RazorianFly

It’s a necessity, right? Take your iPhone out of your pocket, and instantly be able to watch Freeview. Well, what if I told you that you can do this right now, with the use of a free application currently on the App Store? Hit the jump for the video look at ‘Live TV’ from Equinux ..

Developed by Equinux, Live TV is a viewing window. An app for iPhone (and iPod touch) which allows anyone to stream live TV straight to their device, over a Wi-Fi connection. Now, it sounds great, at first, but you will need to spend some money in getting this setup. Firstly you’ll need to own a USB TV tuner. A full list of tuners supported by ‘Live TV’ is available here. Now onto the next little caveat ..

Once you’ve determined if your stick is in fact supported, in order to stream the shows to your iPhone you’ll need to purchase the Equinux TV software ‘The Tube’ available here.

Using Live TV
Once you’ve got everything setup, the next step is to hook your iPhone (or iPod touch) up to ‘The Tube’ TV software. This couldn’t be easier. Simply open ‘Live TV’ on your iPhone, make sure your iPhone and Mac are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, then hit the ‘Add The Tube Computers’ button. Click the ‘Add The Tube Computers’ option, and just like Apple’s remote, you’ll be bounced to a screen displaying your 4 digit connection pin. If you already have ‘The Tube’ software open on your Mac, simply double click the alert that appears in the right sidebar. A prompt box will appear for you to enter the pin. Enter the pin, and that’s it. Your iPhone is now connected to your Mac, through ‘The Tube’.

From here you can select the computer you just hooked up to the Tube via the ‘Computers’ panel on your iPhone. Live TV will also save this connection, remember it, and whenever you are in a Wi-Fi enabled area, and launch Live TV, the app will automatically connect to that computer. The host computer must be left on in order to stream the content, and if you lose Wi-Fi connectivity the stream will stop.

See it in Action:

Stream Quality
The biggest question your probably going to have is “Whats the quality of the stream like?”, well as you can probably tell from the video, it’s pretty good. Obviously results will vary, and factors like the different channel strengths will come into play, but the streams are very watchable.

Overall
I highly recommend Live TV. Ok, so it cost a little to get it working, but for £80 (including £50 TV tuner which I already had), I can now stream live TV to my iPhone, whenever I’m in a Wi-Fi enabled environment – which to be fair, I’m never out of one! Stream quality is great, and if you can live with the 5-8 second delay on the buffer when changing channels, I definitely recommend you go check it out.

One thing to note is currently the Equinux TV software ‘The Tube’ is only available for Mac.
Therefore ‘Live TV’ is useless to Windows-based users for now.

[Update] – It’s noted by one of our readers that this application will only stream live TV over a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) connection. Meaning you can only stream shows if your iPhone/iPod touch is connected to the same Wi-Fi network locally.

Things we’d like to see:

- Windows Compatibility
- EPG ported or available in the app itself (as it’s currently not)

Current Status: Highly Recommended

Reviewed at: v1.0
Reviewed on Firmware: 2.2.1
Download size: 0.6MB
Released on: 06th January 2009
Retails for: FREE

Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1& 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G