Live TV on your Mac
Livestation holds a lot of promise for bringing live television to your Mac. We downloaded this free app with expectations of being able to watch some of the great stations from around the world — and in some cases were able to do so.
The first thing you should know about Livestation is that it wants an e-mail address and password before it will work. I’m always leery of this kind of thing — are they spammers? — so I used my junk address on Yahoo.
There are a few preset “partner” channels, such as BBC World News and C-SPAN, that play well right off the bat. Just double-click and they play smoothly after a wait of a few seconds. Viewing defaults to a small screen with good resolution. You can go full-screen, but expect a lot of pixelation.
If you’re not satisfied with these initial choices, you can search for others. But this is where performance becomes spotty. Some stations won’t load at all. Some load, but the video and audio are choppy to the point of making them unbearable. We have a high-speed Internet connection that normally has no trouble playing movies, so this was a disappointment.
It should also be noted that not all channels are live. For example, CBC News has a channel that plays the latest newscast from the beginning — and that’s it. BBC Headline News is similar.
Is Livestation worth a download? Its best use may be for catching up on the news or watching music videos. Going beyond that is tricky and could be more effort than you’re willing to put into it.
Posted Saturday, November 1, 2008 in Reviews
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