Tube! is the largest resource available for viewing Internet Television, according to developer East Bay Technologies, with over 1500 channels (click for current list) of TV, Live Video Channels and Webcams, plus an Internet Video Search, with 2 million+ videos. You can watch uncensored news, music videos, education and entertainment channels from around the world. iTube! is deal for people interested in alternative programming, learning languages, foreign cultures, entertainment or news.
Within iTube! is a large directory of streaming video links sorted into several categories. They are a mix of live broadcasts and preproduced segments that are updated daily or weekly. iTube uses existing plugins to play the video and audio – basically, iTube! combines the “big three” primary players – QuickTime, Real and WMP – into a single interface. Of course, all of the programming is publicly available via the internet, but iTube! makes it much easier to search for and switch between programming. It’s like a browser for online multimedia. Remember that this is the Internet, not a television, so there will be a delay as you switch from one “channel” to the other. It depends on your connection to the Internet.
Content is displayed in nine categories: Most popular, daily/weekly broadcasts, government, live video/webcam, music video, music/entertainment, religious, science/education and talk/news. Adult content can be disabled in the application’s preferences.
QuickTime and some (not all) Windows Media formatted content shows up with player controls in the iTube! viewing window; RealPlayer content we tried doesn’t have player controls, but if you Control-Click (Right-Click) on the video, you’ll have control options.
iTube! is an excellent beginning and shows what Apple’s “QuickTime TV” could’ve been. What we’d really like is for content creators to adequately describe their video clips, so that when searching for, say, “Apple,” the user wouldn’t be faced with “Apple 01,” Apple “02,” Apple 03,” etc. as the only descriptions – it causes a lot of wasted time to click each one to find out what the heck it is! The isn’t the fault of iTube!, it’s the fault of content creators for not providing descriptive data.
It’s when you stick to categories such as “Talk/News” that iTube! really shines. We must warn you, it’s addicting to be able to watch hundreds of channels in one searchable interface from all over the world!
Is iTube! worth the $24 price? Yes, it is easily worth that price and it’s already found a prominent place in our Mac OS X Docks. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to get back to watching Iranian television (with English subtitles) right after we check out what’s on in Hong Kong, Argentina, and Milwaukee.
More info and download link here.
Sounds more like an Ad than a review
Eric,
Have you used iTube? I have. Yes, this is a positive review and iTube! could use portions of it for an ad. I’m glad MDN covered it, because I use this app every day – it is an excellent product.
Another lame story from MDN, I swear this site gets worse every day. Start posting stories that are credible and relevant or don’t post anything at all.
It’s a review Ray. Not a “story.” Why not ignore clicking the headline and let those of us that are interested in it read it?
Yeah Ray, you should ask for your money back. MDN should have a 110% satisfaction guarantee. Let me do the math, let’s see, 100% of free is…
I had no idea there’s so much crap on TV.
I never even heard of iTube! before reading this, so it’s “news” to me. Thanks, MDN. I found it interesting and I’ve downloaded the 10-day trial to see how I like it.
interesting I had a comment about a pop up on MDN and they deleted it….
You can skip Milwaukee – trust me. There’s nothing worth seeing here.
I had no idea there’s so much crap on MDN
James, don’t listen to frustrated, unproductive people like Eric. People like him are just jealous of people like you! You are doing what you like, and he is just being ignorant.
popeye,
Maybe because your comment was off-topic and the pop-under issue has already been explained. Perhaps you missed this:
MacDailyNews, “2/22. 10:25pm ET: We are currently testing various pop-under ad codes. We have now been in contact with Fastclick and there is a way for our users who do not wish to accept pop-unders to opt out. Users who wish to opt-out of pop-under and other Fastclick ad network ads may do so by installing the Fastclick Opt-Out Cookie. If you choose to install this cookie, please consider buying any songs you wish via iTunes by launching iTunes via our left side column to launch iTunes or please consider patronizing our other sponsors via banner and text ads (such as Other World Computing, MacService, PowerMax, The Apple Store, The Apple iTunes Music Store, and others) as MacDailyNews will be unable to derive any Fastclick revenue from your visits. MacDailyNews is an ad-supported site and Fastclick is a major component of this site’s revenue and helps greatly in offsetting our operational costs. Thank you.”
