Internet TV and Radio

Add hardware or use the internet to get radio and TV on your computer

Get ready for more arguments about which of thousands of channels to listen to or watch. Manufacturers want to turn computers into a combined TV, DVD and CD player, radio, video recorder and set-top box - and, in the process, give you access to much more audio and video content.

Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) set the ball rolling in the US last autumn and makes the My TV folder as important as My Documents.

MCE comes only on new computers, such as HP's Media Center 873n ($1,600) with its TV tuner, DVD recorder, whopping 120Gb hard drive, surround-sound speakers - and even a remote control.

HP expects to see it 'where consumers want both a PC and entertainment solution - such as a den, games room, teenager's bedroom or small apartment'.

Gateway's bid for the lounge is more blatant - its MCE model (an eye-watering $4,000) has a 42-inch plasma TV screen.

Microsoft says it's 'currently evaluating' MCE for the UK market. In the meantime, Apple is pushing its Rendezvous network technology. Instead of turning a computer into a stereo, Rendezvous lets computers communicate wirelessly with traditional devices. 'Music stored in iTunes on your Mac can play through the Philips stereo system in your living room,' explains Philips spokesman Gerald Kleisterlee.

For now, you're stuck with the options explained here. Hardware solutions, are best if you're serious about converting your computer into the equivalent of a TV, radio or video recorder.

Online entertainment, is less predictable, if potentially more rewarding. Presentation isn't always that slick, but you can connect to archived, foreign and even home-produced entertainment from around the world.

And you thought deciding between Footballers' Wives and The Life of Mammals was hard work.

The Hard(ware) Way

You can make a do-it-yourself 'Media Center' computer by adding a TV or radio card to your computer.

Once fitted, you can use your monitor as a normal TV or, as the picture shows, shrink the picture and watch TV (or listen to the radio) while using a spreadsheet or typing a letter. Supplied software lets you check schedules or record broadcasts on your hard drive.

The cards cost from £50, and fit inside your computer or plug into a USB port. Alternatively, you can upgrade your graphics card to one with a TV tuner. This is more expensive (from £170 for the ATI's All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 to £300+ for a top-of-the-range model) but also allows 3D gaming and the like.

Either way, the cards need a standard TV or radio aerial to pick up broadcasts (rather than a modem, which you need for the internet methods).

Space Saver

Samsung's 17-inch LCD SyncMaster171MP monitor (£1,000) has a built-in TV tuner so works as an (analogue) TV whether or not the computer is on. It's an expensive way to have a dual-purpose telly and computer; but one way to save space in your house.

Watching DVDs

Don't confuse a combined graphics and TV card with a card that has a TV-out socket. These sockets can't 'tune in' to television channels, but can connect a computer to a TV (with a long enough cable).

If a tuner card has a TV-out socket, you can use it to watch digital channels on your TV, rather than the monitor.

And if you don't have a DVD player, but your computer has a DVD drive, you can watch DVDs on the TV using a TV-out socket. To do so, you need a reasonably fast (500MHz) computer or a dedicated decoding board (about £60) in it. Otherwise, playback will be jerky if you run other programs while the DVD is playing.

If you want to watch DVDs on your monitor, remember that, like standard TVs, they have a 4:3 ratio, so widescreen films have black bands at the top and bottom of the screen.

Watching TV

Unless you have a big monitor, or are used to a small telly, watching TV on your computer is a different experience from settling back on the sofa - you'll be much closer, for a start.

Hauppauge is one of the main makers of TV cards (www.hauppauge.co.uk). Its analogue terrestrial cards give you the standard five channels. (BBC1 to Channel 5). Its digital terrestrial cards pick up the new Freeview service - they're a way to get new digital channels, like BBC3 and 4, if you don't have a TV set-top box. As with these boxes, you may need to upgrade your TV aerial to receive digital. Unfortunately, there's no way to know this before trying a card.

The other thing you'll need is a computer with at least a 300MHz processor (and preferably more than 450MHz). It's also no way to avoid the licence fee - you need one (but an existing licence covers watching TV this way). Also, make sure you set the card to the correct format (PAL I and not, say, European Pal G).

Making recordings

To make you feel more at home, some TV cards have remote controls and you can buy software, such as ShowShifter (£35, www.showshifter.com) to use as an electronic programme guide (to see what's on) or to record TV to your hard drive.

Some cards come with their own programs. For instance, software with Hauppauge's analogue WinTV PVR (£186) lets you schedule recordings and can also communicate (over the internet) with an 'account' at TV listings website www.tvtv.co.uk. Tell the site what programmes you like, and it instructs the WinTV PVR to record them automatically.

