect to tv chrome