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Date Added: 2008-11-11 04:58:52
Main Category: Catchup TV Networks
All Categories: Movies & TV Shows, Catchup TV Networks, Free TV Websites
Visit: ITV Catchup
ITV Catchup is owned by: ITV
Other ITV TV Channels: CITV, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4
Other ITV Websites: ITV Sport, ITV
Other ITV apps: ITV Player
ITV Catchup app available |
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Country: UK
ITV Catchup Is available in: UK
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Tags: Movies & TV Shows, Catchup TV Networks
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ITV Player catch-up Service Review
Pros
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Cons
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In this review |
Quick Verdict - WorldTVPC Rating: |
Introduction
The ITV Player is a web based media player that lets UK viewers watch TV shows they may have missed,it is available as a web based browser for PC and Mac. For mobile viewers there are versions for IPhone, IPad and Android devices.
Viewers can catch up on all the recently shown show from ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and CITV. Firm favorites such as Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm, Britain's Got Talent etc. plus the news and documentaries shows from the last seven days, and some shows from 30 days previously.
Upon loading, the top of the screen has links for TV Shows, TV Guide, ITV Player, News and Sport. As you move down your able to select TV by day, by channel or in A-z format.
Choosing By Day gives sub menus showing today and the previous seven days. Clicking on one will give that days shows in a scrollable menu, which if you select one will give additional information such as runtime and further description and the play button.
Choosing By Channel gives a sub menu of all the ITV channels which if selected show the top shows from that channel that can be viewed.
Selecting A-Z gives an easy to navigate list of shows by letter order.
Streaming
When you select a show, the buffering begins and after watching the obligatory ads, the show will begin. The player has usual controls which you can access if you move the cursor to the bottom of the play screen. Controls such as expand screen size, volume control, pause and also elapsed time/remaining time numbers.
You can jump to various points of the timeline of the show. You will see little boxes along the timeline that represent ad breaks. If you jump to any point after one of these you will have to sit through those ads before you get to watch more of the show. At the bottom you can see any other episodes of the show available to stream and a tweet button for social network fans.
The ITV Player runs as a flash video so you need flash installed so playback is good depending on connection speed and PC resources used. It runs best if you quit other running programs. The video player automatically adjusts based on your PC and bandwidth available on your PC or Mac.
Bad points are the fact that there are no quality settings that can be adjusted resulting in slow to load and screen buffering,lagging when you watch it.
Verdict
The ITV player is a useful addition to your online streaming arsenal, but needs some work put on it, the lack of live streaming is a big miss and it is not as slick and smooth as it's BBC iPlayer rival.
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Rating:



Summary: It got better
Review: Streams very well and does exactly what it says on the tin - gives you
access to programmes on ITV you have missed, for about 1 month. The
site is greatly improved now (9/2011)
Rating:



Summary: Looks ugly
Review: this site looks terrible 4OD and BBC iPlayer still beat it