TV 3L PC 2.1.6.0

Yes, TV is ubiquitous. Or rather has been in the last decades. But starting with the 21st millennium many TV channels have started broadcasting over the net, in the hopes of preventing their audience from dwindling. But dwindling they are, because the main advantage of the Internet is that it allows one to be proactive in the way he or she gets informed. At least that's the basic premise. Now, that doesn't mean that anybody with a router in his house has stopped being a lemming. But lemmings need their creature comforts at all times. So it's only natural that this application might be of interest to them.

TV 3L PC is a stream video player that comes with a prepackaged channel list. Although at first glance it looks like it might actually be a web browser, a closer inspection of the channel list will remove your suspicion. The browser window is only intended to display the Smart PC Soft website. After selecting a channel from the list and clicking on the play button, a the video will be opened as a tab. If you enable the Multi Channels option you can actually open multiple streams simultaneously. Although I don't know how often you'd want to do that.

Tabs can also be arranged into sections. It's hard to explain, but if you click and drag the tab title, you can undock it from the main window. Also if you hover over the central portion of the main window while holding the tab, you can dock it to either side of the window as if you were arranging panels in a digital dashboard. Pretty neat.

Besides Play and volume controls, the video window contains controls for snapshots, deep chaching (extended buffer range) and recording. The last two might cause some hick ups, but at least during recording, you can turn off the video display, so to put less strain on the system.

TV 3L PC is not only limited to the default channels. You can import channel lists and even make your own channel entry by entering the stream url address using a comprehensive dialog window.

Features

• Pre-stored channel list
• Can stream multiple channels at the same time
• Extended buffer
• Stream recording to mp4
• Can stream forward over LAN
• Detailed dialog for adding new channels

Conclusion

Despite my aversion for television in general, I do appreciate the design of TV 3L PC. It contains very useful features and can easily rival with premium digital TV subscriptions if you don't compare channel lists, of course.