The BBC licencing mafia should be all over this.

With this, every recent mobile device has been made capable of receiving live broadcast television. (the transmission medium doesn't matter does it? cable or radio waves...)

But - it's battery operated so exempt.

But - don't plug it in to charge or you'll need a TV licence!!!

Upon trying to register for the beta all I got was:

"Sorry ENTANET Customers ...

Your ISP (ENTANET) does not currently support TVCatchup.

In order for you to use the TVCatchup site for free, your ISP must have a free peering connection with us.

We encourage you to email your ISP’s support department requesting them to set up this free peering connection. Full details of the steps they need to perform are located at http://www.tvcatchup.com/isps/.

Once your ISP has established the connection, you will be able to watch the full selection of television channels online."

I can't see this working out real well especially when you look at their peering arrangements

http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?form_type=simple&full_query_string=&searchtext=as31715

I don't see that many popular ISP's listed.

"Like the BBC's own streams, TVCatchup's services is restricted to UK IP addresses ("at great expense", says Parsons), to avoid violating copyright licensing deals between broadcasters and producers."

AIUI, a basic rule of tort is that 3rd parties can't be bound by contracts which they aren't party to.

They don't care about the deals between broadcasters and producers. What they care about is that their service would (presumably) be illegal if it retransmitted UK TV outside the UK.

The "great expense" is surely a necessary component of their legality, not an extra they add on to keep the broadcasters happy.

Weasel words strike again.

.... and I had a look just now.

It puts iplayer et al to shame - I can't get anything but BBC where I live (damn trees :| ), and this is a perfect replacement - it's really not all that much different to live freeview tbh, and if the PS3 is happy to stream it (don't see why not)... well, job done. Who needs a TV aerial?

I can't get freeview here and will not get the full line up of channels when analouge is switched off. Works great on o2 broadband.

"Like the BBC's own streams, TVCatchup's services is restricted to UK IP addresses ("at great expense", says Parsons), to avoid violating copyright licensing deals between broadcasters and producers."

Works a treat over here in NON-UK land.

to duplicate the already hugely successful and financially unbeatable, bittorrent ;)

They only things that come close are mythtv, tivo and sky+

No comparison with bittorrent, who wants to wait an hour to watch something on their tv and risk getting busted for it?

MythTV is just that, an unreliable myth, tivo is not available in the UK and Sky+ is a subscription service. When the application launches this is going to be a world beater