Catch Up by Name, Real time in everything but...

Like most people I suspect, new technology tends to politely step forward and introduce itself in a couple of ways: RSS and other internet related mediums and the good, old fashioned word-of-mouth. Through an old friend from my music days in Doncaster on Facebook, I was introduced to TVCatchup.com. It appears that I'm slightly behind the times as browsing some of the forums it seems like the site has been up for well over a year! However a new and recent addition to their service offering, and the way I stumbled across TVCatchup.com is their iPhone offering. Although currently in beta, my first impressions are that you could not wish for a more simple yet effective service. Simply navigate through your safari browser on the iPhone to iphone.tvcatchup.com and from the main menu select the channel you wish to watch. A video stream then loads and away you go!

As of posting the channels available on the iPhone are: BBC's One/Two/Three, ITV's 1 and 2, Channel4, Five, Film Four, E4, More4 and 4Music. The website has a few more channels to offer, listed here.

I've tested the service on my phone a couple of times now: firstly in the office on a 8MB connection, then my home network which is 2MB. Connection over WiFi seems fine. The feed is naturally a few seconds behind that of live TV. While watching the England v Belarus game on ITV1 the TVCatchup feed on my phone was 40 seconds behind. Football is a useful medium to compare as it has a timer on the screen! In the office I could only compare what was on the BBC's website for BBC One and that was a shorter delay, maybe 10 seconds. In the grand scheme of things the delay isn't really any sort of issue, such is the quality and near real time programming provided.

I've heard a couple of other reviews from people using it in more remote locations: The BBC's Rory Cellen-Jones used it on the train with a 3G connection

and had a few time-out issues. In his defence he also said the iphone radio service WunderRadio (another fantastic iPhone app) suffered a similar fate. I can testify to as much when using it on trains. Other tweets experienced similar success to mine, as @allaboutiphone's screenshot can testify.

Overall the iPhone offering (it's not technically an app as it's only available through the safari browser) is in my mind a success; especially considering it's still in beta. I was a bit surprised that I didn't have to sign up to anything to view the iPhone feed, and there were also no signs of commercial revenue generation either (sign-up fee, ads etc.). Perhaps this is still due to the service being in beta. Singing up for an account on the website did answer a lot of my questions, if leaving the biggest one unanswered.

The website is sleek and simple. You can view the channels that are available and a TV guide without needing an account. You can also view the forum messages without signing up. Understandably to watch any channels, sign in is required. This is why my questions began to flow and answers became slightly confusing.

Upon signing up the first thing you encounter is a message congratulating you on your ISP (named) is compatible with TVCatchup. Good to know in that I can use the system, but I'm extremely intrigued as to why this is an issue. I can assume it has something to do with rights or access, but it is bemusing why this is decided at the ISP level? I've looked through the forums but can't find any answers there either. Will probably post a message and report back...

Signing up for the website did answer questions as well as creating them. Before watching my first stream there was a 30 second TV advert (for Smirdoff Vodka). That's the business model and revenue generation thing addressed. As part of the sign-up states they will never charge for the service, I guess all their eggs are in the advertising basket.

T+C's were interesting: small capital letters with a grey font against a white background. In other words 'we don't really want you to read these'. Naturally I did, as I wasn't sure whether this service was a) legal and b) underpinned by the TV licence. It appears the answer to both is yes, although interestingly there is no burden of proof to ensure you have a valid licence to watch the channels. This is not dissimilar to the BBC iPlayer or 4onDemand, although both offerings are provided by organisations that already adhere to licensing. Students are exempt from this provided a pre-requisite check of 1000's of loopholes can be satisfactorily answered!

I've only used the site for a very short space of time so I don't know the frequency of adverts or any other restrictions. I will report back these in due course. Even though the football was not a major international match, I was pleasantly surprised the system stood up well and didn't crash. That's in no way vindication of the rest of the site but it's a good omen that reliability issues will be kept to a minimum.

So the big question: why is it called catch up TV when you can't watch any historical programming? I'm not complaining as I'd much prefer a live feed over an amalgamated 'on demand' service, but it does interest me (infuriate if I'm honest!). Again the website doesn't provide any answers so I'll keep working away at that one too.

To conclude then, an excellent first impression of an innovative and void filling offering. I do hope it's legal and that they continue to innovate and improve their service offering. Hopefully technological advances can iron out some of the 3G issues reported by some users when on the move. That'd be good for more than just this application.

UPDATE: Bizarrely, no sooner had I posted this then I followed a link on Twitter to TVCatchup's FAQ's. These answer a lot of my questions! (thanks to allaboutiphone.net)