Software like this also lets you 'freeze' live TV (if the phone rings mid-soap, say) and then pick up where you left off. However, decent-quality recordings take up huge amounts of hard disk space - about 2Gb per hour.

An alternative is to record straight to Video-CD (in low quality MPEG-1 format) or DVD (better quality MPEG-2) using a CD or DVD drive. CDs hold up to 74 minutes and DVDs up to four hours - the disks play in most standalone DVD players.

There are no cards that let you receive Sky's digital channels (such as Sky One and Sky Sports) directly on a computer. But if you are a Sky subscriber, you can connect the set-top box to the S-video socket on most tuner cards, and record programmes to your hard disk that way.

Radio Too

Many TV cards also pick up radio signals. Hauppauge's analogue TV cards with FM in the name - like WinTV PCI FM (£76) - tune into FM stations if you plug in the supplied radio aerial.

Its digital terrestrial TV cards pick up digital radio broadcasts but, confusingly, as part of the Freeview TV channels (so you need a TV aerial, not a radio aerial, to hear them). The choice of stations this way is not as extensive as 'proper' digital radio. BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4 aren't available on Freeview, but new stations like 1Xtra, 6 Music and BBC 7 are.

Modular Technology's DAB digital radio card (£100, www.modulartech.com) receives all DAB stations via a radio aerial (but no TV channels). We rated it highly last September and, while you can now buy standalone DAB radios for a similar price, the card has great software for finding and recording stations.

You can also get USB FM tuners for around £15 if you want to record FM radio on to your hard drive.

On Air and Online

Internet listeners can tune into far more radio stations than they'd ever be able to receive on a conventional radio. As well as established stations transmitting online (all of the BBC's output is available, for instance), there are loads of internet-only stations.

While internet radio is still only a baby - the first stations went on air in 1995 - the diversity and popularity of broadcasts has shot up. On a less harmonious note, amateur internet radio has been caught in the same sort of controversy that led to Napster's demise. For now, at least, it looks as though the music industry and radio 'webcasters' have found a middle ground over royalties that hopefully won't cripple small stations (see www.saveinternetradio.org).

Broadcasting content via the internet ('webcasting') changes listening (and viewing) habits as it blurs the lines between what's live and what's not, and what's scheduled and what's not. Not only that, the good things about internet radio are almost as prolific as the stations themselves. For starters, it's easy. All you need is a standard modem and internet connection, a media player, a soundcard and speakers, and the right website.

You can also listen and do other stuff on your computer simultaneously. Reader Joel Morris says he listens to radio this way because of the number of stations and the ease of finding them. 'I can catch up on archived shows I've missed; I can listen to BBC 6 Music without having to buy a DAB digital radio; and niche-interest shows that would normally get only a local audience can suddenly tap into a worldwide fanbase,' he told us. As he says, 'the internet can only be a good thing for radio.'

Streaming Away

There are two ways to watch or listen over the web. Downloading an MP3 music file, say, is fairly simple - but once you've heard it, you must download another file to hear more. Not only that, an hour-long film would take ages to download, and you couldn't start watching until the download finished.

A better way is to stream the file. This technology lets you play a file while it downloads. The only delay, once you're connected, is any 'buffering'. This involves loading the file into the computer's memory and playing it a few seconds behind - so if your internet connection slows for a few seconds, you won't get any gaps.

Buffering should iron out most stops and starts in radio broadcasts on a standard 'dial-up' connection and in video streams on a broadband connection. However, trying to watch decent quality streamed video on a dial-up connection will always be stuttery.

That's because, although the stream is encoded to reduce it to a manageable size, there's still a trade off between quality and bandwidth. Most radio is streamed at 56 kilobits a second, which sounds fine and works on most dial-up connections. For video to look good in more than just a tiny window, a 300k stream is necessary (six times faster than a dial-up modem can cope with). You're often given the option of a lower-quality stream if you want to persevere.

The Player

To listen to or watch streamed audio or video you need a media player to decode the stream.

Microsoft's Windows Media Player (now in its 9th version, and free at www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download) and RealNetwork's RealPlayer (uk.real.com) have long battled for supremacy. Apple's QuickTime (www.apple.com/quicktime) has quietly got on with being an excellent alternative.

You can have as many players installed as you want. While this may seem overkill, you may need a particular player to access certain file formats - most of the BBC's audio and video clips need RealPlayer, for instance.

One drawback is that when you install a new player, it will almost inevitably try to make itself the default player for everything. If you installed it to watch a one-off video clip, you'll need to reset your original as the default.

Players are easy to use with just a little trial and error and increasingly want to cater for all entertainment needs; RealNetwork's newest RealOne Player finds and organises content as well as playing it. This is all part of the move to make media players as essential to everyday computing as internet browsers and word processors are.

