CTube
What's it do?
CTube uses Windows Media Player and RealPlayer to view and listen to
available Internet TV broadcasts and video from a large selection of
channels.
Does it do what it promises?
Reviewer 1. Yes, it does what is says it will. I was intrigued with
the number of available stations, however, some of them need Real Player
to connect and view what is being broadcast. I am not a fan of Real Player
so accessing these sites was not an option for me. Some of the stations
have better broadcasting capabilities than others. There were some that
were quite clear and then there are some that start off fine but after a
few minutes of watching it was like looking through a fish bowl, it was
blurry and seemed to be “waving”. This was just the signal from the
source. As you scroll through the available sites it is amazing to see
what broadcast information is available through the Internet. To date
there are approximately 1300 stations for your viewing pleasure. The help
file is straightforward and shows you the different features available.
Reviewer 2. The claims on the website are pretty simple and this
program performs as described.
Reviewer 3. Yes. It is simply an Internet television resource with
over 1500 channels available.
Reviewer 4. CTube is a simple program that focuses directly on a
single objective: allowing the computer user to watch TV, videos and Web
cams on the computer monitor. Currently the website lists 1500 sites or
locations. I did not try all 1500, so I cannot guarantee that all of them
actually work but many of them do. In addition to the lists of locations,
stations, programs and so on you can do a search for particular videos to
view or play. So yes, CTube does what it promises.
Reviewer 5. Yes.
Was it easy to install?
Reviewer 1. It was very easy to install. Simply click on the
executable and let it select the folders and run with it.
Reviewer 2. Installation was quick and clean.
Reviewer 3. Yes, I had no problems at all with installation.
Reviewer 4. Yes, it is a very quick install. The only question I
was asked was where to place it. The icons were all placed automatically,
including one in the Quick Launch toolbar. As I dislike programs that make
those decisions on my behalf, I hope that the CTube designers will remedy
this part of the install process.
Reviewer 5. Yes. It is a surprisingly small 1.5MB download. A very
straightforward, easy and intuitive installation. But requires
RealPlayer™, Microsoft Windows Media Player™, QuickTime™ Player
Good Points
Reviewer 1. I was amazed at the number of stations available for
viewing. Some of the stations were clearer than others, but this is to be
expected based on the region they were being broadcast from. There are no
subscription fees and no charge of any kind. Your current video card will
more than likely be sufficient for viewing. Upgrading your card to one
with more RAM and maybe one with dedicated processor will allow smoother
viewing, but remember it is based on the broadcaster and what type of
signal they are sending out.
Reviewer 2. This program opens the gateway to a wide range of video
content on the Internet. The ability to search for Internet video is a
strong feature. As disclosed in the help section, this searches only
pre-recorded content and will not find live streams. If you use this
program, you are sure to come across some interesting Internet video
content which you might not have found otherwise.
Reviewer 3: CTube has an enormous number of viewing choices, and
you can select regular or full-screen mode for watching selected programs.
I found it to be very easy to use, and had no problem locating programs I
was interested in. I appreciated that there are no extra costs; the
program is the only investment, as the programming is free. Programming is
divided into categories for ease of finding channels; it makes it very
easy to locate programming that is not normally available, such as
international or educational networks. The program allows you to sort
channels by bandwidth requirements in case you have a slower connection,
to allow you to sort out channels that might be too demanding for your
connection. Also, you can scan stations, getting a 30-second preview
before it jumps to the next selected program.
Reviewer 4: The CTube designers have done a good job defining what
they want the program to do, and keeping on track with these goals. When
you start CTube, you will be presented with a fairly large window with a
few menu items across the top. Inside this window is another, which is
really where you will be running the program. In the main part of the
internal window, there is a list of places that you can check out. You
double-click on any one of them, and CTube loads that location into a
smaller, third window layer, and starts playing it. At the top of the
screen is a drop-down menu, which shows you the general categories that
CTube responds to: Live video/Web cam; Most popular stations; Music video;
Music/Entertainment; Religious; Science/Education and Talk/News. Choosing
any one of these categories will give you a new list of sites that fit
inside that particular category. If you like a choice that you have made,
there is an “Add to Favorites” button on the left side bar. This will
become your own set of “bookmarks” to sites or videos that you will come
back to again. You can also choose to add a comment or rate the particular
station or site that you are on, in a window at the bottom of the screen.
