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Watch digital TV from your computer with Zattoo

Zattoo makes it possible to watch terrestrial and digital TV from your computer without the need for a TV card, and it works on Mac, Linux and Windows.

Zattoo is an application that allows you to watch terrestrial and digital television stations from your Mac, PC or Linux box. There's no need for a TV card or antenna, Zattoo works entirely via the Internet and it's free to download and to use.

Zattoo, which was developed by scientists at the University of Michigan, uses a special peer to peer television protocol (P2PTV) and needs a downstream broadband connection of at least 500 kbit/s.

To install, just go over to the Zattoo website and select the version for your hardware. There are pre-built versions for Windows XP and Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux. If you're running a different flavour of Linux, the source code is also there along with some detailed instructions on how to compile it.

Download Zattoo

Next you'll be prompted to agree to the Terms of Use. Zattoo assures us via its website that the service - which effectively re-broadcasts digital and terrestrial channels via the web - is completely legal.

Zattoo

On the Mac version you see here, you'll now need to drag the Zattoo icon from the window below onto your Applications folder. You'll need to be an administrator on your Mac to below able to have the privileges to do this, of course.

Installer

OS X will now politely warn you that you're about to run a file downloaded from the Internet, which you already know. Press Open.

Zattoo

You will now need to register with Zattoo. This is free and we haven't been bombarded with spam. It's presumably so they can geotarget your computer's IP address and serve you channels that are relevant to your country.

Zattoo

When Zattoo first fires up, you'll see a list of available channels in the right hand sidebar. You can access this sidebar at any time by clicking the little Zattoo TV logo at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. To pick a channel, simply clicks its name.

Zattoo

The picture quality is not great, but it's also perfectly watchable, even on the fullscreen setting. Here's the BBC News as an example.

Zattoo

At present you can't pause or record the TV streams. However, these might be features in future releases, as this is only the Beta version. We reckon it's very impressive and it works great on Ubuntu, too.