TV Makeover

Broadcasters know that making internet TV work is harder than radio - the regular audience of EastEnders is larger than the online UK population, as Tom Barnicoat, Chief Executive of Endemol UK (the company behind Big Brother) pointed out at a conference late last year.

The big problem is that, on a dial-up internet connection, streamed video is almost always jerky and playable only in a small window. As people are unlikely to pay for this, subscription video services are targeted at people with a broadband connection.

Don't despair if you don't have broadband, as video clips on news, sports and entertainment sites are still worth a look. There is usually the option of a stream that's compressed for a dial-up connection - but this inevitably reduces the quality of the picture.

The internet is no substitute for a TV - there's little live action, for a start. While you can listen to a live stream of Radio 1 from the BBC site, you can't do the same for BBC1. Instead, most internet TV is material that's re-mastered for internet broadcast.

This is why Tom Barnicoat admits that streaming TV is 'not much on its own'. But he sees big potential to connect with audiences when online stuff is linked to existing TV shows.

Channel 4's Big Brother site demonstrated this. It showed live streams from the reality-TV house - and Endemol claim that seven million viewers visited the site to watch the housemates confront 'Nasty Nick' in August 2000. This was old news by the time the TV show went out.

The entertainment industry inevitably saw money-making potential in this. You had to pay to watch the live streams in 2002 - but 25,000 people still did so.

Handy Hints

Ready, set, go | Browse with your player | BBC keeps it real | Hang the dj | DIY dj | Cure the stutter | Show time | Worldwide appeal | ISPs also license content | The A to Z of TV

Ready, set, go

For an easy way to start listening to radio in Internet Explorer, open the Radio toolbar (in 'View', 'Toolbar'). Then click 'Radio Stations' on the toolbar and select 'Radio Station Guide'. Alternatively, go to windowsmedia.com/radiotuner. It lists hundreds of stations, organised by type (News and Talk, Rock, Jazz and so on). Many of them webcast using the Windows Media format, so you'll need Windows Media Player to listen to them.

Browse with your player

Most media players have direct links to stations. In RealOne Player, pictured above, clicking 'Radio' lets you browse stations, and save those you like.

BBC keeps it real

Clicking on a BBC station from RealOne or RealPlayer (the only players, for now, that work with BBC radio) plays that station live - as you would hear from an FM or digital radio. The BBC's Listen Again service is an archive of its shows. For the Radio 4 archive, for instance, go to www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml.

Hang the dj

Many of the thousands of internet-only stations aren't like traditional radio - there's no dj talking. Instead, music is streamed continuously and you may even be able to take control and skip tracks. Stations like this range from well-known brands such as NME (www.nme.com) to the collection of thousands of hobbyist broadcasters at www.live365.com. There's a huge list of services at www.radiojump.com, and a good search engine at www.radio-locator.com

DIY dj

The other option is to create your own station at launch.yahoo.com. You select and rate your favourite artists and songs from lists on the site, and sign in to your own station. However, while songs are stored and streamed to your computer based on your preferences and ratings, copyright restrictions mean that users don't have 'the ability to listen to any song they want, any time they want. Instead, we ask that you rate songs highly to increase your chances of hearing them.'

Cure the stutter

You can have other programs open while watching video streams. But they may make the stream stutter, as can a slow computer or poor phone line.

Show time

With so many video clips on so many sites, it's perhaps pointless trying to define internet TV. Time is better spent seeing what's there. Try www.liketelevision.com for classic (mostly US) TV, www.hollywood.com for movie trailers or msn.skysports.com for video clips of recent matches and fixtures.

Worldwide appeal

BBC Worldwide, its commercial arm, is developing 'premium' broadband products based on existing programmes, such as the video offered at the RealOne SuperPass (uk.real.com) for £10 a month. This gives access to BBC news, sports and weather feeds that are updated hourly. There are also 'channels' (video archives) for Top Gear and The Old Grey Whistle Test. Real plans to launch an a-la-carte service - giving just the channels you want for a smaller fee - soon.

ISPs also license content

ISPs have licensed similar products from the BBC. Tweenies Broadband launched on OneTel (www.onetel.co.uk) before Christmas with five hours of the show, re-worked for the web, available to subscribers. The Director of the BBC's commercial broadband services, Jonathan Crane, says he sees potential to adapt other shows - Later with Jools Holland, classic comedies and chat shows.

The A to Z of TV

For free internet TV, wwitv.com has a more eclectic range of channels than even cable or satellite TV. Many are archives - BBC Breakfast with Frost is a streamed version of the most recent show. And while BBC News 24 is listed as 'live', it's really the version shown on BBC's interactive digital TV service (short pre-recorded clips that are regularly updated). There's lots of international stuff - although local news from Australia may have little appeal.