These comments become part of the worldwide CTube users, who will be able
to see the comments of others who have looked at and rated that particular
station, location or site. Essentially, this is not a very difficult
program to use and manage. There are not too many things to learn, so the
learning curve is not steep. If you are unsure, though, about any of the
menu choices or functions, the help file is very well-designed and
structured, with good illustrations to get you launched. It is available
under the Help Menu, or by using the F1 key. East Bay Technology has set
up an online forum for users to share questions, problems and solutions.
However, at the moment, most of those using the forum are reading the
questions from users, with the answer supplied by the forum moderator.
There are about a half dozen topics, each one with very few postings, but
a large number of “Views”. By the way, that forum is very familiar to NNT
readers, as it is the same “forum provider.” If that fails to deal with
your particular issue, you fill in an online form, and your question is
sent directly to the support staff. The answer is emailed back to you.
Reviewer 5: CTube 3.9, if not the world's first and only Internet
television tuner program as claimed, is certainly the best with a variety
of over 1500 channels of daily and live broadcasts (streaming TV, Live
Video Channels and Webcams). Watch free uncensored news, music videos,
education and entertainment channels from around the world. Plus, there is
an Internet Video Search, with over 2 million videos! The most recent
release includes a very cool search feature, which finds video content
based on criteria you type in. For instance, if you want to find videos
with Michael Moore appearing in them, type his name in the search and a
long list of results will come back. Be warned, some of the content
available through CTube is not suitable for children (and possibly not for
adults either!). If you prefer to avoid potentially offensive content,
turn on the password protected filter and it all goes away. Content
streamed using CTube is in RealPlayer, Windows Media, or Nullsoft Video
(which is an AOL format) format. Sort content a variety of ways, including
by genre and by quality of the stream so you can use this program whether
using dialup or broadband. Unlike cable providers, CTube requires no
subscription fees. No additional hardware is required to use CTube; all
video plays using standard PC video cards. To quickly preview multiple
stations, CTube loads content in the background, providing a 30 second
preview of each station in the scan. Easy-to-use controls, no additional
equipment required, watch in regular or full-screen mode, visit live
content not available anywhere else, great for education, entertainment,
foreign programming, it even includes automatic station list updates
monthly. Best of all, unlike so much Internet TV that bombards you with
advertising from within your media player, CTube does not bombard you with
any advertising, none! It is also compatible with Windows 95 through XP
and there is a version for MAC users as well.
Weak Points
Reviewer 1. I am not a big fan of Real Player and many sites
require this to view their broadcasts. These I skipped over.
Reviewer 2: Somehow CTube added an icon to my QuickStart menu
without my permission. The television station selection was disappointing.
There are stations available from all around the world, but I found no
local content for my area. There were lots of links to stations that were
off the air at the times I was trying to connect. There were lots of links
to stations broadcasting in languages other than my native English. The
ability to search for television stations by city or features would be a
very useful future improvement. You can see a complete list of available
channels by clicking on the “1500 channels” link from
http://www.eastbaytech.com/ctube.htm . You will note that while there are
some mainstream channels, there are also a lot of channels of local or
limited interest. I found it useful that the channels in the program were
broken down by category, but finding a channel was done by scrolling down
a list with limited information and then clicking on the link to see if it
was live and if the content was interesting. This is a rather inefficient
and time-consuming method which left me with the feeling that I may have
missed some gems, but also not having the time or desire to click through
on every link. They seem to have tried to deal with this by introducing a
“most popular” category. While this seems like a good idea, many of the
selections in this category were rather obscure. Finding my way around the
different screens in this program was more difficult than necessary. For
example, I did a video search, viewed an item, and then wanted to return
to my search list. Looking through the menu list revealed no way to do
this without reentering the search term. By chance, I found that the F4
key pops the search menu back up with the original search results intact.
The documentation in the help menu indicates that the f3 and f4 keys
should be controlling the volume… Pressing those function keys also
resulted in adding a station to my favorites list which I would prefer not
to have. I could find no way to delete items from the favorites list.
Another point which could be improved is within the search function.
Entering a search term that gets zero hits triggers a popup screen that
covers the search term, gives guidance for improving your search terms,
and then when this window is closed the search box reappears with the
search window blank. This left me not knowing whether I had spelled my
search term correctly or had just entered a word for which there were no
hits. The only way to determine this was to retype the term and research.
