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Internet-TV Aggregators are Popping Up like Dandelions

November 28, 2006 at 5:55 pm - by Dale Dietrich

Categories: Big Media v Internet, BigMedia v NewTech, New Tech, Piracy, iVOD/iTV

I don't know what is in the air these days, but Internet-TV aggregators seem to be popping up all over the Internet. I recently blogged about Tioti and the TVUPlayer, each of which have received substantial press coverage owing to their controversial nature. 

Over the last few days, I have become aware of dozens of online TV, movie and other aggregators running the gamut from sites streaming literally hundreds of live TV channels over the Internet to others indexing and hosting thousands of TV shows and movies for instant viewing over the Internet. 

Many of the live broadcast feeds are likely accessed from Internet feeds supplied by the content owners themselves. But, I'm guessing, others are likely redirected Slingbox or similar streams. As you can read in my TVUPlayer post, the company's CEO, Paul Shen, believes he can escape U.S. copyright infringement liability using the DMCA's ISP safe harbor. He argues that the streams are made available from the service's users and not hosted directly by his company.   

peekvid and QuickSilverScreen in particular, seem to be the most blatantly infringing services of the lot. They directly index over a thousand TV shows, movies, cartoons etc. for instant viewing. Users can select a particular TV series from a list and then directly view selected episodes - on demand. Movies can similarly be selected and viewed on demand. If peekvid is located in the U.S., I suspect it won't be long before the link fails to work owing to NAB and MPAA legal actions. QuickSilverScreen was located in the U.S. until Fox sent it a cease and desist letter. The proprietor has sold it to someone offshore and it continues to operate unabated from an offshore location. 

In no particular order, here are only a few of the dozens of live TV aggregation sites that have popped up recently.

All of these have the following features in common:
  • They all actually worked when I tried them
  • Of the dozens of other aggregators available, these sites required no prior signups or passwords. 
  • Unlike Tioti and the TVUPlayer, no plugins or downloads were required for these sites to work - simply show up, click and watch.
  • My browser, Firefox 2.0, is set to disable popups and redirects - all worked without popups or redirects 
  • Many of the video streams were resizable - even to full screen in many contexts
This is clearly a new trend, or at least a new trend to me. In light of the fact that iCrave TV was so quickly shut down in 2003 for doing essentially the same thing, it is surprising to see so many seemingly thriving. I gather that most, if not all, are hosted in far-off countries outside the reach of NAB and the MPAA - for now. As AllofMP3.com has recently discovered, locating offshore will not, alone, keep you outside the reach of the U.S. copyright lobby.
 
See also the Digg.com comments to an original story about Streamick.com that provided the spark to get me blogging about this.

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7 comments

1  Andy Breene { 11.29.06 at 1:44 pm }

Hey Dale!
Interesting read…

Think there are a few sites there I dont know about.

Internet TV Aggregationg is nothing new, but has grown hugely in popularity recently.

wwwitv.com has been around for many years (check alexa).

Also you group services that aggregate legitimate internet TV stations (such as wwitv.com) and others which don’t (such as TVUPlayer).

The two things are very different.

2  Sandroid { 12.02.06 at 10:19 pm }

Well of those that you mentioned, the FreeTube ( http://www.freetube.us.tc ) one looks most promising. Many of them as you said are popping up, but the majority just are very sleazy.

That bottom portion of your list are just sleazy (ChannelKing, Worldtvpc, OMGfreeTV). I mean those sites look like they’re all about adsense or banners. These sites lack creativity and are so run of the mill, makes me think they’re all running the same script. (in fact they are http://www.silverscripts.de ) - notice the counter lol.

3  hitman { 03.30.07 at 5:38 pm }

I believe i crave tv was shutdown because they were actually transmitting the channels from cable to internet, but most of these new sites are just providing links to channels which are already on the internet originally.

Anyway, here is another site which you can check out http://www.wantena.com, basically its an organized collection of links to different live streams which are broad casted by their owners.

4  james { 04.09.07 at 2:46 am }

Movies Directories are full of deadlinlks, i prefer http://www.vidjay.com/ (vidjay.com)

5  peter { 04.15.07 at 5:46 pm }

Hi Dale and readers,
To see an Internet TV site with a real difference, take a look at http://www.viewmy.tv

1. viewmy.tv does not have adverts everywhere.
2. viewmy.tv monitors stream quality for availability and bitrate (bad quality ones are dropped).
3. They do not have porn but have a good selection of decent channels from all over the world.
4. TV viewers can save they favorite tv channels to a profile.
5. viewmy.tv gives every free registered user their own RSS URL which can be used to send saved channels to an RSS reader or mac widget.
6. Users can comment on channels and submit channels and suggest description edits.

I’m sure there are even more distinct points about this site but in summary:

viewmy.tv really does offer social internet television.

6  hiutopor { 09.18.07 at 1:32 am }

Hi all!

Very interesting information! Thanks!

G’night

7  Nate { 11.30.07 at 6:09 pm }

Great list, my favorite though is http://www.TVForPC.comsince its nice and dark

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