January 8, 2011

Ivi.tv Streams Live Broadcast TV over the Internet

If you'd love to cut or eliminate your cable bill but still want to get the major networks' live feeds, consider Ivi.tv, an online-only alternative to retrieving over-the-air stations with an antenna or via ClearQAM over the cable network.

ivi.tv works by retrieving publicly available television signals over-the-air in several large markets, including Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago and then rebroadcasting them over the internet using their own custom software.

It is very cool (and useful!) to be able to pull in stations across the country in reasonable resolution. However the service does have some drawbacks. The first is the quality: it is not quite running at full framerate and the skipping of frames was noticable for me even on a 25mbit connection. The second problem is that the network stations are all suing ivi.tv for copyright infringement. ivi.tv for their part is rebutting them claiming that FCC must-carry rules state that they, as a cable network, must be able to retransmit any content that the networks offer for free via broadcast. It's a hot topic within the telecommunications industry, and it'll be interesting to see how things pan out.

Ivi.tv has basic subscriptions available for $4.99 a month with some upgrades that include $.99/month for the ability to DVR shows. For now, I've found that ivi.tv works and it is a great alternative if you want to watch live content from network stations that are not available anywhere else in streaming format on the network. Then again, if all you want is access to you local over-the-air HD networks, you can buy or make your own DTV antenna

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Mac App Store Cracked Open for Piracy

The Mac App Store's security has been cracked. This means that, by installing a software called Kickback, you will be able to pirate any applications in the store. However, the crack will not be available until February 2011, according to Dissident:

We don't want to release kickback as soon as the [Mac App] Store gets released. I have a few reasons for that.

Most of the applications that go on the Mac App Store [in the first instance] will be decent, they'll be pretty good. Apple isn't going to put crap on the App Store as soon as it gets released. It'll probably take months for the App Store to actually have a bunch of crappy applications and when we feel that it has a lot of crap in it, we'll probably release Kickback.

So we're not going to release Kickback until well after the store's been established, well after developers have gotten their applications up. We don't want to devalue applications and frustrate developers.

Dissident is a member of Hackulous, the community that cracked Apple's Digital Rights Management system for iOS.

While I don't support piracy, I understand the need to allow people to try apps for free, especially when there's so much crap out there. However, this opens the door to wide piracy, which is not good for anyone, developers and users alike in the long term.

That's why Apple should provide a test mode for all apps. Lite and trial versions don't cut it. It's cumbersome and not universal. Storewide 24-hour testing would be perfect, allowing users to quickly purchase or delete at any time during the trial period.

And they should do the same with iOS. [Gadgets DNA]

Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at jesus@gizmodo.com.

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