Leaving the original text in the box would have made this more user
friendly.
Reviewer 3: I had no real complaints about CTube. The manufacturer
makes no outlandish claims, and makes good on their promises.
Reviewer 4: I have three major issues with CTube. The first is that
there are quite a number of bad links. Perhaps CTube can design an
additional button that would send a bad link address directly to CTube,
where it could be repaired or discarded completely. The second is the poor
quality of many of the images. I do not know if this has to do with my own
computer setup, or with the signals sent out by the broadcaster. In spite
of CTube’s many other positive features, this one is a major drawback. The
third one is the “Religious” Category. As far as I can tell, all the
choices currently listed there are Christian, most of which are seeking
converts. This is badly out of balance. There needs both a wider variety
of religions represented there, and a wider variety of views and
approaches to the religious experience.
Reviewer 5: There are really few significant weak points in this
program. It is simple to use and does exactly what it says it will do. It
does offer a very limited 15 day trial period which, in fact is further
severely limited by only allowing you to make ten selections and then only
a sixty-second viewing limit! This is a good product and its developers,
East Bay Technologies, should believe in it a bit more by allowing
potential buyers a more reasonable trial. (In fairness, they do guarantee
a 30 day refund if you are not completely satisfied.) There is also the
stingy, but what is fast becoming standard, Single User Agreement which
allows you to install the program on only a single computer. The only
thing, however, which prevents me from giving this a superior
recommendation, is its inexcusable and unprofessional customer support
policy. You are limited to 1 hour per month or 5 hours total technical
support! This is unheard of and diminishes this application from being a
first-rate program to a third-rate program. It causes or should cause any
potential buyer some serious apprehension. This, too, makes me believe
that the developers do not have much faith in their own product.
Other Comments
Reviewer 1. This is a neat program. As stated above, it allows you
to view free Internet broadcast signals from around the world. As you go
through the lists of available broadcasts, there are some that are
duplicates. This is because the signals may be sent out in multiple
languages, so they will be categorized under different areas. But do not
worry that you have to go through huge lists. The stations are categorized
according to the type of information they are transmitting. This makes it
easy and quick to find what you are looking for As well, some stations
offer adult content so if there are any small children in the family,
Internet monitoring may be an option for you.
Reviewer 2: This is an interesting program which has some
limitations based on factors beyond control of its creators. Internet
video content is still a somewhat haphazard, evolving phenomenon. It is
difficult to imagine a program that could create order from this chaos.
This program is a good start, but there are issues with navigating through
the features of this program that could be improved. There is a setting
that limits adult content. As disclosed in the help section, this does NOT
filter out all adult content and should not be relied upon to make the
content displayed child friendly/safe.
Reviewer 3: As with many cable or satellite systems, CTube does
access some adult content, so supervision must be used with children, as
you would any such television system.
Reviewer 4: CTube promises its users that they make a one-time
payment, and that there are no subscription fees to pay for the service.
At first, I considered the $24 price tag to be too high; however, if you
plan to use this program for a number of years, it becomes a more
reasonable consideration.
Reviewer 5: My reservations regarding the aforementioned support
limitations notwithstanding, I am still giving this program my
recommendation. It performed flawlessly for me in extensive use and
testing over a 90-day period of time as well as provided hundreds of hours
of entertainment which was far and beyond what you can receive even with
the most extensive cable or satellite service. If you are a news junkie,
CTube is a must; but if you are just tired of watching the same old thing
on TV, and enjoy exploring new cultures, independent film, and educational
programming, then you will easily find something to like here. I am afraid
I have already become somewhat of a CTube junkie!
Will you continue to use it?
Reviewer 1. I enjoy languages and music from around the world
and this program gives me the opportunity to view and listen to “what is
out there”. I had the chance to watch a music festival from Argentina, a
news broadcast from Japan, (not sure what they were covering but it was
interesting anyway) and a comedy routine from the United States.
Reviewer 2: Yes
Reviewer 3: Yes.
Reviewer 4: With a life-long guarantee of no subscriptions, and
automatic update already built in, yes, I will continue to use it from
time to time.
Reviewer 5: Yes, most definitely!
OPERATING SYSTEMS USED IN THIS REVIEW
Windows XP Pro, XP Home
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