The link to the MDN article
OK, I downloaded iTube, paid my money, and I’m NOT impressed. Yet.
MDN fails to mention that there’s hardly any QuickTime video; mostly WinMedia and Real.
There are tons of video and streams available, though. It takes awhile to sift through all the crumbs to find something spongeworthy (to mix a few metaphors).
If there was ever a service in need of Apple’s “touch” this is it.
Tera Patricks
Mac360
Tera,
It’s hardly iTube’s fault that the majority of web multimedia isn’t in QuickTime. That would actually be Apple’s fault for not convincing content providers to use QuickTime, right? And we Mac users who want QuickTime should be writing to sites asking for QuickTime format, too!
Tera Patrick, wow, she’s hot AND a mac-head?
That’s hot. I love you Tera!!!!!!!
Opt out? Special cookie that I have to visit FastClick to get? No thanks. I’m all for opt in and fewer cookies!
I’d rather just visit less often. There are other news sites.
I won’t pretend I’ll abandon MDN altogether, but the popunders do drive me away. I hope they are temporary.
thanks for the little Milwaukee shout-out
i’ll be donating money soon because of it!
mil-town… woot woot
Michael, there is no trial version on their website. If it is, then they’ve got it well hidden.
I guess sites like this depend on advertising, but why do we have to put up with poorly written Flash ads. This page is currently using about 80% of my cpu cycles on my 867 12″PowerBook. And it appears to be the stupid “GFT Forex” whatever that is just below.
It’s just friggin’ rediculous. Macsurfer is just as bad… if not worse since they have more flash ads.
Flash is annoying because:
1) The moving things make it hard to focus on reading
2) It’s a serious drain on my battery
3) they take too long to load
3) They send my fan into over-drive
4) Safari (or any browser I know of) doesn’t have a way to stop them running.
5) WHO actually clicks on these things anyway?
GRRRRR.
For those who are fluent in French there is a free product called CocoaJT that does exactly the same, except that the channels point mostly to French content (althought you can also tune into the BBC).
The nice thing about CococaJT is that the source code is freely available, therefore it should be easy to customize. Maybe that is exactly what the creators of iTube did…
http://jeanmatthieu.free.fr/cocoajt/
sceptic
firefox, and the adBlocker extension will block those ads for you. i still use safari because i like it and over the years have grown to ignore the ads. and i do click one every now and then, i even make it a point to come to MDN and click the links to the apple store and ITMS if im gonna buy something.
// i also play the lil games where you shoot stuff on occasion
There is similar program called CocoaJT
http://jeanmatthieu.free.fr/cocoajt/ (in French)
CocoaJT is a donationware.
Review in English : http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14465
MDN, what the hell have you been smoking???
I agree with Tera Patricks.
I downloaded this program AND paid $24.00 to register it. I speak from firsthand experience.
When I tried to use the filter/search for Quicktime content, I could find absolutely NOTHING. The only thing I could find was ‘Real’ and ‘Windows Media’ files. What the hell is that about? After I reset the filter/search to look for Quicktime AND Real content, there were several options that were available, all of them ‘Real’ of course. I had to download the Real player (…shudder…) to watch the stuff, though.
One thing that pissed me off about this program is that, unlike Quicktime player, there was NO WAY to pause a video that was being watched. If I stopped the video and then restarted, it would go back to the beginning and start ALL OVER! It was a pain in the ass to use.
This program has a LONG way to go to be anything near the quality of an Apple application. It’s lack of missing features makes me think that this is nothing more than a beta. Oh, and I get to PAY for the priviledge of using it. Yay.
I don’t care what MDN says, unless you have a sadististic nature and you deliberately look for things to be disappointed in, don’t waste your time or money on this piece of crap.
Oops…
I meant, ‘unless you have a Masochistic nature…’
too many adult beverages…
Go to wwiTV.com.
It lists the various television streams you can watch.
It’s free.
Yes, most streams are Windows Media Streams or Real Streams. Real Streams work very very well – much better compression than Quicktime Streams.
Once Quicktime adds it’s new codec, that may change.