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)

Stick Cricket: Great game, successful strategy

I've been meaning to post about my favourite ever Internet game for a while now. Stick Cricket's history is quite an interesting read, a rise from a student learning how to develop in flash to one of the best Internet games out there.

I first became aware of this game a few years ago now and it is the only Internet game that has held my attention for longer than a week! I can't quite put my finger on what makes the game so appealing for me, but there are a few factors that probably help. Firstly, the ability to score fours and sixes on a regular basis (the entire point of the game) brings that feel good factor when playing. Secondly, the view you get (a batsman's view) of the ball careering to the boundary is very, very satisfying. It also looks like a proper cricket shot. Sometimes on other games the actual game play isn't very realistic. Finally I think the concept is something that fits the medium it has been developed on. Although originally using stick men, the game has developed but kept to the same ethos.

Apart from the game play elements addressed above I think another reason I really like the game is the way in which Stick Sports has been developed and allowed to evolve. Slowly but surely they've enhanced the Stick Cricket game. New features, new competitions, more variety in how you play have always enticed me back to the game. They tackled the most obvious shortcoming of their game (not being able to bowl) with a challenging online multi player game. It didn't last very long but it was good!

More impressively than the actual innovations that were borne seems to be the strategy they have adopted for development. Stick Sports had a core product and they spent time and money developing it; enhancing the game play and ensuring it maintained its popular appeal and market position. Only after this phase of its strategy had proved successful did it branch out to develop other games to complement the cricket game and produce a range of sports games under the stick sports banner. (The best of these games in my opinion is Stick Tennis)

Although with success has come less discrete advertising and more 'obvious' placement of adverts, this doesn't interfere with the experience of using the sites. They have developed a community feel to the site that although I don't personally see as advantageous, I know a lot of other users do). The site is not in the same league as Cric Info and other cricket media in terms of a cricketing knowledge base, but this seems to be the next phase in the strategy. Blogs and forums are prevalent on the site and there is also 'Live Score' features (although I must confess to not having used these enough to pass comment).

Basically I've been impressed with Stick Cricket since the beginning, and if it is possible to end with an awful pun, believe that from tiny acorns, cricket bats really can grown! [I'm sorry]

The Secret Plan to Fight Inflation

I've been playing around with xtranormal.com today. Decided that original dialogue was probably a leap too far so have stolen a scene from The West Wing (possibly my favourite ever TV show).

Particuarly impressed with the Lego man-style of characters. It gives a retro feel to a very comtempory concept. The options available to create the dynamics of the movie aren't fantastic, but then for a free, internet-based application you can't expect too much (however I have only really played with it for 20 minutes so not an expert!)

I might have another play later and try something that's approaching plot, storyline and moving people!