Windows Phone Thoughts: TV on WP7 -- A review of SpbTV v2.0

Be sure to register in our forums! Share your opinions, help others, and enter our contests.


Digital Home Thoughts

Loading feed...

Laptop Thoughts

Loading feed...

Android Thoughts

Loading feed...



Wednesday, June 29, 2011

TV on WP7 -- A review of SpbTV v2.0

Posted by Don Tolson in "Windows Phone Software" @ 10:00 AM

Changing Channels

Switching between channels is a simple matter of scrolling through the list at the bottom of the screen using left and right swipes. Unfortunately, the movement is not as fluid as with other parts of WP7 (such as the apps listing), since the SpbTV display keeps wanting to update the icons before proceeding, or as new ones are shown. What results is somewhat laggy and jerky motion, and no sense of the 'inertia' (swiping quickly to get it to move on it's own, then slowing down as it loses the initial kick) found in other lists.

As you scroll through the list at the bottom and various channels are highlighted, the video screen shows a capture of what's on at the moment and information about the channel is displayed below. The descriptions change, depending upon the type of video feed.

Figure 3: A shot of a typical News channel. (Screenshot courtesy of Spb).

The screenshot above is what Spb's documentation refers to this as a Pay-per-View chennel, but I prefer to think of it as 'episodic' TV, since you can select which programs or segments you want to watch. As shown here, each segment tends to be fairly small -- typically 3 minutes or less. On the comedy channels, for instance, there was one segment for a particular joke stream from one comic.

There are also channels where it only shows an overall description of the station's coverage. This is mostly in the case of 'community access' type of channels.

Figure 4: It is possible to expand the schedule to fill the entire screen, if you want to get an idea of what's on later in the day, or look for your favorite program! (Screenshot courtesy of Spb).

By tapping the list icon at the top left of the screen, SpbTV takes you to a list of all the available channels and allows you to add or remove them from the list. To remove access to a single channel, just tap the channel entry and the checkmark beside it will toggle on and off. Unfortunately, the + and - icons at the bottom are a bit misleading. All they do is check all or uncheck all of the stations. I couldn't find any way to create a list of 'favorite' channels to shorten having to go through the entire list.

Figure 5: Adding and removing channels from the available list. (Screenshot courtesy of Spb)

As far as the available channels are concerned, for North American viewers, there's not a lot of what I would call 'first tier' stations. You won't be watching the latest segment of 'Big Bang Theory' or 'House'. I can't speak for the European and Asian selections, but the North American channels available are definitely second or third-tier players -- mostly community access channels, 'oldies' rerun channels, and religious. There were a couple of comedy channels which looked a little more modern, but I think they may be straight off the internet.


Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...